The power of prayer (or Mangetout starts a witnessing thread)

Great Debates
1

Don’t worry - it’s not going to be as bad as you might have feared…

I’ve just returned home from the finsl perfomance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat that our Church put on - it has been a frantically busy week - I’ve spent a lot of time helping out with the production and setup as well as performing in the show too.

All week we worked until the small hours to get the venue set up - I arrived an hour Early for the first night and the place was in total darkness; the electricity supply had failed. Only an hour to go and there was no lighting, no power for the sound and music, you get the idea.

Anyway, someone from the more fundamentalist end of the scale piped up something about us needing to ‘take authority over the situation’ and small huddle of people formed to pray. Shortly afterward, one of the other perfomers said he would call an electrician who might just be able to help.

He was told to have faith and not to make the call - “that’s how you let Satan in, doing things in your own strength” (or something like that. He excused himself and made the call anyway.

The electrician just happened to be working on a minor job locally and dropped everything to come and help - he quickly identified the problem as a blown fuse (not accessible to ordinary mortals - this was the fuse inside the breaker box - it was rated 32A for a supply that had been upgraded to 100A. He added a fuse of the correct value and power was restored (to a chorus of ‘hallelujah!’ from the people praying in the main hall.

OK, what’s the point of all this?, you’re asking.

Well, I’m going to make the ridiculous assertion that disagreement within an organisation can be constructive and necessary. I believe that there are situations when no one person can rightly stand up and say “this is what we should all be doing”, because what we should all be doing might very well be different things.

The people praying in the hall thought the power was restored miraculously, the guy who phoned the electrician thought that he had saved the day (and I fully expect the majority of opinions here to echo that).

Me? - as usual, I fall somewhere in the middle; I was utterly convinced (more through sheer obstinacy and investment of work) that the show would go on, I still thought that phoning the electrician was a smart move (not that I’m suggesting that restoring a piece of fuse wire isn’t something that God could do), but I have to say that I simply couldn’t believe how quickly he arrived and fixed it all up - faster than I would have thought humanly possible.

I suppose in the end, what I’m really saying is that diversity is good.

2

Criticizing someone for calling an electrician when the power goes out because it’s “doing things in your own strength” is appalling, (what do these people do when their shoe’s untied?) and no one’s going to convince that kind of person that diversity is good.

There are billions of coincidences that happen every day, most having no impact on us, more that go completely unnoticed, and only a tiny fraction that we both notice, and expect in one way or another. And only a tiny fraction of those are sufficiently beneficial and “creepy” to attribute to something beyond chance.

There’s also the tendency among praying people to “count the hits and ignore the strikes.” If a tornado wipes out an entire neighborhood, it’s a miracle that the entire town wasn’t destroyed. If a tornado wipes out a neighborhood, and most people in the neighborhood survive, it’s a miracle that more people didn’t die. If only a few survive, surely God was watching out for them. And if only one person survives, it’s a miracle of epic proportions.

I highly doubt that God intervened in your case, if only because I don’t think He would assist in the production of anything written by Andrew Lloyd Webber. :slight_smile:

3

Right. So we’re supposed to sit back and let God take care of everything for us? I think your fundamentalist friend needs to read the bible a little more. as i’m SURE it says something to the effect of believe in God, but take steps to prepare yourself anyway… while STILL BELIEVING IN GOD.

4

Does your fundie friend live in, like, a house or something? Cuz I’m pretty sure that if she does, her house wasn’t just willed into being by God!! I’ve always liked “There may be fairies, there may be elves, but God helps those who help themselves”.

5

So what you’re saying is that in this church group, not a single person had enough sense to check the breaker box for a freakin‘ blown fuse, and you had to call in an electrician for that? And some in this group thought this was a miracle because the electrician, despite it being his trade, was able to come over there and diagnose the problem and put a new fuse in, in an hour. :rolleyes:

It isn’t the diversity of opinion that concerns me, it is which person or group did the most constructive thing. If it came down to it, if you had to eliminate the group that prayed, or eliminate the electrician, which would you have chosen and still planned on having the electricity back on in time for your show? IOW, pray in one hand, and s#@% in the other and see which one fills up first.

The hands that help are better far than lips that pray.–Ingersoll

JZ

6

Well, I for one think your observation and conclusions are ones that I would agree with completely. Diversity is good. The Body of Christ is made up of many parts and we each have our own purpose. Obviously some of us have more worldly sense while others tend to rely only on their faith. Either way we all get through this life one way or another and hopefully as ** Mangetout ** has done, we can all see the goodness in everyone and appreciate everyone’s differences.

7

If God was responding to prayers here, I wonder if it was only the prayers of those who didn’t believe in what the wacko fundie guy said. If not, He was probably trying to teach some people a valuable lesson.

So be sure to tell them about the electrician!

8

I’m just thinking about the old joke.
You know the one. “I sent you two boats, and a helicopter.”

9

Yup. Lifeboat, helicopter, Coast Guard…

Calling an electrician is pretty basic, when an electrical problem’s involved. Would those folks not call an ambulance if someone was deathly ill?

I don’t get it. Never have. I remember a lady who prayed over our cat, then proceeded to try and throw out the cat’s (necessary) medication. I don’t find justification for this sort of thing in the Bible, do you? It’s emotional grandstanding.

Just my late-night $0.02…

10

Two people have already beat me to the “two boats and a helicopter” joke, but that’s what I figured would happen.

OK, Mangetout, here’s a story for your Fundie friend about the power of prayer. A couple of years ago, I was driving through the mountains east of here when I saw a car stopped by the side of the road about half way up a mountain. Now, I know nothing about cars, but I figured I should at least offer whatever help I could give. Sure enough, it wasn’t something simple, and I didn’t have a cell phone. Rather awkwardly, I admitted to being some sort of Christian on my way to a church retreat, so I offered to pray for them. I figured it wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. As I drove up the mountain, I started praying, “Lord, send someone to help these people.” At the time, I thought that would be that. Wrong.

The other side of that mountain, there’s a long, straight stretch of road. About halfway down it, I saw a state police car who was, I assume out to catch speeders. My first thought was, “How fast am I going?” Then I got it. I’d prayed “send someone to help them.” There was a police car. “Oh,” I thought, “now I get it. ‘Someone’ means me.” I pulled into a driveway about half a mile beyond the police car, made a u-turn, pulled in next to the car, and told the police woman in it about the couple I’d seen. She pulled out and drove up the mountain, presumably to help them.

As I drove away, my knees were shaking and they kept shaking the rest of the way to the retreat. I’m a devout Christian, and I believe in the power of prayer, but I’m not used to a less than 5 minute turn around on them! I wasn’t going to say anything about this, but I had one more coincidence left. While I was talking to the policewoman, another car had passed me, carrying four other women on their way to the same retreat. They’d seen me while I was stopped and, when I got to the retreat, they asked me if I’d been stopped for speeding. Instead, I told this story for the first time.

Yes, we should pray and ask God for what we want and what we need, and yes, we should trust Him. However, if He wanted us to just sit back and be passive receivers of His grace, He wouldn’t have given us free will. It’s my belief that God wants us to use the gifts He was given us to do His work in the world, rather than expect Him to do everything for us. We’re not babies who need to have everything handed to us. Instead, Christ called us “brothers” and “sisters” and commissioned us to do His work. I’ve been praying for a new job since I’ve been laid off, but I’ll also be checking through today’s want ads as well.

By the way, if you need another joke, there is the one about the fellow who kept asking God to let him win the lottery. Apparently he nagged a little bit too much, because one day he heard a deep voice coming out of the clouds saying, “Give me a break. At least buy a ticket!”

CJ

11

I’m not getting this. As I see it, the call to the electrician was the determining factor in getting the power restored, and would have worked regardless of what prayers were uttered. Conversly, I do not think that any amount of prayer would have restored the power.

Given that the prayer was superfluous, why was it good?

12

The answer is simple here. God ( or whatever) runs the electrical company.

13

The fuse was one of the main fuses, not the bitty 15 amp branch fuses everyone over 40 is familiar with. They are located behind the cover of the box, and most folks don’t even know they are there. In order to get things up without the intervention of an electrician one would need to:
[ul]
[li]Take a couple screws off of the cover and open it up[/li][li]Test the fuses to determine the blown one[/li][li]Use a fuse puller to yank the bad fuse (death lurks within)[/li][li]Pop the replacement in and button things up[/li][/ul]
Mind you, this assumes you’ve got the test gear, fuse puller, and fuses in your pocket, or at least the truck. Calling an electrician was the right thing to do. Personally, finding one so close and so quick is a sufficient miracle for me.

DD

14

Yes and no.

Yes, if that one person who stands up is Mr. That’s How You Let Satan In.

No, if that one person who stands up is the one person with the common sense to realize that an electrical problem is a good thing to see if an electrician’s about to take a look at.

Alternately, the explanation was that the electrician was Satan. His quick arrival is explained by being Let In.

15

Because there’s no rational argument that’ll convince The Faithful® otherwise.

16

You seem to have missed Mangetout’s assertion that the electrician got there much quicker than might normally have been expected, and that the problem turned out to be minor. While Occam’s razor may make it easy for some to discard the possibility that prayer had an effect, there’s plenty of room in the described situation for real consequences arising from the actions of both the prayer group and the pragmatist.

17

Let me see if I’ve got this right. God killed the power in the church, I presume in order to prevent another staging of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I can’t think of any other reason he would have done so. Then, because some people prayed to him, he changed his mind, and decided that he would, after all, endure another ghastly amateur production. But instead of simply restoring the power supply, he made you call an electrician. He softened the blow by making the electrical problem a relatively minor one, and by getting the electrician to show up quickly.

Does any of this actually make sense to anyone with a rational bone in his body?

18

Changing the fuse inside the breaker box (not just one of the fuses that plug into the consumer unit) is not an operation that anyone present was qualified to undertake.

19

Let me make it absolutely clear that I don’t find there to be any objective evidence of a miracle having occurred here; certainly the electrician was on site very much quicker than I would have expected, that’s all; one can subjectively (or rationally) interpret this any way one pleases.

The lifeboat joke sprung immediately to my mind too.

20

Ah, I believe we’ve identified the source of the problem! This statement implies that virtually any interpretation of an event is somehow “rational,” no matter how ludicrous the interpretation is.

I drop my pen, and it falls to the floor. Why did it fall to the floor? One person concludes that gravity did it. Another concludes that God pushed the pen to the floor. A third person maintains that invisible aliens from Venus live just below the surface of the Earth, and constantly suck things down. By your standards, each of these interpretations is equally “rational.” Hopeless.