If I am assigned this purpose, it would mean that god actually DOES exist. Wow, talk about a switch in worldview! So, knowing that there is a god, I’d try mostly to grant the prayers of pre-teens or teens, who are most likely to challenge and reject their faith. With preference given to disadvantaged teens (poor, gay, fat, ugly, unpopular), because I think they need help more than Priscilla needs another pony.
Miraculous perception? I could use that. Let’s start with a criteria of that which requires the least effort for the most change towards the betterment of all mankind. If at all possible, with no obvious signs of a miracle. Slowly but surely, everything is going to get better.
What Mr. Excellent is saying is quite accurate, one should be extremely cautious about anything that changes human culture’s reliance on the supernatural. Weird shit can happen that way.
However, at least once a day, there should be a completely random prayer answered. (Not completely random: if the random selection winds up as ‘the serial killer is praying for a perfect victim’, then we get to pick someone else.), because a little disorganization is good for the soul.
Once a month, pick a project that’ll require some serious manhours.
And whenever possible, frustrate those with evil motives, in the most plausible and mundane ways.
Priority processing:
- Prayers for the protection or well-being of children.
- Prayers for the smiting of people who hurt children.
- Prayers for the greater good (world peace, to the extent that it can be influenced within my little purview, will be supported.)
- Mac’s rule is hereby adopted, to whit: “grant to all who ask for knowledge, wisdom, kindheartedness, strength, courage, perseverance.” Except when the perseverence is intended to withstand a bad situation rather than changing it.
After that I’ll pretty much go with the Leprechaun rules. If your prayer is in any way selfish, or greedy, or poorly intentioned, it will backfire on you in as amusing and educational a manner as I can devise.
And yes, I give myself a decent income and a comfortable home, and pay Celtling’s school bills. Nothing elaborate, but the all-powerful Celt will not be vacuuming the living room between miracles.
I changed my mind. Prayer means an uneven playing field or taking sides.
Life is a train. When it’s gonna wreck, sometimes you intervene. Other times you just have to watch the show.
There’s a saying that god helps those who help themselves. So if someone needed a leg up for a good cause (crap. moral judgment) or to ensure tzedakah or justice, then I could do that.
So yeah. I would politely decline most prayers. I’m on the fence on whether or not I’d respond with decline letters, though.
That’s what I was thinking of when I wrote the OP.
So what? If Ralph’s boss wanted you to play prayer, she wouldn’t have press-ganged you into service in the first place. You’re being directed to take sides.
So yeah. I would politely decline most prayers. I’m on the fence on whether or not I’d respond with decline letters, though.
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I would separate prayers into two categories: Prayers to protect oneself from harm and misfortune, and prayers to improve quality of life for oneself. Both categories are extremely arbitrary by design.
Both categories would have two criteria each:
Prayers to protect oneself from harm and misfortune
[ol]
[li]The severity of harm or misfortune (praying to not run out of gas before getting to the gas station vs. praying to get pregnant on one ovary).[/li][li]How much personal responsibility the pray-er is willing to take for his/her own misfortune or harm. If someone prays, “I know I didn’t study hard enough before, but grant me the strength to study through the night so I can keep from failing the exam tomorrow” would likely get answered.[/li][/ol]
Prayers to improve quality of life for oneself
[ol]
[li]Genuine need.[/li][li]How much the improvement for the pray-er would improve the lives of those around him or her. If someone prays to win tonight’s PowerBall so she can afford to get her son that cleft palette surgery, it will likely be answered.[/li][/ol]
Why not just miraculously heal the son’s cleft palate?
I work in mysterious ways.
Whimsey, pure whimsey. 
The only sign of a system would be that I’d be inclined to grant prayers for disease cures.
Since Ralph’s boss doesn’t care about being worshipped and wants any wonders worked to be discreet, and furthermore prefers that such wonders act to make people more self-reliant, I think a completely inexplicable-except-by-miracle healing of the soft plate is contraindicated. Likewise she won’t approve of smiting muggers with lightning bolts from a clear blue sky, and so forth. Either of those will increase people’s dependency on the supernatural.
And also some fairly direct ones?
/Obligatory BTVS reference/
Request discernment, answer everything in Love, ignore any and all rules that restrict me answering in Love, let God judge my heart in all my actions.
Either you missed the point of the exercise or willfully ignored it.
I spend more time mocking kanic than not, but I won’t here. I think he actually answered in a meaningful fashion. Yeah, he declined to set a policy, but so did Abraham Lincoln. He did specify an approach whose thrust I understand.
I think the whimsy thing would actually earn you points towards a permanent gig, since being unpredictable would keep people you’d helped from relying on you overmuch. Best be careful what diseases you cure, though, or how.
"When I was back there
In seminary school,
There was a person there
Who put for the proposition
That you can petition the Lord
With prayer.
Petition the Lord with prayer…
PETITION the Lord with prayer…
Petition the Lord with PRAYER?
You can NOT PETITION THE LORD WITH PRAYER!!!"
~ Jim Morrison (The Doors), “The Soft Parade”
I’ve never understood this celestial begging concept. It wasn’t so long ago that prayer consisted only of atonement or of acknowledging/celebrating the existence of God. Do you really think an all-powerful being capable of creating the entire Universe is swayed by the petty beggings of someone who’s only on this Earth for a few moments in that Universe?
If such a power were granted to me, do with me as you will, since I choose not to exercise it. If I did, I’d probably do it in such a way that I’d benefit from each instance, which renders such power profane.
Prayer is only celestial begging is you assume God is omnimax. A deity can be vastly powerful, hugely knowledgeable, very wise, and generally benevolent without being inifintely so in any of those areas; and possessing an infinite capacity for those areas is not necessary for such a deity to be sovereign.
God may spend most of her time attending to matters on such a vast (or minute) scale that humans could never understand, and thus prefer to delegate dealing with most mortal issues to others. And she might prefer to use mortals rather than angels to deal with mortal concerns, on the grounds that angels, being immaterial and immortal, are not going to understand some human concerns.
I would base my decision to answer prayers on whether or not I approved of their underwear choices. That’s nice and random and no one is likely to figure out that women wearing bras without underwires are getting their prayers answered, and that anyone in a thong gets smote. Smited. Smitten.
StG
Smited.
A woman who has just been* smitten* has just suddenly fallen in love.
A woman who has just been smited just got the business end of a lightning bolt.