Poly, I forgot to address this in my last post. Regarding anecdotal evidence, I’m sure I could come up with more anecdotes where prayers WERE NOT answered than this board could come up with prayers that WERE.
And, conversely, all the people who NEVER pray, or have people pray on their behalf, and still manage to recover completely from potentially terminal illnesses.
(or have money come to them for an adoption)…
Exactly. I mean, I could attribute everything bad that happens to terrorists, just because I want to put a name/face on it, but it would be inaccurate and unfair. I really LIKE the fact that most people are good and that they do good things for each other. Does it suck that some people are mean or cruel? Sure. But that’s what they call “Life”. If there is a controlling factor in the universe and it still allows all the pain and evil in the world, “it has some 'splaining to doooooo…”
Polycarp, Grimpixie, et al, have you ever prayed and not received an answer to your prayer? Maybe not even for yourself, but for someone you love, or for your community, or even your country. Have you ever put your heart ‘n’ soul into it and received nothing back?
I cannot answer for GP, but yeah, I absolutely have – no indication that it’d been heard, no “results” in the sense of anything changing as a result. (See my self-pitying Pit rant of last week for some excellent examples.)
But the difference here is, I believe in God. I’m not saying something about giving my intellectual assent to the proposition that there is a supreme being, I’m saying that I trust Him to be what He purports Himself to be – omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. And I’m not Him. Which means that when I pray, I’m asking God for certain things, as a mortal, with my own limited perceptions and ability to foresee consequences – and that I trust Him to answer those prayers from His perspective – which may mean the equivalent of telling a five-year-old, “No, you can’t have candy right now, because we’re having your favorite dinner in a half hour.” (I do hate the “we are to God as a little child to its parents” analogies, but sometimes they’re the only useful way to illustrate the distinction in form of existence, and this is one of those times.) In short, if He knows more and better, and particularly regarding the future, than I do, then I’m content to trust His judgment on what is the best answer to my prayer – including the null set.
One of my boys was on the outs with his wife. I prayed for the healing of that relationship. It didn’t happen. Instead, he became permanently out of her life completely, met a woman who was much better for him, and he for her, than his wife had been, and now has a happier life and a son he loves with her. With the advantage of 20:20 hindsight, I can see the wisdom of the choice God made to “not answer my prayer.”
Likewise, and this is the first thing to give me this concept, when I was 8, my grandfather, whom I loved dearly, died suddenly of a massive heart attack, with no inkling of any problem beforehand. For some reason that I never learned, there was an thorough autopsy performed – and it turned out that, unbeknownst to him or any of us, he had terminal cancer that was at that point asymptomatic. And the quick death from the heart attack saved him years of pain and inability to care for himself – which, given his personality, would have been emotionally shattering to him.
Then, of course, you get the cases of the summa cum laude student who has great plans and dies in a stupid accident the day after graduation, and the kindly old woman of whom everyone thinks well who suffers greatly from a fatal disease for years before finally dying of it. And these don’t make any sense – at least from our current perspective.
But I feel that I can trust Him that they do – from His. (I have a sneaking suspicion that karma may be involved, but near-total absence of evidence to support that.)
You do see where a skeptic would think you have pretty equal evidence for both the power of prayer and the suspicion that karma is involved, don’t you?
I understand that you have a much stronger feeling about God than karma, which I respect, it just doesn’t make a whole lot of empirical sense.
As Polycarp has already said, the answer is “lots of times”…
Most recently, I prayed for a job for my wife - she is doing temporary/supply work and it sucks, not to mention not being terribly stable in terms of income, and has been looking for full-time work since we got back from our travels. She was offered one job, but turned it down because it meant a very long commute and wasn’t able to offer her the opportunities she needed. Then along came another interview, another long commute, but an unbelievable opportunity - she came home SOOOO excited!! They were interviewing for a lot of positions, and told her that she’d hear this Monday just passed. I prayed harder than I have for a long while, I really wanted her to get the chance to do this job, I thought it’d be good for her, they could start employing her before the new term started and it would be a terrific opportunity - but she didn’t. I was mightily pissed - from my perspective it would have been a perfect job. But it is not to be…
Since I believe things such as “in all things God works for the good of those who love him” and “the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them.” I have been able to accept that there must be some better plan for us, and in the meantime, we are getting by fairly comfortably, my job is secure, pays well and is enjoyable, so I have many things to be thankful for. I guess that that sounds like justification or delusion to you or another impartial onlooker, but I can only say that to me, it is a source of great comfort - and, added to the fact that there are prayers that do get answered, gives me enough hope/faith to carry on believing until the next answer…
Gp
If the prayers that get answered in your favor equal the prayers that don’t get answered in your favor, what difference does it make?
Because from our point of view, Czar, it’s not whether it’s “in our favor” or not – but whether God’s will gets done. I suspect you’re familiar with Niccolo Macchiavelli’s quote on the subject, but just in case and for others who may not be: