Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Prayer

  • On Measuring Results – World Prayer Blog

    I have a post today at the World Prayer Blog that discusses measuring the results of prayer.

  • Looking the Part – on Worldprayr

    No, that’s not a misspelling. @worldprayr is an international prayer organization started on Twitter. Since many of us have been following this organization for some time on Twitter, we’re used to calling it by it’s twitter ID. I wrote a post for the World Prayer Blog which was published today. It is titled Looking the Part and draws heavily from the first 12 verses of 2 Corinthians 4.

    I didn’t mention it there, but I want to do so here–I have been really enjoying Frank J. Matera’s New Testament Library commentary on 2 Corinthians. I’ve been reading through that book rather slowly, and spending a good deal of time with the text of Corinthians. Matera does an exceptional job of both covering the critical issues quickly and providing theological reflection that is relevant to living, teaching, and preaching the message.

    Enjoy, and please comment there.

  • And Now, Prayers from Everybody

    … or almost, that is. According to this Christian Post story, quite a variety of clergy have joined in the various services that will be involved in the inauguration.

    So if people want to bash Rev. Rick Warren or Bishop Gene Robinson, they should at least consider the broader range of targets available.

    Before anyone misunderstands me, let me tell you what does not disturb me here. First, I think that the president-elect is a man of faith, and that should be reflected in his inauguration. Second, I also think he will be president of a diverse nation, including people of a variety of faiths and of no faith (set of religious practices), and that should be celebrated as well.

    Under the circumstances, we’re beginning to see the sort of representation that is needed, and some of us, at least, should have expected this all along–that the participants in the weekend would not only include the folks who pray at the inaugural itself, but who would be involved in many events surrounding that one.

    What I would be delighted to hear from our political leaders at some point would be an explicit acknowledgement that our celebration of diversity extends specifically to include those who are atheist, agnostic, non-religious humanist, and so forth.

    Why do I, as a Christian, get worked up about this? Because recent polls show that these are people who are actually despised by large percentages of the population. An interesting set of poll numbers can be found here, in which I would simply note that 56% say they would be willing to vote for an otherwise qualified homosexual, but only 46% would be willing to vote for an atheist. Both of those numbers are troubling to me, but in the wake of movements such as Proposition 8 in California, consider that less people regard atheists as acceptable. I take the golden rule seriously–do to others as you would have them do to you–and I think it applies here.

    The problem, in my view, is that we work on these groups one at a time, rather than simply learning to celebrate diversity as long as that diversity is not injurious in a society with a variety of beliefs and practices. (I don’t advocate tolerance of people who practice human sacrifice, for example.) The reason I would like to hear something said is that it is only by expressing the view publicly that each of these groups consists of people, who should be judged on their merits whether for a job in one’s business or for public office, that we get people to think about them and change their attitudes. If nothing else, the previous century should have taught us that silence doesn’t work.

    I grow more able to celebrate the inauguration mix as a whole, though still wondering about homogenization. I prefer a robust diversity where each practices his or her own religion, and it is the differences, not the sameness, that is celebrated. But one thing at a time.

  • Let Them Pray Together

    Bruce Alderman has a wonderful suggestion for Bishop Gene Robinson and Rev. Rick Warren:

    Personally, what I’d like to see is for Robinson and Warren to sit down and say a prayer together. This issue shouldn’t tear the church apart, regardless of who is right.

    If nothing else, we could call it loving enemies and praying for those who persecute you (Matthew 5:44). Perhaps it could even be better than that!

  • The Difficulty of Appropriate Public Prayer

    MSNBC.com reports that there is a bit of a kerfuffle over whether Rick Warren will use the name of Jesus in his prayer at Barack Obama’s inauguration. At the same time we have a group of atheist and humanist groups suing to prevent any prayer at all at this public event.

    I confess to mixed emotions about the public prayer, largely because I think that the event reflects not only the public, but also the person who has been elected to that office, and Barack Obama is a believer. I could quite easily regard the prayer as relating more to him as a person than as something that is intended to reflect the country as a whole. While I may have mixed emotions, I would suspect that the lawsuit is doomed to failure, except in producing publicity, because we still have military chaplains and prayers to open the houses of congress, and the courts have shown no inclination to stop them.

    But I have more problem with a public prayer as a Christian than I do as a political matter, something that has only been stirred up and sharpened by discussions with a friend of mine who is a pastor and who gets invited to pray at public events. There are two major points involved. First, for most trinitarian Christians, prayer in the name of Jesus (or in a trinitarian formula in some cases) is the way to pray–it is prayer. Second, just what is it that we expect a pastoral prayer at a public event to accomplish? As my friend has pointed out to me, and I agree, the public bodies over which prayer is offered are not going to actually seek God’s guidance and blessing as a group. They’re going to go right on doing whatever they were going to do anyhow. And it’s difficult to expect a public body that is diverse in beliefs to do so.

    So in that case the public prayer becomes, in many ways, an act of idolatry. It is a pretense at worship, but not the reality. A critical part of the Lord’s prayer is “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Show me the public body here in the United States that intends to behave in that particular way. And with acute awareness of my atheist and other non-Christian friends, that is not a prayer that can be prayed collectively by a public body, expected to act in a secular way to govern a diverse body of people.

    Were I an elected individual, I could individually pray that God guide me, even though I must express my viewpoint in non-religious terms in public debate. And note here that I can only express my viewpoint in non-religious terms if it is honestly supportable in non-religious terms. That means that I can pray the Lord’s prayer for myself, but that collectively prayed, it becomes an outright lie. Any prayer prayed in the name of Jesus is similarly supposed to be “under the authority of” as well as “in the name of” and thus, in my view, becomes idolatrous if prayed corporately on behalf of those who do not consent.

    Given that there will be prayer at the inaugural event, I think the explosion of hostility over the selection of Rick Warren to offer that prayer is at best overdone. President-elect Obama, in my view, thinks he’s secure in his liberal credentials and wishes to reach out to a block of voters. That’s the political view. Thinking of it as a Christian I am much less comfortable, not because I don’t think Rick Warren can pray for, with, and on behalf of Barack Obama, but because I think it’s somewhere between difficult and impossible for him to pray on behalf of the inaugural crowd and certainly on behalf of the nation as a whole.

    I understand pastoral prayers in congregations to be collective, that is that the pastor prays both for and on behalf of the people. Those who are more theologically and liturgically oriented than I am may argue this. I don’t see how this can be transplanted to the public square.

    Yet we do so constantly in this country. I’m not sure where my conscience would lead me if I were a pastor. My friend doesn’t want to pray at public events (not in church), a position with which I sympathize. The only compromise position I can see is praying in public, but seeing this as praying solely on one’s own behalf, and for the gathered audience. Trouble is, unlike pastoral prayer in which I believe all participate, I think this sounds a great deal like a violation of the principle expressed in Matthew 6:1-6. The prayer becomes a public show, or perhaps a political show.

    I like interfaith dialogue, but I like interfaith prayer much less. I prefer the idea that in interfaith dialogue all sides maintain their distinctives honestly and openly, yet celebrate the diversity. In my view too much interfaith dialogue involves homogenization and blandness rather than actual celebration of diversity, combined with robust but respectful discussion and debate.

    Readers are free to see this as a modification or even a partial repudiation of my view expressed here, where I considered the invitation solely from the political point of view.

  • 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!

  • Grief: Finding the Candle of Light



    Note: I want to give fair warning on this post. It’s both commercial and personal, and deviates from my normal approach on this blog to a considerable extent.

    When I married my wife Jody, our son (my stepson) James Webb was already in chemotherapy for cancer. Over the next five years we experienced remission twice, but always the return of the cancer. Finally, it returned in multiple locations, and on the evening of September 22, 2004 James passed away.

    Both my wife and I are teachers in the church, with ministries that are relatively small, but extend beyond the boundaries of a single congregation. We teach about various topics including [tag]prayer[/tag]. Teaching was very interesting while James was ill. There were some who assumed that if we really knew anything about [tag]prayer[/tag], we would be able to pray “properly” for our son and he would be healed. We experienced the complete range of reactions from other people. I would like to emphasize that the vast majority of responses to our situation were very supportive and helpful.

    Some responses were well-intentioned, but not very much on target. I myself made any number of errors in supporting my own wife through this situation. Our relationship was strong enough to withstand those errors, and I would suggest to others that they are unlikely to make it through such a situation error free.

    Amongst Christians there were some very interesting views on [tag]grief[/tag] as well. Some felt that there should be no grief. James went straight to heaven, so what’s to be sad about? Other’s would see every moment of peace or joy during his illness as a sign of denial. I was approached about both my wife and James with the suggestion that they were in denial. The only thing I could tell people that as a hospice nurse with 12 years experience, and a manager of an oncologist’s office prior to that, Jody was more aware than any of us of the realities of cancer and its treatment.

    Over time, James became an expert far beyond his years. He was more aware of reality. I remember when the cancer returned for the final time. Jody was in Hungary on a mission trip, and so James came to me to report pain in his side. We had to decide when to go. I said that under the circumstances a few days one way or another wouldn’t make much in the way of a medical difference, so I’d go with what he wanted to do. He chose to go to his primary care physician immediately.

    I related his pain to a pulled muscle due to practice for marching band. I didn’t catch it at the time. I was too anxious to believe what I wanted to believe. (Though few people ever thought I was in denial I was the least fully aware of the situation from beginning to end.) But James gave me a look of pity; he was pretty certain this was cancer again. He was right.

    Jody has been planning to write about this for some time. This year it came together. She has combined her years of nursing, and especially 12 years as a hospice nurse with the skills of Janet Wilkie, LCSW to produce a short, simple, concise, and practical guide for dealing with grief as a Christian. She’ll answer questions about resentment, anger, the reality of grief, and how to deal with the various stages and with other people.

    It is unplanned, but this book has just arrived, and it is also just past the 3rd anniversary of James’s death. In a way, we can celebrate his life in this way with a book that will hopefully help others in the same situation.

    On our Energion Publications web site we will be honoring the prepublication price of $7.00 through midnight tonight. There are already a couple of slightly lower offers through various internet dealers, though I believe combined with our $2.50 shipping and handling charge, the prepub offer is still a good deal. (Some dealers are listed on the detail page for the book.)

    As I said, this is both personal and commercial, but I hope the material is also helpful.

  • 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.