PRAYER: Wanting to be Bruce Almighty
December 28, 2008
Two weeks ago, I wrote in this post about the many unanswered petitionary prayers and about embarrasing testimonies of people claiming that God intervened supernaturally in their lives when their case is more than doubtful.
So, how are we supposed to deal with unanswered prayers and embarrassing testimonies?
I propose that our theology is wrong. God is both blamed and given credit for more than He ought to, because human freedom cuts both ways. If a man makes the wrong choice by deciding to murder my daughter, I can’t blame God; it was not His decision. The only blame we can put on Him is that He has given us so much freedom.
If we blame Him, we cut off the proverbial branch on which we are sitting. It’s only due to our freedom that we can blame Him at all. If we blame Him for our freedom, we blame Him for our very ability to blame Him. Conversely, we don’t have to thank God that we have discovered our wallet on the roof of the car; God probably didn’t intervene supernaturally at all.
What I can thank God for is His being the Source of everything existent: the One who upholds every atom of the universe I live in. I can also thank Him for the order in which He created everything and for the power of choice He has given me.
This power of choice, however, this freedom, necessarily creates a world in which there are real consequences to my actions. If I’m not careful enough to keep watch over my wallet, I might lose it and not find it again. I might pray to God, and sometimes He might perchance intervene supernaturally to help me undo the consequences. But in most cases, I think, His answer is:
“Play by the rules. If you don’t learn to be watchful, you lose things. If you cross a street while reading a book, you will be run over by a car. If you jump out of a helicopter without a parachute, you will die; I won’t change the gravitation of the earth for you, even if you fervently pray in your last minute on earth for me to do so. I can’t change the rules of the game all the time; that would create an extremely confusing world in which no one, once he starts to think about it, wants to live.”
A movie that illustrates this pretty well is Bruce Almighty. Field reporter Bruce Nolan thinks that God isn’t doing a good job and should let someone else take His place, to which God says in essence, “Okay, Bruce. It’s your turn.”
He allows Bruce to play God for a while. And what does Bruce do? He thinks that his almighty powers now give him the right to change the rules of creation as he chooses. For example, thousands of people pray to win the lottery, and Bruce answers every one of them, as a consequence of which everyone wins only a few dollars. From the weather to traffic, nothing is safe from Bruce’s interference. The end result is utter chaos—a completely unpredictable world.
Do we want that? What do people stuck in a traffic jam expect God to do when they pray that He should help them be on time? Move all the other cars out of the way? Magically create a bigger road?
No. He will say, “If you don’t want to get stuck in a traffic jam, talk to your minister of transportation. You know the rules of this world. If your roads don’t have sufficient space for the amount of cars you manufacture, you have to change something. If you can’t find a parking space in a city, don’t ask Me to help you find one; either build more parking spaces or allow fewer cars in the city. Should I create more parking spaces for you or make cars disappear? Which cars should those be? Not yours, that is for sure. Or if you pollute the air, don’t ask Me to clean it for you; you will have to find ways to stop the pollution. You know the rules.”
God honors His creation too much to continually mess with it. Christianity says that He is present in His creation; yes. He does talk to people and guides them; yes. But it is a guidance from within, not from without. He is speaking to the hearts of men in order to help them make the right decisions, not by writing letters in the sky or continually changing the laws of creation. Any change of order must by necessity be an exception. Otherwise chaos will result.
If God answered most prayers in the way we expect Him to, there would no longer be merely one God; there would be millions of gods—millions of Bruce Almightys—all trying to direct the universe according to their will.
Entry Filed under: Christianity/Religion. Tags: blaming God, Bruce Almighty, Christianity, disappointment with prayer, free will, God, prayer, unanswered prayer.
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1.
Gloria | December 28, 2008 at 9:04 pm
“So, how are we supposed to deal with unanswered prayers and embarrassing testimonies?”
The problem I see is that sometimes the answer is no. Many people see that as unanswered prayer when actually God has said no.
