Hope vs. Prayer.

Been wanting to write about this for awhile. Hope vs. Prayer. What's the difference, really? I do think hope is better, because if whatever you're hoping for doesn't come to pass, then at least you can move on, or try to, without all the questioning. When you pray, you're praying to someone, someone who can, if he so chooses, grant you your request. Hope is just hope. If what you want to happen doesn't happen there is no 'Someone' to ask why not. You can ask yourself or your friends a rhetorical 'why,' but it's just that- rhetorical. You're not really expecting any answers. But when you pray for something- something really big and non-selfish say, and it never happens, you're constantly wondering and asking and guessing as to why not. Especially when others around you seem to be getting 'smaller' things they asked for. Just what is the point of praying, anyway? The bible clearly tells us to. Jesus clearly told us to. But why? Seems like God's just going to do what God wants, never mind what we want or how in line with his will what we're asking seems to be. If we ask for something that we are 100% sure is in line with his will and that we are 100% sure he would want, and it doesn't happen, then we're left thinking that, well, maybe we were just wrong about that thing; maybe we were being selfish all along in asking for it (you'd think god would be a little better at communicating things to us- 'no, you're being selfish here, or asking the wrong way, or whatever. Here's what you need to be asking for...' etc.). Or he didn't answer with a 'yes' because he's got other, super secret reasons, reasons that he'll one day reveal to us when we're with him in heaven, because right now we're just not ready to know them. Well, why can't he help us be ready to know them then, so we don't have to wait until then? Well, he's got his own super secret reasons for that too, and we'll just have to wait for that as well, right?
I remember reading a quote somewhere that God answers prayer in one of three ways- yes, no, and wait. I don't remember where I read it, but it was attributed to Christianity.com (though I'm sure many others have repeated it). Ok, so let's think about that- yes, no, and wait. I guess those are really the only three ways he could answer prayer; the answer is either going to be yes or no, and if it's yes, it's either going to come shortly after the prayer is offered or it's going to take a really long, unknown amount of time. And if it never happens, then the answer was no, right? Seems pretty simple, I guess. The tricky part is- how do you know- really know- who it is that's answering your prayers? I mean, if it's yes, no or wait, I could just as easily pray to the 100 year-old tree in my back yard, or to my dead ancestors, or the flying spaghetti monster, right? The answer is going to be the same- yes or no or wait. Now, while it may seem just blatantly obvious to you that of course it matters who you pray to, because my dead ancestors are just that- dead, and the tree is just a tree and the FSM doesn't really exist, it's not so obvious to those who don't believe. It goes back to what I said in a previous post- just who is this 'God' guy anyway? By definition we can't detect him with any of our physical senses, or any other way, for that matter, except 'through faith.' I know, I know: gravity- we can't smell, taste, touch, hear, or see it, right? No, we can't, but neither do we have to take it on faith, because we can detect it through science. We see it indirectly; we see it's effects on things- things fall to earth, earth rotates around the sun, etc. Gravity is a (very basic and very well understood) part of the known physical universe. By definition, God is not a part of our physical universe (even though he's said to inhabit it). He's 'outside' of time and space, as they say (whatever that's supposed to mean). And he's not at all well understood. I hardly need to provide any examples of that; it's practically part of Christian doctrine- 'my ways are above your ways,' he knows everything, we know (comparatively) nothing, etc. Believers everywhere freely admit that they know very little about God's ways. Of course, it's usually in the context of 'he's so infinite and amazing, it'll take us all eternity to understand him.' Sort of like an ant trying to understand algebra or something. But still, you'd think Almighty God could make himself a little more understandable to his puny, ignorant creation. With all the arguing and disagreements among different branches of Christianity (not to mention those who don't identify as Christians, but who still believe in God) why can't God just step in and act as referee? Straighten everyone out. But it's not just the different branches of Christianity who disagree with each other, with each group saying the other aren't 'true' Christians- Christians in the same group don't need to travel very far to find other like-minded Christians that they disagree with on something 'big.' I've heard some Christians say that they're for the death penalty because of their faith in God, while others have said that they're against it because of their faith in God. Seems like a pretty big issue to me, one that God might want to show up and straighten everyone out on, just so they're all on the same page about it. But anyway, I'm getting off track here. Back to prayer. I suppose there can be more than just 'yes, no, or wait' as an answer, because after all, what if it's not a yes-no question? What if it's more along the lines of 'Where should I go to college?' or something like that? I remember many years ago, when Janelle S. was looking at colleges, trying to decide where it was that God wanted her to go to. She narrowed her choices down to two- ENC, and some other one- I can't remember the name, but I think it was in Pennsylvania. So she prayed about it. She told me that since she'd applied at about the same time, she was praying that God would let her know by whichever one she heard back from first being the one she was supposed to go to. Sure, now it seems like maybe not the best way to figure out what school God wants you to go to, but really, how else was she supposed to decide? 'Yes, no, wait' doesn't apply here. And she can't really expect the school to send her a letter saying 'God told us he wants you to come here and not go to that 'other' school.' So it seems like a perfectly reasonable way for a believer to figure out what God wants for her. He does send 'signs' after all, doesn't he? The thing is, if you were a graduating high school senior involved in the Nazarene church pretty much anywhere in New England who was heading off to college in the Fall, it was pretty much a given that you were going to ENC. You just did. Everyone did, right? And everyone wanted to. And why not? This was long before Facebook and Myspace; hell, this was way before even email became mainstream, so going to ENC was how you stayed in close contact with all your friends, acquaintances and loved ones, everyone you'd gone to camp with and quizzed with for the last several years. And Janelle wanted to go to ENC. Probably expected she'd hear from them first, being that MA was much closer to Maine than PA. But she heard from the other school first. I remember the look on her face, too. It was sort of a surprised letdown. She really wanted to go to ENC and thought for sure God wanted her too as well, but now it appeared that he wanted her to go to the other school, much further away from friends and family, which would be difficult to deal with. Obviously, in the end she ended up going to ENC. I can't remember what the process was for her changing her mind, and her reasons for it, but somehow she managed to decide that no, it was really God's will that she go to ENC instead. Imagine if she'd gotten the letter from them first all along, as she probably expected she would. Obviously that would have been a clear sign from God that she was supposed to go there! Obviously! But she didn't get that letter, so she had to look for other 'confirmation' that that's where God really wanted her to go to college. I'm not passing judgment on her in any way- everyone does stuff like that in one way or another, believers and non-believers alike. We look for, and find, patterns and meaning and signs where there are none, and in the absence of a literal road map for life, straight from God's printing press, believers need to find confirmation somewhere.
So since God's preferred method of answering prayer is never a direct, spoken answer straight to our ears, but is often vague and made through 'indirect' means, what then (again) is the point of praying (besides the fact that we're told to)? If the 'yes, no, or wait' template could just as easily be applied to prayers made to anyone or anything (real or made up) in the universe, why even bother? Seriously. I recall hearing awhile back some preacher or other talking about how prayer isn't so much about asking for stuff, as it is about just communicating with God, and how it's supposed to be transformative- meaning that we should pray simply because it brings us closer to God. Well maybe it does, and maybe it doesn't, but if that's the main purpose of prayer, why does the bible tell us specifically to ask for things? Like I mentioned in one of the beginning posts, that verse in Matthew or wherever, where Jesus got really specific and said whatever you ask for in his name, you shall receive. Enter all the name-it-claim-it folks telling you all you need to do is just ask for money and healing and whatever, followed by the apologists who have to parse what Jesus really meant from what he actually said (even though he's said to 'say what he means and mean what he says').

Thank goodness for all the apologists to come along and explain the gospel for me because if I had to think for myself, I just might get it 'wrong.'

***

Years ago, shortly after I fully left my old faith, I had this bumper sticker that read, 'Nothing fails like prayer.' I wasn't trying to be confrontational or offensive with it, it just really struck a chord with me. It rang true. Still does, actually. Because when you're told to ask for things, and you do ask for them, and they never come to pass, that sounds like a failure to me. 'Maybe the answer was just no,' you say? Maybe. Or maybe the answer just fell squarely in line with the laws of probability. Come up with any scenario you like: 1000 Christians with a gravely ill child, whom modern medicine may or may not be able to save. They all pray fervently for their kids, and some make it, and some don't. Well, maybe God decided to 'take home' the ones who didn't make it; who are we to judge what he does, right? Well, if he were to actually communicate with us, the way he expects us all to do with him, and offer up some sort of reasoning as to why he chose the ones that he did to either live or 'come home,' then maybe I could say 'Fair enough,' and go along with that. But the communication never, ever happens, does it? It's always one-way. One way you could look at situations like that would be to say that 'Well, that's just how God works, and he's got his reasons, etc., etc.' And many people do look at it like that. I've heard some believers, when pressed with similar troubling scenarios (usually taken from the headlines of the evening news) and asked, 'Why would God allow this/ do this/etc., say something along the lines of 'I don't know, but I plan on asking him when I see him (face to face, in heaven). On the surface, I really appreciate the apparent honesty- a believer is actually genuinely troubled by the way God 'chooses to work' in a particular situation and has plans to take it up with him in heaven. But then I think, what in the world makes anyone think that God is going to explain everything in heaven? He's gone this long without a single word of explanation in any form, so why does everyone think he's just going to open up and explain everything after we're all dead? What could possibly give anyone that idea? Just think about how long humanity has been inhabiting this planet- anywhere from 6,000 years (if you're a young-earther) to (last I checked) around 200,000 years. And think about all the brutal, shocking things that have happened to innocent people throughout all that time; things that make even believers ask 'Why, God, why?' A thousand years may be just a day to God, but to us, it's a thousand years, one single day at a time, and if you happened to have been born a black person in Africa or a Jew in Europe during the wrong period in time, then you had many, many days of asking God why, with no answers forthcoming (unless they were from other people, trying to explain why God does things the way he does). But I'm supposed to believe that he's just going to open up and explain everything at the end of time, once all the believers are in heaven and the unbelievers are in hell? No. I do not buy it. Not for one. lousy. second.

Ok, getting away from the yes/no/wait aspect of it, there's the other part of it that I wanted to talk about. Years ago I used to live in the same building as this one guy; we were part of the same church/fellowship and would often run into each other in the hall. Now this guy, I'll call him Mark, he had some sort of physical handicap- a degenerative disease, I guess. I never asked him or anyone else what it was, and noone ever told me so I have no idea what it was called, or his history with it, but basically he was almost completely paralyzed (someone told me that at one point in his life he had been able to at least walk). He could move his head and hands a little, so that if you helped set him up just right he could use a keyboard, feed himself, and brush his teeth, things like that. But other than that, he was pretty much dependent on others for just about everything. Nicest guy in the world, too. Never heard him say a bad word about anyone, and he was almost always cheerful. Not bitter like a lot of us might be. He was, however, sexually frustrated. Noone ever came out and said that, of course, especially him, but it was the truth. Nearly every time I would pass him in the hall, or see him at church, or generally just cross paths with him (which was quite frequently) he'd almost always ask me to lay hands on his head and pray for him because he was dealing with impure thoughts about women or some such thing. Almost every single time. And it's not like he would single me out as the one to pray for him (because my prayers were stronger than other peoples') I'd often see lots of different guys laying hands on his head and praying for him. It got to the point where I actually started going out of my way to avoid running into him, as awful as that sounds to say. It's too bad really, because like I said- nicest guy in the world. And even though noone said it, everyone understood his plight- he didn't have the options that any other able-bodied person would have for dealing with his situation. That's gotta be tough to deal with. Sure, everyone else thought that if they 'gave in' to their 'sexual thoughts' that that would be bad, and they'd have to pray and ask forgiveness for it, and so they would, and everything would be fine- until the next time, when they were again overwhelmed by their raging hormones. Mark didn't even have that option. He didn't have any option to deal with it, other than just keep hitting up his friends for prayers. Many, many times per day. Every single day. Surely- surely - that would be a prayer request that God would honor, no? I mean, of all things to ask for, and since he's so against any actions, any thoughts about sex or anything sex-related, you'd think he'd answer Mark's prayers and 'help him to do better.' But he, apparently, never did. Some might argue that he couldn't actually 'make' Mark not think about sex anymore because that would somehow violate his 'free will.' Bullshit. Mark clearly did not want to think about sex anymore because he believed it was wrong and God didn't want him to since he wasn't married. He was asking for help to not think about sex anymore. But help never came, for some reason. Believers can try and dress it up any way they like, say that God has his own secret reasons, or say that he is helping (just imagine how much worse Mark would have been without God's help) or pull the old 'free will' trick, but the fact of the matter is that Mark prayed countless times per day (and others did the same for him) and yet there was no noticeable difference for him. He was still battling the same old battle. Nothing ever changed. That's pretty depressing, when you stop to think about it. I mean, it's gotta be hard enough just being in his situation, but then when you're constantly so torn up over some thoughts- not actions, not things he did or even said, just some lousy thoughts- and you pray and pray and pray and pray, and nothing ever changes, even in the slightest little bit- you really gotta wonder what the hell God is doing while Mark is suffering (and yes, I call that suffering). So now, you take a believer who's observing this situation as objectively as possible, someone who's trying their damnedest to know/do what's right, know the 'truth' about life and all that, and they look at Mark and his situation and see all the prayers go (apparently) unheeded- what exactly are they supposed to think about all this? Obviously many (most, even) find some way to rationalize it all away and say that God really is listening and really does care and all that, but some might look at it and start to doubt God's everlasting love and best intentions for us. Some might even conclude: 'If that isn't a case of failed prayer, I don't know what is.' And of course, those people will likely be ridiculed and vilified (in a godly way, of course) by the true believers, because as we all know, prayer doesn't fail. God doesn't fail. It's our limited human understanding and knowledge of God that fails (which I guess is why we're supposed to pray in the first place, right?)

No doubt some believer or apologist will read all this and conclude that I just hate God/want to sin/was burned by a 'fake' Christian/etc., etc., etc. (absolutely anything except that maybe what they believe/I used to believe just doesn't stand up to a little scrutiny and critical thinking). The far more simple truth of the matter should be pretty obvious to anyone with a little intellectual honesty: Hope vs. Prayer- what's the difference?