Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Prayer

  • James 5, Prayer, and Physical Healing

    Mark Olson has posted on James 5 and it’s relationship to healing. He notes that he “had been” in conversation with me on health care. I have been a bit too occupied with other matters, but I do intend to write some more in that conversation. Right now, I’m interested in his comments on James 5 and the instruction to call the elders of the church, anoint, and pray for someone who is sick.

    He says:

    From reading this, and the prayers attached to the rest of that section of the service, it seems fairly clear that based on the liturgical prayer and the attached reading above that he prayers and annointing of the sick first and foremost are intended to deal with the afflicted one’s relationship to the Lord. If one takes seriously, as one should if one is of the faithful, that salvation is assured … then this is the right attitude.

    Just so. I would note that there is a special point here in calling for the elders and then doing this together–the element of community. Too much of prayer for healing in the modern American church is a very individual thing with the primary point being to get the physical healing one desires. I have been asked whether calling for the elders of the church and having a kind of service of anointing would be “more effective” than some other form of prayer. What about finding someone who is claims and/or is identified as having the gift of healing?

    The problem here is that we identify the primary purpose of prayer, and in this case of a form of worship service or at least an act of worship, as getting something physical for ourselves. The perennial question is whether prayer “works.” Experiments are set up to determine the effects of prayer.

    I have no interest in those experiments, because they would rely on the idea that the primary purpose of prayer is to produce a particular result. If, as many Christians seem to believe, that is the actual purpose, then such scientific tests would be valid, and prayer would be a scientific process. We could measure the dosage, determine how many people need to pray for someone, and what sort of people. Do we get more points for a minister or priest? Do elders count for more than ordinary church members?

    But I think that misses the point of prayer. It’s not about getting stuff. It’s about communion with God. And God, as Mrs. Beaver noted of Aslan, is not a tame God. We Christians are often guilty of being pushed into a corner on this point. If we don’t claim any physical benefit from prayer, then we’re asked what good it is, and if we do, we’re making a testable claim for something that has not proven testable in the past. Personally I don’t worry about it. I pray because I want to commune with God. I pray with my community because I am a part of it and am called to be in communion with God and with one another. I don’t pray because I can get things and I don’t stop because I don’t.

    Through this conversation Mark has been making good theological points while I have been telling stories. I do have a couple of notes here. My father was the recipient of anointing when the elders were called. We were overseas and it was questionable whether he would live. The mission board wanted to send him home and my parents refused. Our doctor said he would never work again and would be dead in no more than 10 years. My parents called for the elders and they anointed him and prayed over him. I was very disappointed. I was 14 years old and expected something spectacular to happen. What did happen was that he returned to work two weeks later and lived another 35 years. Miracle? I have no idea. My guess is that he was on a mission from God, so to speak!

    In the case of our son, I have been repeatedly complimented on my “strength of faith” to continue believing through that experience. But the problem with that is that I had never expected Christianity to provide me and my family with immunity to cancer or to death from it.

    I would bring this back to my earlier post on the fear. Fear is the great problem. We can go with peace and joy, as befits those who are citizens of God’s eternal kingdom, or we can live in fear. The focus on the physical result of prayer keeps our focus on the wrong issue. Paul was uncertain whether to go and be with God or to stick around, but I feel under the surface that if it was just for him, he was ready to go (Philippians 1:19-26). But none of that sounds like fear!

  • Prayer or Medicine

    I was going to write about his, but Laura has already done a good job. Like my dad the doctor taught me, there’s no need to make it either/or; it’s both/and.

  • Praying for your Enemies

    Rev. John Shuck of First Presbyterian Church of Elizabethton, TN, would like people to stop praying for him.

    That should be a provocative enough opening line! What’s more, I think a few of those people at least should do just that. More importantly, they should quit talking about praying for him.

    I’m guessing that they start from something like this:

    But I say to you, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” — Matthew 5:44

    OK, so what am I, a Bible teacher, doing telling people not to do something Jesus commanded them to do. I obviously must not be a REAL CHRISTIANTM.* Well, not so fast. Let’s take this just a little bit further before we consider it settled.

    (more…)

  • Mother Theresa and Crises of Faith

    A friend e-mailed me the link to Mother Teresa’s Crisis of Faith. Although they use the singular “crisis,” that one crisis was one she lived with for a long time.

    I have to say that I have ample sympathy, not to mention empathy with people with doubts from time to time. I think God leaves us with an abundance of questions. Standing back and thinking in “theologian mode” that seems like an excellent scheme to make us grow spiritually. Living through it seems just simply annoying.

    It does remind me how much I dislike prosperity theology. Besides promising people something that is false–not all, or even most, followers of Jesus will be wealthy–it also encourages people to deny doubts and troubles in order to appear to be “real, faith filled” Christians.

    When our son was in his fight with cancer, from which he ultimately died at age 17, there were those who felt that if we had the right amount of faith, God would heal our son. It’s an interesting feeling to not only struggle with the reality of losing a child, but to also face the implicit accusation that it’s your fault because you don’t pray correctly or with enough faith.

    I suspect the faith that is without any doubts of being shallow. Trust and endurance are separate things. Faith, however, is not so absolute as some would like to make it.

  • A Christian Response to Wiley Drake

    I’ve been trying to write a good response to Rev. Wiley Drake who is calling for imprecatory prayers against specific people at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. I haven’t really managed to express my feelings yet. This is not about disagreements about church and state, it’s about a proper Christian response to opponents. There are times when one has to express oneself forcefully, yet there are certain things we should not do.

    But Through a Glass Darkly has a post Imprecatory Prayer Today that expresses what I’d like to say extremely well. This issue also illustrates, and the post discusses, some of the wrong ways to use scripture.

  • Because I Would Keep Right on Praying

    That’s obviously the answer to some question, but what question is it an answer to?

    Well, I’m frequently asked by fellow-Christians why I would pray if I don’t believe that God will do what I ask. I’m also frequently asked by others why I would bother to pray if there is no evidence that prayer works. It could also be an answer to the frequent question of why I’m not at all interested in the results of studies on the effectiveness of prayer.

    I wrote on this from a more scriptural point of view in my essay Praying, Being Heard, and Not Getting It. Here I just want to give a few personal reflections.

    It starts with the reason I pray in the first place. I pray, because I can commune with God. Those who don’t believe in God are welcome to fill in some kind of meditation, communion with my subconscious, or whatever you want. What I believe is that I commune with God. Now what is this communion with God? Is it something that can be tested? Just what scientific test would one propose to determine how effective one’s prayers are at communing with God?

    Designing a prayer study depends on determining just what it is that is going to happen when somebody prays. I see no theoretical reason one can’t test such things, provided one can find something to predict. For example, are people more likely to be healed when people pray for them or not? It seems a simple question. Of course, you can’t weed out factors like how many people might be praying for certain patients in the study even though they know nothing of the study. Thus statistically, Mary might be in the control group for which nobody in the study is praying, but she might elicit numbers of prayers in some other way. Nonetheless, it would seem to me such a study would work generally, always provided that the prediction was in fact the right thing to test.

    But when I pray, I expect to communicate with God, but I expect God to continue to do things his way anyhow. I don’t see God as a slot machine in the sky. Some scriptures certainly suggest the idea that he is, but others tend the other way. I think this reflects our own experience. Sometimes things happen as we’d like; sometimes they don’t.

    My personal test on this came with the death of my 17 year old son in 2004, less than a week after Hurricane Ivan passed through. In the prayer order of things, I would have taken the life of my son over anything else I might ask God for. Yet my double-wide trailer was spared, despite being in an area of substantial destruction, and my son died. There was nary a leak in the trailer. There was not a moment of respite on my son. Travel plans for guests at the funeral were chaotic due to the cleanup from the storm.

    Did God answer my prayer on my home, but deny the prayer on my son? I couldn’t answer precisely how God works in these things. I can simply note that my son’s cancer ran the course that might be expected of that type of cancer, and that damaged areas were scattered, as they often are in a hurricane. Did I consider cutting off my prayer? “God,” I could say, “This prayer machine isn’t working. I put in several sacks of quarters into the ‘heal my son’ slot, and a quarter or two into the ‘save my home’ slot, and you skipped the healing and handled the home.”

    Many people, I know, have quit praying under that sort of circumstances. Many people will think either that I had insufficient faith–if I’d had enough what I wanted would have happened. Others will think I’m a stupid man because I continue to pray when prayer clearly doesn’t work. (Go ahead, admit you think I’m stupid on this point, even if you’re gracious enough to give me points in other areas.)

    The bottom line, however, is that I didn’t pray so that certain things would happen and others wouldn’t. I prayed because I could. I prayer, as C. S. Lewis once noted, because I couldn’t help it. But even more I pray because I enjoy praying. It’s an important part of my life. I don’t think it gives me a handle on God, or a way to force God to do things my way. It does give me exceptional opportunities, I believe, to reshape my life according to the way God wants it to be. And that is why I will keep right on praying no matter what the studies show. They aren’t designed to discover anything I want or need to know.

    I was kind of set off on this topic by the story of Ante Pavkovic, who said that he was trying to “avert the wrath of God on the nation” when he protested Hindu prayer in the Senate (source ; HT: Dispatches). I’m not sure precisely how being discourteous in the Senate gallery will avert God’s wrath, but it sounds to me as though Pavkovic thinks God is hard of hearing and will perhaps miss the nasty Hindu prayer while hearing the Christian ones from the gallery. Or perhaps he thinks God is too dumb to figure out what to do about America, and needs our guidance. It would be much more useful to stay at home and earnestly ask God to guide him into an effective means of witness.

    All this rhetoric about averting God’s wrath on the nation has a subtle foundation in the notion that America has become God’s chosen nation. In the times of ancient Israel nations in general were seen as belonging to their various gods. Israel was YHWH’s country, and he blessed or cursed Israel according to their obedience or disobedience. The idea of a pluralistic society simply didn’t exist. Most people who pray for the nation are not Christian dominionists, but they do take the promises God made to Israel and apply them to the United States without serious consideration of the context.

    All of which leads them back to the “prayer receiving machine in the sky” which will give the right people what they want if they pray often and loudly enough. I really enjoyed the seen in Bruce Almighty in which Bruce sets the computer to answer everyone’s prayer “yes.” The resulting chaos is quite amusing. But the comedy has a wonderful point. It doesn’t work that way. It couldn’t work that way.

    I suggest those who study prayer seriously consider whether there’s anything to study. Just as I don’t like intelligent design, because I think it’s an effort, however disguised, to make God subject to scientific study, so I don’t think prayer can be studied. If you want to get stuff, feed your money into a vending machine. If you want to get closer to God, pray.

    PS: For those interested, I have three prior essays that are relevant to this issue: The Hand of God, The Hand of God: Miracles, and The Hand of God: Prayer. These three essays are also edited and incorporated into my book Not Ashamed of the Gospel: Confessions of a Liberal Charismatic.

  • Hindu Prayer in the Senate

    My own preference would be that any prayers in congress be privately, not officially conducted. That is due on the one hand to my conviction that we should be a pluralistic, secular society, and on the other to my doubt that politically stage managed prayers are of any value. But given that prayers are offered on the floor of congress, the opportunity should be inclusive, not exclusive.

    Thus I appreciate the effort of Harry Reid in inviting a Hindu to offer the prayer, and I believe the response of three Christian protesters in the gallery was not a good witness for Jesus. The appropriate response would be courtesy and respect, both for the person who was practicing his religion and for the congress which was recognizing the presence of non-Christians in this country.

    For the complete story, see Hindu prayer in Senate disrupted

  • Hearing God’s Voice

    You know, John Piper has come on my radar on women’s ministry issues, and some of my comments have been pretty negative. But this article on his DesiringGod.org web site is something that resonates completely with me. For my skeptical friends, no, this is not the evidence you keep hoping I’ll provide. It’s simply an example of where someone else’s experience of God parallels mine so completely that I have to simply say “Wow!”

    Let me tell you about a most wonderful experience I had early Monday morning, March 19, 2007, a little after six o’clock. God actually spoke to me. There is no doubt that it was God. I heard the words in my head just as clearly as when a memory of a conversation passes across your consciousness. The words were in English, but they had about them an absolutely self-authenticating ring of truth. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God still speaks today.

    . . . continue reading from DesiringGod.org.

    Hat tip: Adrian Warnock’s Blog.