My boys, when they were younger, would truly want something and I as a parent knew that it was not either the right time or not a good thing. So I said no. Sometimes we want something and see it as such a good thing- but God, who sees the whole picture, knows that it would not be good for us and He says no.
Embarrassing testamonies, hey if someone wants to thank God for something you might think is trival or coincidental – finding wallet, why should that embarrass you? I really think any time we are giving God thanks that He doesn’t have a problem with it. God’s word tells us that He cares about the little things – after all when was the last time you gave thought to a sparrow? or the number of hairs on your head? or the tears you or some one else has cried? Yet they are important enough to have been included in the
Bible. Just a thought
2.
jacobschriftman | December 28, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Thanks for your thoughts, Gloria.
You’re right, of course: A generally thankful attitude is always good, and feelings of embarrassment smack more of one’s own pride than of any real problem. Maybe I should have used a different word.
What I meant was that people often thank God for things that *they* got and others didn’t, for example a parking space in a crowded European city or a job in an area of high unemployment. My feelings of “embarrassment” stem from thinking about how all the others must feel who didn’t find a parking space in time or who just lost their job.
An honest group of believers must take these people into account just as much as the testimonies of God’s supposed supernatural intervention. If someone is invited to come to the front during a church service and share how God blessed him with a new job, maybe the church should also invite someone to the front who shares how God helps him deal with just having lost his job.
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4.
mark | January 7, 2009 at 9:42 am
Hi, i shared your opinion with a friend and this was her reply.
I don’t feel your pals theories, mainly because trying to explain God
. Pastor Mureithi(our local pastor) once said that trying to explain
and asked how it died the ant would
through his [and by extension [man' s] logic is self focused and
therefore self focused
Gods actions based ones perspective and ones personal experiences is
like an ant trying to explain the size of a human being based on its
[the ants] own experience and ant-like perspective – now the ant has
never seen a whole human being – its eyes are too small – so if you
asked say 100 ants, each of them would explain a different body part,
e.g. an ant killed by someone who squashed it between forefinger and
thumb upon reaching [ant] heaven
say it was squeezed in between 2 massive white walls. Does this mean
that human beings are massive white walls? No, but that is the only part
of the human being the ant experienced, so from its perspective, that’s
what we are…,Massive White Walls… Don’t know if this makes sense,
but hope you get the point. Faith, [by which we pray] needs to be
defined from Gods perspective, not ours…that’s the only way it will
make sense.
Faith defies logic, God answers prayer, heals bodies and hearts, breaks
the rules of gravity, nature and water, and generally He does whatever
the Bible says He does, that’s the basis of our faith.
Again dunno if this makes sense, but then again… does faith?
5.
jacobschriftman | January 7, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Hi Mark,
I feel honored that you would deem anything on my blog important enough to share with a friend.
Well, attacking reason itself stops all arguments, doesn’t it? You cannot reason with someone whose position is to defy all reason. Notice, though, that you need reason to even make a case against reason. It’s a self-defeating position, like (if I may use a strong metaphor) mental suicide.
Does your friend actually believe that God goes flatly against reason or that He is beyond reason? There’s a significant difference.
Only because God knows much more than we do, it does not follow that the little we do know is of no value. A very complicated math formula might go beyond even the brightest mathematician’s ability to reason, but the equation 2+2=5 goes against the reason of every schoolboy. If a man told a boy that two and two equaled five, the boy should not say, “Well, there are so many complicated math formulas I don’t understand. This man must know it better than I. My perspective is so limited. I’m like an ant to this man’s mind. So I accept that two and two makes five.”
If he did that, he would not merely go beyond his reason but against it.
Again, one can believe in the infinity of the universe, even though the concept of infinity goes beyond our reason. We cannot fathom it because we are finite. But it does not go against our reason. It is perfectly reasonable, but it is also utterly unfathomable.
Saying that God wants us to play by the rules of creation and that any suspension of the rules has to be by necessity an exception is a simple observation like 2+2=4.