Posted by Helen on: 05.03.2007 /
Today is the National Day of Prayer here in the US, by proclamation of President Bush. Or, if you prefer, you can join Hemant and others in recognizing it as the National Day of Reason. (Or you can recognize both, perhaps?)
I was looking at the website for the National Day of Prayer Task Force. I found the article What Makes Prayer Work?
From there:
Maybe you’ve tried prayer and prayer has failed you. Maybe you can point to unanswered prayer after unanswered prayer, proving that prayer doesn’t work.
If so, here’s why, according to this article:
Imagine that you went into a restaurant with your father. Imagine that you and your father ordered your meals, and when the waiter brought them to your table, he said to your father, “That looks delicious. I want to try a bite of that!” Then imagine the waiter picks up a fork and helps himself to a bite from your father’s plate. It would be inappropriate. You would be offended. You would demand an apology.
Now imagine that you and your father ordered your meals, the waiter brought them to your table, and you said to your father, “That looks delicious. I want to try a bite of that!” Imagine that you pick up a fork and help yourself to a bite from your father’s plate. It would be natural. Your father would be happy to share his meal with you. It would be an accepted intimacy.
What is the difference between the two scenarios? Not the words. Not the actions. Not the intention. The difference is the relationship. The child has access to the father that the stranger does not.
That’s quite a wordpicture of God: a father who won’t share his food with strangers and a son who angrily demands apologies from strangers who are perceived to be overly presumptuous.
The article ends with a link to how to get to know God. But if God is like this who would want to get to know him? (Or his angry demanding son)
Comment by: benjamin.ady
1xukesola, what a … puny conception of god, and of prayer.
I wonder how god would react if the son said “dad, let’s not go out to eat at a restaurant. Instead, let’s go hang out with some of the food not bombs people, and spend the whole morning dumpstering really yummy veggies and stuff (thus subverting the dominant unfair trade paradigm), and the whole afternoon cleaning, chopping, cooking, etc, preparing a lovely hot vegetarian feast to bring down to feed the homeless and anyone else who wants some down in Pioneer square.
Comment by: Helen
2Benjamin, it seems to me there’s evidence the God of the Old Testament was into that sort of thing - fair trade, helping the poor, etc.
I doubt that the ‘don’t touch OUR food unless you share OUR chromosomes’ father and son have noticed there are homeless people. They’re probably too busy enjoying their relationship with each other.
Comment by: Rose
3Helen,
The story of Cornelius the Italian in Acts 10 seems to give us a different picture.
Comment by: seekingsomething
4I really struggle with Christian analogies. I don’t think I ever got them. When I was younger and a ‘Christian’ it seemed as though whenever anyone asked a searching question (or even a simple, straight one, someone would come along witha well-meaning analogy that didn’t make sense and didn’t answer the question. But the look of delight at the person doing the enlighrtenment made it embarassing to ask further questions.
Comment by: Elisabeth
5I really don’t know what to think of that… I think a better analogy would be: imagine you went out to dinner with your father and he says you can have ANYTHING you want off of the menu. You throw a fit, insist that it’s all bad quality food and that you want food from a different restaurant. And then you get really mad when He just sits there shaking His head, so you get up, tell him that he doesn’t love you and stomp off.
Comment by: Helen
6Rose - I agree.
ss - what I don’t get is that the person doing the enlightening is delighted at what they said rather than being delighted only if it helped you. I’ve often heard Christian speakers (maybe other people do it too but I’ve heard Christian speakers) share the wonderful responses they gave people but they never say whether the other person found it helpful or not. Oh well.
Elisabeth - I don’t know anyone your analogy applies to.
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
7Elisabeth,
I like it that you spell your name with an “s” rather than a “z”. That’s very kewl.
how about this analogy. Imagine some largish majority of americans all went out for breakfast on a sunday morning with their dad. And the black Americans all sat over in that section, and the white americans all sat over in this section. And a huge crowd of people from Haiti all came banging on the door asking to be let into the restaurant, cause they were hungry and thirsty. but all the americans pretended like they didn’t hear them, and kept happily enjoying their feast. Finally some of the americans said “god, those annoying people from haiti. let’s send them some of the scraps that we didn’t want. but we mustn’t unlock the front door, or we might actually notice them. So we’ll send a few of us to sneak around through the back door with some scraps for them.”
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
8seeking something,
I love your “christian analogies”. That’s so perfect. Maybe we can call them “incomprehensible and annoying christian analogies”, or IACA’s for short. I often have a problem with these too. I lacked your tact, and just kept asking the questions right through the look of delight, and it caused (and still causes) me no end of trouble. Now I’m older and a teeny tiny bit more mature than I used to be, and I’ve made a tiny bit of a start on learning some of that tact, and managing to ask the questions with smallerish pokes rather than just enormous jabs and lunges as I used to do.
Comment by: Elisabeth
9I’m sorry, I am at work so I have been just skimming everything (I haven’t gone to any of the links). I must be missing something…are you talking about America as a Christian nation and their position in the world? If so, I am totally not on the same wavelength and didn’t realize that this was about politics.
I was under the impression that the article was strictly talking about personal prayer and saying that God will give you what you ask for as long as you have a relationship with him. I am saying that is not true. We ask him for things which happen to not be on the menu…that’s why we feel like our prayers are unanswered and we get upset.
Comment by: Helen
10Elisabeth, thanks for clarifying what your analogy was about.
I don’t think it applies to me because I asked for things that were on the menu and didn’t get them. The salvation of other people is on there, isn’t it?
And when he didn’t do what I asked for I didn’t get mad or assume he didn’t love me or storm off.
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
11Elisabeth,
Also thankyou for clarifying. What do *you* see as being on the menu?
Comment by: Rachel
12I totally relate to that Seekingsomething! I think the most irritating IACAs I heard came after the sudden death of my father… “God needed another flower for heaven so he picked your father” and other such yucky comments.
Comment by: Stephan
13Yeah, that “free will” really sucks, doesn’t it. If God could just force them to convert, that would fix it all.
Sorry for the sarcasm, but it was too hard to resist. I don’t believe forced conversion is on the menu, Helen, and I wouldn’t order it if it were. Love without free will is meaningless.
Comment by: Stephan
14But more on point, I don’t think the menu analogy is even close to what prayer is. Are we really just asking for things for ourselves? Or is it more about a relationship, about discerning God’s will and conforming more to His image?
Comment by: Helen
15Rachel wrote:
:(
It’s bad enough to be dealing with a loss like that, without having insensitive comments made.
Comment by: Helen
16Stephan wrote:
I’m never going to understand the free will argument, because if heaven is so great, no-one would complain about not having the choice not to go there.
FYI
Comment by: Elisabeth
17Thank you for asking, Benjamin :) And that is what I have been thinking about this afternoon actually… That’s the whole problem! I don’t know what is on the menu. Just yesterday I was looking at books online and ran across a new one called:
“Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To: Divine Answers to Life’s Most Difficult Problems” by Anthony DeStefano
I’m very interested in reading it because I NEED to know what’s on that menu…
Stephan, this comment leads back to the original post, I think…and that is where I have a hard time. I suppose I need to evolve a bit more in order to really understand how to do that. When I talk to God, I don’t hear a voice talking back to me. I can’t discern God’s will. And that is where the “menu” concept comes in for me…I need guidance…I need the “menu”. Could someone please give me a list of things I can talk to about with God so that I can ‘try’ to conform to His image?
Comment by: Helen
18Elisabeth, you could look at what Paul (the apostle) prayed for - that might give you some ideas.
Either go through the letters in the New Testament, or here are some sermons about specific prayers of his.
Praying with Paul
Comment by: Rachel
19Excellent point, Stephan!
Comment by: Stephan
20Elizabeth, I can’t say there are many times I have actually heard a voice (although there have been a few), but mostly it is a sense. There have been several times in my life where a major decision felt ordained in a way that is beyond my human understanding.
Unfortunately I don’t think there is a “formula” other than those laid out in scripture. I find that obedience to the things I already know often lead to learning more. If you are not already living up to the things you have already learned, there is very little point in learning more.
Prayer, for me, is a way of acknowledging God as the source of everything I have and am, and asking Him for direction. Yes, I also often ask for specific things, but more often for others than myself. Truth be told, this is not really selflessness as much as it lack of faith. If I pray for someone else and it doesn’t happen I am not deeply hurt. But if I ask for something for myself and don’t get it I might have more questions. I’m not proud of it, but I might as well be honest about it.
Comment by: Stephan
21Helen said
Ok, here goes another flawed analogy.
If you offered your kids a million dollars if they obeyed you, I’m pretty sure they would obey. They might also quietly resent you and not understand, or even attempt to understand, what you were asking them to do. Wouldn’t you much rather have them obey because they loved you and wanted to please you?
Comment by: Helen
22Stephan did you read what I wrote at the FYI link? I thought you might be interested to see that I largely agreed with you about prayer and relationship, in a comment I wrote over there.
Comment by: Stephan
23Helen, Thanks for the link and the agreement. I suppose when you are “almost an atheist” you can still have some good ideas about prayer and relationship with God, even if you don’t totally believe it yourself.
Comment by: Helen
24You’re welcome.
My comments were well-received over there so, evidently that does seem to be the case.
Comment by: benjamin.ady
25back to the menu thing. I think this touches on one of the reasons I can’t really consider myself a christian. Jesus says these *really* crazy things that seem to be related to prayer. Like in Luke 12
I guess this kind of touches back on the whole insane trust thing. It seems to me that the level of … trust/hope required to be a christian is exorbitant, with relatively little … evidence upon which to base such a trust. This touches on why I just can’t pray anymore. I like the … *actions* jesus is suggesting here, and I think motion towards these actions would lead to a better world. But I don’t see Christians, by and large, taking these actions, and I just can’t find any place or reason for the nutsola hope/trust toward ‘god’ upon which Jesus seems to be saying these actions should be based.
Comment by: Helen
26Benjamin, I hear what you’re saying.
Jim is speaking at a conference this weekend. According to John Smulo’s summary of Jim’s talk from last night, one of Jim’s points was:
I thought you might like that.
Anyway this is how I would read the passage you quoted:
- wow, neat, the point is Jesus wants me to relax!,
Now I’ve got the point I don’t need to read the rest ;-)
This might seem shockingly irreverent and disrespectful to what the passage actually says.
But is it any less irreverent and disrespectful to assume that even though Jesus said “I’m trying to get you to relax” he actually meant, he wanted something that is not at all relaxing or even possible for you?
Ok, so this is a paraphrase. What do other translations say? “Do not be afraid” and “do not worry”. I think “relax” conveys the sense behind those pretty well. I’m satisfied with the paraphrase :)