  • Persecution Victim as a Profession

    It seems that former Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt, who claims to have been dismissed from the Navy for praying in the name of Jesus, is making a career now of being persecuted. The story is being kept alive. I was alerted to the current edition through my Breaking Christian News e-mail alert, a source that often provides me with valuable, positive news, but in this case refers me to the WorldNetDaily which appears to be a bit apoplectic.

    WND said:

    A chaplain who was dismissed from the U.S. Navy when he refused to following orders to make his prayers “nonsectarian” and remove the name of Jesus from them now has been commissioned by the governor of Kentucky as an honorary “Kentucky Colonel.

    But CNN reported:

    In September a military jury found Lt. Gordon Klingenschmitt had disobeyed a superior officer’s order not to wear his uniform to a political protest at the White House in March 2006.

    Ah, he was not dismissed for praying in Jesus name, but for disobeying a lawful order. Interesting difference. The Kentucky legislature should be ashamed of themselves for commending an officer for disobeying orders. Kentucky’s governor should be ashamed of himself for giving such a person an award for courage.

    Since I have commented on the issue before, I’m not going to go through the details of the original problem about prayer. Suffice it to repeat here that Klingenschmitt’s view on this differs substantially from that of others, including other Christian chaplains.

  • Two Stories about Prayer in School

    . . . but they supposedly recount one incident.

    The first came to me via the Traditional Values Coalition alert e-mail, which is generally quite strident. It referred me to this story on Alain’s Newsletter, which tends to make the TVC alerts look calm, collected, and irenic.

    Now here’s another story, this time from The Columbian. You need to read both stories to get the picture here. I’m not going to quote extensively from them.

    I think one can get most of the facts out of these stories, if one ignores the hyperbole and possible reconstructions. But if you look at what is reported and what is emphasized in each story, you will see an excellent example of how to slant news. It’s not by actually concocting facts from thin air. I think completely fabricated data is quite rare, but creative selection is quite another matter. Rather, it’s by means of reporting certain specific things.

    You see, if a group of students were refused permission to pray outside of class time and without disrupting the activities of the school, in other words, in good discipline, I would certainly be angry at the school. This sort of thing does happen, but it’s generally the result of ignorant school officials, lacking good judgment and sometimes fearful of lawsuits, though if they’re that stupid they should be subject to lawsuits. On this point everyone from the ACLU to the ACLJ can agree.

    I’m firmly in favor of prayer. I’ve written a couple of books on it, though only one is still in print. I teach weekend seminars on prayer. I’m not against prayer. Got that? So if the facts were solely as stated in the Alain’s Newsletter report, then no problem. Reinstate the students and let them pray.

    But there were certain things that defied probability, and so I looked for other stories to see if things would clarify themselves just a bit. I was doubtful of the claim that complaints came from “one Satanist” student. That’s one of those elements of a story that’s just too good (for the side of the writer) to be true. It might be, but I doubt it. Note that the offer of a classroom in which to offer prayer is missing from the Alain’s report.

    Now constitutionally I’m not 100% on the boundaries, but if the facts are as The Columbian reported them, I think the school officials will turn out to be within their rights, even though their reaction sounds excessive to me based on the provocation. Other facts could change my mind on that. On the other hand, if the disruption of traffic resulted from hecklers, and not from the actions of the praying students, I would be opposed to the actions of the school officials. The problem is that it is precisely key facts such as that one that are hard to dig out once emotions are high.

    I think the following facts are key:

    • The offer of a classroom and the appropriate supervision
    • Was it the praying students or hecklers who were disruptive (or a little of both)?
    • What was the response of the praying students to the school’s authority? If that authority was properly exercised, and yet resisted, that would explain greater sanctions.

    But more important than the legal issues, which are not my forte in any case, are the issues of Christian values. When we pray publicly, what message is it that we are trying to send? There is a good point here in Matthew 6:5-6. I don’t think we should read such a short message as condemning public prayer, as I have heard done, but the purpose of prayer should be questioned. If the purpose of the prayer is to make a show, to shove it in people’s face, then I think we need to reevaluate our actions. For example, if a classroom was indeed offered, as the school spokesman indicated, then the question would be why pray in the commons?

    Again, I think it is quite possible that more facts need to be brought out in this case, but based on what I have seen I would have serious concerns, both about the actions of the students and the sanctions imposed. I’ll have my eyes open for more clarification.