Like Part 1, we are defining "prayer" for the purposes of this essay as 'asking God for stuff".
When you pray for stuff, under what circumstances does your prayer get answered? Even the most devout among us has to admit that all prayer most definitely is not answered. And we'll define "answered" for the purpose of this essay as "receiving unambiguously what you prayed for". God says "no", sorry, not answered, you got something "better", sorry, not answered. You didn't get what you asked for because, unbeknownst to you, waht you asked for was actually not so good, or "God was closing one door to open another, sorry not answered!
Many people have attempted to answer this very question, with very little success in my opinion. What is the fine line between receiving answers to prayer and not receiving answers to prayer? Calvinists believe that some folks are "the elect" and some are "the damned" and there not a "damn" thing you can do to change it. God decided who was who and bad things happen to the damned and good things happen to the elect. How do you know if you're among the damned, well, bad things happen to you! Others believe that God only answers the prayers of those who are in his favor, although there are many interpretations regarding what that might exactly be. Some postulate that you can only pray for things that line up with specific promises in the bible and it's the firmness of your belief in those promises that brings your prayer to pass. But all of these theologies have a certain fuzziness about them, they all seem to have exceptions, weasel words, explanations ready at hand when prayer inevitably doesn't work.
More to come
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment