Don: After the Pharisees demanded to know of Jesus the authority for His ministry, He recited a parable, now known as the parable of the Two Sons:

“But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go work today in the vineyard.’ And he answered, ‘I will not’; but afterward he regretted it and went. The man came to the second and said the same thing; and he answered, ‘I will, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him; but the tax collectors and prostitutes did believe him; and you, seeing this, did not even feel remorse afterward so as to believe him.” (Matthew 21:28-32)

As usual, Jesus began with a question: “What do you think?” The Pharisees had tried to trap Him with an earlier question, now He was setting one for them in return.

The key elements of the parable are the vineyard, the father, his two sons, and work needing to be done. The parable focuses on willingness to do the work vs. actually doing the work, though the ostensible focus is the two sons. The parable reminds us of the parable of the Prodigal Son, which is also a story about a father with two sons. The two parables have obvious parallels and are in many ways complementary.

The father in our present parable orders each son to go work in the vineyard, which is a metaphor for the message and mission of Jesus. The injunction to work is an injunction to be engaged in the message and mission of the father—of Jesus. The message and mission of Jesus is a call to humility and service and to obey the will of God. The elder son in the Prodigal parable elects to stay home and work in the family business, while the younger son chooses to abandon it. In the Two Sons parable, one says he will work but reneges on his promise, while the other refuses work but does so anyway. (Some translations say that he regretted his refusal; others, that he repented.)

The brothers’ responses are at the root of the trap that Jesus set for the Pharisees, in asking which of the sons did the will of his father while also telling the Pharisees that various sinners would get into the kingdom of God before they would. He was saying that the Pharisees talked the talk but did nothing, while self-acknowledged sinners walked the walk despite not fully understanding what they are doing. But the Pharisees thought their religious pedigree was sufficient grounds for salvation; that their descent from Abraham gave a free pass into the kingdom of God.

But what does the parable say about God?

First, it says that He is the God of all Mankind. No matter how we respond to His call for work—positively or negatively—God is still our Father. Whether or not we do His will, whether or not we even understand what His will is, and whether or not we repent our bad decisions, He is still our Father; and as our Father, He never stops to look out for us, as He looked out for His Prodigal Son. No matter how far we stray from our religious roots, He always welcomes us back with open arms and no questions asked.

Second, in the Two Sons parable, neither son was blameless. The first son’s petulance (“I won’t go!”) and the second son’s lie (“I’ll go”) are equally disrespectful. But neither was thrown out of the house. The parable suggests that this father was long-suffering and ever-forgiving. It means that all God’s children are sinners in need of the grace God gave so lovingly to His Prodigal Son. God’s acceptance of sinners is clear from Jesus’s preference for sinful tax collectors and prostitutes over self-righteous Pharisees.

We are all sinners in need of God’s grace, but the Pharisees at that time regarded tax collectors and prostitutes as the lowest of the low, so to say that God would accept and forgive such people is to say that God accepts any and everybody.

Finally, the parable tells us something about God’s view of religious intolerance and arrogance. We all tend to religious smugness—from the atheist, smug in his conviction that there is no God, to the Christian convinced that her religion is the only way to heaven. Notice that the parable does not feature a son who says “Dad, I’m happy to go to work for you” and sets out to do so.

Is it possible to be humble about God and certain about God at the same time? To share one’s feelings about God without being arrogant? Simultaneously to believe in yet be uncertain about God? Why does belief in God seem to require affirmation and constant re-affirmation?

David: Why is John the Baptist mentioned in the parable? Presumably it’s significant.

Jay: The trap Jesus set for the Pharisees just before He told the parable was in forcing them to say whether his baptism by John was inspired by God or by Man.

Donald: Can we be humble about God and at the same time be confident of our belief in Him? Confidently to proclaim our message as “the truth” seems to preclude humility. Perhaps the parable speaks about individual versus institutional beliefs and humility (of all Pharisees). Institutions—churches, groups—tend to be less humble than individual people. Churches proselytize because they think individuals need their message.

Jay: Does being sure about God simply mean believing in His existence as a God of mercy, love, grace, and forgiveness? Beyond that, it is harder to be sure about God’s thoughts and judgments concerning such things as what is a sin and what is not a sin, what is moral individual and group behavior, and what merits (or not) salvation. I think it is hard enough to be humble and simultaneously believe in God’s existence; but it is surely impossible to be humble and certain about what’s on God’s mind.

Donald: We find arrogance—confidence that steps over a line—unattractive. Humility strikes me as the opposite of arrogance. If people find in someone’s beliefs and actions an expression of love and goodness, they will be attracted by those attributes to that person.

David: I think one can be certain of the existence of God but not of His nature, His plan (or even if there is one), His message(s), and so on. Certainty of God’s existence seems to me to be no reason for arrogance. Arrogance arises from a claim to speak for God, which implies a claim to know the mind of God, which is as arrogant as arrogance can get.

Don: Could a church conceivably be based on uncertainty about God?

David: Yes!—See religious Daoism and Zen Buddhism! Scripture tells people what is in/on the mind of God. It leads to much arrogance and indeed to the violent imposition of religious beliefs and practices on non-members of certain religions.

Don: It seems to me that in the parable of the Two Sons, Jesus was dealing with just this issue of certainty about God, and He clearly came down on the side of humility. Yet our quest for knowledge about God seems insatiable. Humankind has always wanted to know more about God. The search seems practically hardwired into us. We can never get enough of it. Throughout the ages, in all cultures, people sought and seek to know God better through religious experience.

Donald: “Belief” is not the same as “knowing for a fact”, but in a group such as a church, belief assumes an aura of knowing. Individual group members may then feel justified in assuming the aura for themselves.

Jay: We do seem internally driven to find something spiritually bigger than ourselves. It affects all societies at all times and at all stages of advancement. In a way, that is evidence of the existence of God. But we want more than belief: We want to define God, to own Him, to bottle Him, and to make others drink from our bottle. Jesus pointed out through the parable that you can’t do that. Group (or what we have in previous discussions called “corporate”) belief tends to differ from individual belief. Our class seeks to examine just this difference. So we are searching, but not with any expectation of finding answers. A church formed on this basis would be an interesting church indeed.

Aishwarya: My grandparents believed so fervently that God would help when asked that, for them, it was more a statement of fact than of belief. In my smugness growing up, I ignored my grandparents’ call for humility and trust in God, and stopped believing that God would help me with (for example) my exams. I grew to question God and everything.

We crave to sense God, but there is no sensory evidence of God; there is only Scripture. We are sure of many things, such as that we will meet again next week. That certainty arises from sensory perception, but the closest we can get to sensory perception of God is perhaps in temple or church, or in retrospect when we ascribe an effect (such as a friend cured of a disease) to God as the probable cause. But in the absence of sensing God, we are uncertain of God. Uncertainty leaves us humble.

Don: Is education, intelligence, intellect, then an impediment to a connection with God? Our grandparents’ simple (simplistic?) view of our connection with God seems enviable compared to the attenuated view our modern intellect practically imposes on us. Have we over-educated ourselves, to the point that God means less to us than He did to our grandparents?

David: Perhaps the problem lies in the assumption that we are all seeking to know God. It seems to me what people ultimately seek is to understand the existence of “life, the universe, and everything” (see Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). Science increasingly satisfies that search, while spirit satisfies it less. Before science and objectivity, all we had was spirituality/religion and subjectivity. Existence was explained via religiously invented gods. Even today, the Chinese retain a belief in their pantheon of “earth gods” and turn to them for relief from (but not understanding of) the exigencies of existence.

Looking externally for signs of God—for divine authority—is I think misguided, because it seems to me clear that God is internal—He is inside each of us. If we search for Him internally, we are forced to see our true selves, as Jacob did. We are searching for Him when our conscience tugs at us—when we consider whether (or not) to answer our Father’s call to get to work, and whether to answer truthfully or with a lie. One of the two sons had a conscience: He petulantly refused at first, but evidently found something inside himself that made him change his mind. If the “something” was not God, then what was it? If he had looked out of the window, or under the bed, for a sign of whether he should obey his father, would he have found it? I think—with all the humility I can muster—not.

The Chinese have a different perspective on life, the universe, and everything than we in the West do. Our assumption that a God accounts for life, the universe, and everything is a cultural artifact. It is not a universal perspective, let alone a universal truth, like gravity or Planck’s Constant. What we all—Westerners, Easterners, Northerners, Southerners—do share is a common humanity and a common desire to understand how we came to be. This is not the same as saying that we share a common desire to find or understand God. That’s a cultural thing, and we have developed different cultures.

Jay: The desire for a god to better our lives is a very human desire. The problem is that we define “better” ourselves, rather than let God do it. To us, “better” is healthier, wealthier, wiser. But to God—as explained by Jesus and recorded in Scripture—“better” might be the enlightenment achieved by the “faith hall of famers” through terrible trial and tribulation. Our perspective on the “better” life does not incorporate tribulation and humility; rather, it fosters arrogance.

Don: A Muslim friend made it clear that to him, there was no question that his was the final religion, that Mohammed was the final prophet, that understanding of God is now complete and certain and closed to discussion. Such certainty has its attractions but is not without discomfort to some of us. I believe in a God of goodness and love but I would hesitate to subscribe to a God who prescribes how often I pray or what I should or should not eat.

Donald: It’s like going to the doctor. We don’t want a doctor who dithers in the uncertainty of differential diagnosis; we want one who will give us a bottle of pills that will make everything OK. We want our God in a bottle, too.

Don: We don’t want to go to a church that dillies and dallies about God. We look to it for authority. We would rather put up with its arrogance of certainty than with the humility of uncertainty. If uncertainty creeps into the church, we do our best to smother it and get it out of the way, because it is disabling.

Jay: We don’t want to die, physically or spiritually, so we go to the doctor to save our lives and we go to church to save our souls. Fear of our own death is the motivating factor behind uncertainty. But should not our concern be reserved rather for the deaths of others? I wish it were so, but I cannot claim it is so in my own case. Human nature intervenes. Our selves are the dearest thing to us, and this affects our perspective on what we want a church to be and how to treat others and how we want others to treat us. That is our condition as fallen wo/men. It is the carnal nature common to all. Recognizing our selfishness is critical to improving our behavior. But when we do recognize the selfishness of our true selves, all certainty flies out the window.

David: As it did for Jacob, when he wrestled with his inner God and suddenly realized that he did not know himself and how low he had fallen. Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses find God and His authority in the Koran and the Bible respectively (He is apparently not in both). If you are searching for God, you need look no further than the Koran or the Bible, they arrogantly believe. I cannot share such belief. If you are searching for God, you must look inside your self. And I suspect it is impossible to do that without utmost humility.

The etymology of authority is “creator, originator, author.” So in one sense Jesus cannot answer the Pharisees’ question of authority because the author is unique to—inside of—each one of them. Yes, it is the same God in everyone, but unless the individual has sought God inside himself, s/he cannot know the author. Jesus cannot (and, I think, would not anyway) make it easy for them, or for any of us.

Donald: I don’t care about the doctor’s diagnosis. I just want the pills. And if they work or seem to, then the doctor seems irrelevant. “Here, let me give you some of my pills. You don’t need to see the doctor at all!”

* * *

Don: Where does religion come from? Do we need it, and if so, why?

After His triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, His cleansing of the temple, and His instant withering of a barren fig tree, the Jewish religious authorities demanded that Jesus reveal the authority for His acts. As was so often the case, He answered their question with a question of His own:

When He entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to Him while He was teaching, and said, “By what authority are You doing these things, and who gave You this authority?” Jesus said to them, “I will also ask you one thing, which if you tell Me, I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John was from what source, from heaven or from men?” And they began reasoning among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will say to us, ‘Then why did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From men,’ we fear the people; for they all regard John as a prophet.” And answering Jesus, they said, “We do not know.” He also said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. (Matthew 21:23-27)

By asking the question at all, the Jewish leaders implied that Judaism could not have authorized the activities of Jesus. They did not represent God as Judaism understood God.

The questions were not spur-of-the-moment questions: The Jewish leaders had been watching Jesus for about three years. They had seen His miracles, heard His parables, watched Him cleanse the temple, and saw Him feed the 5,000. They had noted the effects of all this on the crowds that gathered around Him. They knew that his Gospel was one of peace, unity, and humility—of going to the back of the line, of giving to the poor not just the coat but even the shirt off one’s back. They were aware of his radical restatements of the Commandments to love God with all one’s heart and one’s neighbor as oneself.

“How can you justify all this?” the Jewish leaders were asking, and implying that Judaism would not have authorized it. They might as well have asked: “Why do you need a different religion? What’s wrong with ours?” But Jesus responded, as both God the Father and God the Son so often did to questions, with a question of His own. Their question centered on religious authority, and that is the topic of our discussion today.

The word religion comes from Latin ligare which is also the root of ligature—ties/knots, as used for example in surgery to bind separated tissues. The prefix re suggests, then, re-binding, re-connecting something that was previously united but had somehow become severed. Re-connection with God, following our severance from Him at the Fall, is the essence of religion.

Religion has been present throughout the ages in all human cultures. It consists of commonly held beliefs, commonly practiced rituals, and common explanations of life as we perceive it. This week, Prince Harry and his fiancee Megan Markle visited Northern Ireland. Prince Harry said of the Troubles (violent clashes between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland):

“Over the years, religion has divided us; but really, we are all the same underneath.”

If we are all the same underneath, why do we need religion? Might we not be all the same underneath? Pew research conducted in 2014 showed that:

• Overall, the US was becoming less religious (but not necessarily less spiritual).
• More than 90 percent of respondents still believed in God, but the percentage of people who were “absolutely certain” that God exists dropped sharply since the survey was conducted in 2007, from 71 percent then to 63 percent in 2014.
• People asserting no religious affiliation rose from 16 percent to 23 percent over that period, but despite this the survey suggested that the American people are becoming more spiritual.
• Six out of ten respondents said they regularly experience “a deep sense of spiritual peace and wellbeing”—up 7 percent over the period, while 46 percent felt “a deep sense of wonder about the universe at least once a week”—also up 7 percent over the period.
• Believers were just as observant, committed, practicing over the period. African-Americans, women, older adults, and Republicans had a greater tendency to religious affiliation.
• Asked “Is religion affiliation important to you?” Jehovah’s Witnesses ranked highest (86 percent), followed by Mormons (83 percent). At the other end of the scale were Hindus and Buddhists (40 percent) and at the very bottom were Jews (31 percent). Asked about prayers and reading the Scriptures, the scores and rankings are almost the same.
• As would be expected, people unaffiliated with religion were found to pray less, attend church less, and believe in God less. This begs the question: Which came first—does unaffiliation lead to skepticism, or does skepticism lead to unaffiliation?

To delve deeper into this, the latest survey asked two new questions:

• “How often do you feel a strong sense of gratitude or thankfulness?” The survey found that 75 percent of Americans have this feeling at least once a week. By religion, this broke down as follows: Christians 82 percent, Muslims 77 percent, 73 percent Buddhists, 70 percent Jews, 66 percent unaffiliated, and 62 percent Hindus.
• “How often do you think about the meaning and purpose of life?” The survey found that 55 percent of Americans, including 50 percent of Christians, 53 percentof non-Christians, and 45 percent of the unaffiliated.

Whether affiliated or not, 9 out of 10 Americans felt that organized religion was in general a force for good because:

1. It brings people together.
2. It strengthens community bonds.
3. It plays an important role for the poor and the needy.

In addition, 3 out of 4 thought that church and religious institutions help protect and strengthen morality in society. But many also said that organized religion is too concerned with money, power, politics, and its own rules. 42 percent of adults have a mostly positive view of religious institutions. 7 percent have a mostly negative view. The rest have a very mixed view.

Why was Jesus reluctant to simply state his religious authority? The word “authority” is a loaded word. It speaks of power, control, and even oppression, which might explain His reluctance. Is religion necessary? Important? Has it gone off the rails? How should we deal with it?

David: In non-Romance languages the word for “religion” does not mean “re-connection.” The Romance etymology is a spurious parochial artifact with no universal significance.

Mikiko: Does God approve of all religions? John 4:24 says God is spirit and that those worshiping Him must do so in spirit and truth. So we must worship in harmony with the truth of God’s Word, according to which there are only two kinds of religion: One true and one false; one right and one wrong; one that leads to life, one that leads to destruction.

Aishwarya: The root meaning of the word “religion” as “reconnecting” with God is nice, but to me seems best if it is taken to mean reconnecting with one another, human–to–human. We need religion simply because with the development of abstract thinking came the loss of equality among human beings. We need a special power to remind us of our fundamental equality. No other species has religion, and no other species sees individual differences as we do. We are all the same biologically, but we use culture to differentiate and separate ourselves from one another. We wanted a higher power to bring us back to one another, so we invented religion, but then we used it to differentiate ourselves still more!

My mother once told me that just talking with another person is enough to establish a relationship with that person—with the heart and mind, the inner God, of that person. It establishes a relationship of souls. I don’t believe the concept of an inner God any more but I do believe that reconnecting with one another is an important function of religion.

David: I share your mother’s argument and take the inner God as the ultimate authority. To me, a God outside of me would not have the same authority.

Mikiko:

“Whether a person has a formal, organized religion or not, these are essential human characteristics. Religion is characteristic of all human beings. When people have common beliefs they form a communal religion. Organized religions theoretically enable people to understand the world and be part of a historic community of believers, a basic component of human life.” http://www.kansascity.com/living/religion/article20435898.html#storylink=cpy

Don: I’m hearing that religion’s major value is in reconnecting us to one another rather than in reconnecting us to God. Yet it seems to me that through the process of trying to reconnect with one another we often end up more disconnected! Hence my question about whether religion is off the rails, if so why, and what (if anything) can we do to get it back on the rails? If religion is a human creation—and I agree with Aishwarya that it is—then it is within our power to recreate it. Was Jesus making a point about this?

Kiran: We have governments, religions, and societies because as individual human beings we need the strength of the group to protect and nurture us. The greatest accomplishments of the United States have resulted from cohesive societal thought and action. That necessarily impinges on individual rights and sovereignty, which creates constant tensions between the more ardent proponents of both sides, and people in the middle feel squeezed and driven this way and that by those tensions. This is what happens in herds, such as buffalo, where the strong form a circle around the weaker animals to lead and protect them. It is an evolutionary survival tactic.

Religion is our way of finding God through other people. There is no better feeling than finding a “soul-mate” who shares one’s thoughts and beliefs. We naturally gravitate to one another. But Jesus reminds us to connect with those who are not like ourselves, including even our enemies, and this is a struggle for us. We rather use our communal and religious power to fight with and corrupt other people for our selfish ends. This is a universal tendency in all humans and religions. It is human nature, but when we manage to overcome it, we accomplish such things as the Red Cross. There is virtue in religion, but we should recognize that no human system can be perfect.

Aishwarya: The communal strength of religion is not what should connect us—we should connect of our own individual volition and recognition of our sameness as human beings rather than our sameness as Hindus or any other religion. Religion should bring us together, but instead it focuses on our religious differences rather than our human sameness.

Michael: It’s hard to argue for or against religion. Christianity has been used in the United States to justify discrimination against black people. But it’s also been the source of many good things that have helped the community. It all comes back to people. People form religions.

David: The book Bowling Alone, published in 2000, argued that civic engagement in America was in decline. It occurs to me that the decline was roughly contemporaneous with the rise in megachurches. Jesus said He was present wherever “two or three” (people) were gathered in His name. He did not say two or three thousand. Religion may claim mundane, secular authority for itself but has zero spiritual authority over the spiritual lives of individuals. Every individual has the spirit of God within him or her. To me, that is the only valid source of spiritual authority. Perhaps the spirit is amplified by the presence of Jesus, but is Jesus present in a religious institution (as opposed to a gathering of two or three)?

Mikiko: The Jehovah’s Witnesses define religion as follows:

A form of worship. It includes a system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices; these may be personal, or they may be advocated by an organization. Usually religion involves belief in God or in a number of gods; or it treats humans, objects, desires, or forces as objects of worship. Much religion is based on human study of nature; there is also revealed religion. There is true religion and false.

Michael: Christianity and Islam claim spiritual authority. Hinduism and Buddhism tend not to. And they tend to be less violent. Is there a connection?

Don: The tendency for the more authoritative religions to be more violent is clearly true historically.

Michael: What type of authority were the Pharisees expecting Jesus to claim? Were they expecting a Jewish religious authority or just authority in general?

Don: And why did Jesus not give a straight answer? Why did He not just say: “My authority is God”?

Anonymous: He saw that the Pharisees were asking a trick question, to try to trap Him.

Kiran: Hindus can be violent when they form groups. Fundamental Hinduism is not violent.

Don: The grouping that begins as an evolutionary mechanism for survival develops traits of arrogance and aggression. Is there a happy medium?

Anonymous: Yes—with God in the mix.

Kiran: But even people within the same religious group kill one another. Unity and division can coexist.

Anonymous: Churches help the poor. It’s safer to be in a group. There is a big difference between communal and religious. The key is to have all the individual members be in oneness with God.

Kiran: Isn’t the point that we must love our enemies as we love our neighbors, but we shouldn’t abandon religion when we fail. Groups—government, religion,…—have beneficial roles to play. The struggle is between individualism and group mentality.

* * *

Don: Humankind was created to be one with God and with each other. This was God’s original plan. But the Fall resulted in the breakup of that oneness. We became estranged from God and from one another. All religions are essentially trying to help us journey back to oneness with God, whether in the Christian heaven or the Muslim Paradise, the Nordic Valhalla or the Hindu Nirvana—whatever we happen to call the dwelling place of God.

Christians look for a coming day of reconciliation with God. Prayer is what will get us there. It is the antidote to our fallen condition, the link that will bind us back to oneness with God.

The story of the Fall is told in Genesis 3 and 4 of the Bible. The beginning of our breakup from one another is described in Genesis 4 with Cain’s murder of his brother Abel. It seems ironic that the dispute that led to the murder was essentially about worship and prayer. The use of prayer as a divisive tool separating us one from another and from God has continued to this day. Prayer and its meaning, form, and content continues to divide us.

I believe this was not God’s plan. I believe His plan was for prayer to bring us all back together. The longest prayer of the six prayers of Jesus recorded in the Bible reflects this plan. Indeed, it summarizes the core of the ministry and the message of Jesus described at greater length in Scripture (for example, in the Sermon on the Mount, in the Lord’s Prayer, and elsewhere in the Gospels).

“Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You, even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life. This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do. Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

“I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You; for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me. I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me; for they are Yours; and all things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I have been glorified in them. I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are. While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture would be fulfilled.

“But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves. I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.

“I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.
The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.

“O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17)

Jesus prayed that we be one with Him and with one another. If we are, then we are one with God. It is a radical notion. More often, we look upon prayer as something magical that we can use to harness God’s power for ourselves. We want the ten thousand angels that Jesus rejected in favor of God’s will. No wonder the Bible says we don’t know how to pray.

The prayer of Jesus recognizes the human condition. It answers the questions we’ve been asking and asks that we align ourselves with God’s will and restore our broken relationships with our fellow Wo/Man. It is always answered in the affirmative. It is the mountain that can be moved (it is more difficult to love one’s enemies and pray for one’s persecutors than it is to move a mountain (Matthew 5:34)).

This point was illustrated in the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee:

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:10-14)

The tax collector recognizes the human condition of sin and highlights our need for God’s grace. The Pharisee prays for exclusiveness and division (“I thank you that I am not like other people”)—the very opposite of the inclusive oneness prayed for by Jesus.

True prayer is humble, inclusive, uniting and the antidote to the sinful human condition and the loss of oneness with God and each other. It is a call to mirror the message and the mission of Jesus. It is not magic or manipulation. True prayer should allow God to be glorified in us, and lead us back to oneness with Him and one another.

David: It seems we are able easily to thwart God’s plan. That “God’s will be done” is by no means a sure thing. Omnipotence means He is indeed all-powerful but it does not mean that He imposes His power on us.

Jay: It is not clear to me who Jesus was praying for in his long prayer. He said He was praying not just “for these” but also for those who believed in Him through “their” word. The prayer is in two parts, each for a different group of people.

Aishwarya: What does “divisive prayer” really mean?

Don: The God to whom we pray and even the way in which we pray divides cultures. We claim exclusivity in our prayer—that our prayer and our God are valid while those of other cultures are not. Jesus is telling us this is wrong.

Kiran: The most striking thing about the parable was the contrast between the publican’s confession of his sinfulness and admission of his need of help, versus the Pharisee’s self-proclaimed piety and exclusivity. When people of any and all religions or even no religion submit themselves to humble self-introspection then they are, in effect, praying for help. Any human claim to piety must be laughable to God. To admit that we are nothing compared to Him puts us in the same boat with everyone else—it unites us rather than divides us.

Aishwarya: When religionists claim superiority for their religion, they are being exclusive. The fact there there are so many religions shows that the idea of unity has failed to gain traction. But at the individual level, we are all human beings. We don’t need a God or a religion or Scriptures or priests to tell us that we are not exclusive at the human level—we know it.

Jay: The individual personal connection to God is important, yet it can lead to my comparing and contrasting my relationship with God with your relationship with God and with your co-religionists’ relationship with God. This is indeed divisive. There is a delicate balance between wanting to strengthen our individual relationship with God while holding back our arrogant human judgment of the relationship other people have with Him. Prayer can lead in either direction. The Bible can be seen both as inclusive and as exclusive.

Chris: The beauty of prayer is that it levels the playing field. It does not matter what my status is in life, what I own. It’s what I do when I come to God in prayer that matters. In the end, I am no better than the person praying next to me. The pitfall is that as humans we want to elevate ourselves, and we think (like the Pharisee) that prayer can help us in that. How much we pay in tithes, how much service we perform in church, makes no difference to our fundamental equality before God and our equal need of His grace.

Robin: Scripture tells us to pray in one accord. After Jesus had ascended to heaven, the disciples met to discuss a replacement for Judas:

Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away. When they had entered the city, they went up to the upper room where they were staying; that is, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas the son of James. These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer, along with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers. (Acts 1: 12-14)

And we are to do so with humility:

Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. (Philippians 2:1-4)

David: “[D]o not merely look out for your own personal interests” seems to me antithetical to the very next statement: “[look out] for the interests of others.” The latter seems to me to be the only truly equalizing prayer. Many Christian sects allow for differential treatment of different classes within their congregations—pews reserved for the rich aristocracy, for example. Contrast this with the Muslims who go on the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca required once of all Muslims in their lifetime. They all wear the same rough, plain white robes. You cannot tell that one pilgrim is wealthier or poorer, or more or less powerful than anyone else. It is a level playing field. It would be wonderful if they could keep the playing field level outside of the Hajj, but of course they can’t. At least they appear to try harder for equality, or to recognize it as important, than Christian and other religions.

Aishwarya: In India, some Hindu temples do not allow certain kinds of people (non-Hindus and women, for example) in. Whether prayer is divisive or unifying depends on its goal. If the goal of a prayer is victory for the Indian cricket team over Pakistan, it will unify the entire nation of India—people of all religions and walks of life—for that brief moment. Once the game is over, they are back to their differences. Prayer may have been originally intended to unify, but we have forgotten or ignored or are simply ignorant of that intention. Today, it takes some sort of fight or crisis to bring people together.

Jay: Humans tend to be unified in crisis and through our common tendency to selfishness. We all want our team to win. Selfishness and evil seem to unify at least as much as unselfishness, goodness, and love. The ministry of Jesus was aimed at correcting this misalignment of the human spirit. He said, in effect, “Root for the enemy—the opposition—not for yourself and your own team!” Prayer is about all of “us”, not about a narrowly defined group of “us”.

David: Prothero’s book God is Not One compares religion with sport. Different sports have different aims and outcomes: Runs in baseball, baskets in basketball, distance in the shot put, speed in the luge, height in the high jump. Similarly, different religions have different aims and outcomes including different forms of heaven as mentioned by Don earlier.

Michael: I think the unity of India before a Pakistan–India game is false unity, and the common prayer is just a prayer for magic. True unity is between the individual and God, and depends on genuine humility based upon recognition of our fallen nature. People who can achieve this unity with God are united with all people. There is no magic.

David: But as a Daoist, I am not looking for forgiveness. I don’t have a concept of a “Fall of Man”. I just have a concept of a Power, a Force that is guiding us along the Way to Enlightenment. I am not expected to cover myself in sackcloth and ashes. If I find myself in crisis, in trouble, that is the Way for me, and I must accept it.

Michael: “True acceptance” is what I am trying to say, in Christian terms (but I reach the same conclusion in the existential philosophical term of “existential guilt.”) It’s a continual struggle for humans, and the only resolution is through grace, which comes only in a moment of true humility.

Don: Humility is as common to the human condition as arrogance. It transcends religion, creed, and culture. The contrast between arrogance and humility can be seen throughout the ages and in all cultures and religions. True prayer is said in humility. It recognized that one is not better than anyone else, that one has no claim to any exclusivity. The prayer that says “I am a sinner in need of God’s grace” will always be heard and answered, I believe. It is the knock that will always open the door. And since the door will be opened for anyone and everyone, it is a prayer that draws humankind together in oneness.

David: Arrogance does seem to be an attribute of much Christian prayer. Human arrogance bleeds into religion, in part through Scriptures written by arrogant human beings. Islam seems to me to score better at least in attempting to practice humility through the rituals of the Hajj. There are some Christian, Hindu, and other religious people and sects who have abasement rituals. But is this too not simply the human intellectual idea of humility bleeding into religious practice? How genuine is this humility and abasement? Is it the ostentatious public prayer Jesus warned against? I don’t know. At least, common coarse clothing tends to make everyone anonymous.

Michael: The mystic sects and individuals of our religions tend, it seems to me, to value oneness more than their mainstreams do. Sufi philosophy is especially beautiful in this regard.

Don: Next week, we will turn the discussion toward authority and authenticity.

* * *

Don: God’s original plan, it seems, was to be in constant, continual contact with humankind. In the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve walked and talked with Him. Even after the Fall from the garden, God maintained constant conversation with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Elijah, Elisha, and the other prophets. Throughout the theocracy—the period when the Israelites were ruled directly by God—there seems to have been such direct communication. This was made manifest in the the Urim and the Thummim, two stones embedded in the breastplate of the High Priest through which God revealed His will and answered questions.

When the Israelites replaced the theocracy—direct rule by God—with worldly rule by a human king, direct interaction with God gradually decreased. There were still occasional warnings and calls for repentance, but in general prayers to God seemed much less sure of being answered. Nevertheless, humankind continued and continues to this day to pray. Believers in particular insist that prayer is beneficial.

Jamie Ducharme asked in Time magazine of February 15, 2018: “Do Religious People Live Longer?”:

You Asked: Do Religious People Live Longer?
By Jamie Ducharme
February 15, 2018

If a long life is what you’re after, going to church may be the answer to your prayers.

A number of studies have shown associations between attending religious services and living a long time. One of the most comprehensive, published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2016, found that women who went to any kind of religious service more than once a week had a 33% lower chance than their secular peers of dying during the 16-year study-follow-up period. Another study, published last year in PLOS One, found that regular service attendance was linked to reductions in the body’s stress responses and even in mortality–so much so that worshippers were 55% less likely to die during the up to 18-year follow-up period than people who didn’t frequent the temple, church or mosque.

You don’t have to become a nun to get these health benefits, however. The simple act of congregating with a like-minded community might deserve much of the credit. Tyler VanderWeele, one of the authors of the JAMA study and a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says factors related to churchgoing–like having a network of social support, an optimistic attitude, better self-control and a sense of purpose in life–may account for the long-life benefits seen in his study and others.

Indeed, it’s also the values drawn from religious tradition–such as “respect, compassion, gratitude, charity, humility, harmony, meditation and preservation of health”–that seem to predict longevity, not the dogma preached at the altar, says Howard Friedman, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, and co-author of the book The Longevity Project.

Fostering these qualities may even affect rates of chronic disease, says Marino Bruce, a co-author of the PLOS One study and a research associate professor of medicine, health and society at Vanderbilt University. “Having that sense that you’re not in the world alone, that you are part of a power larger than oneself, can give one confidence to deal with the issues of life,” Bruce says. “Biologically, if that reduces stress, then that means you’re less likely to have high blood pressure or diabetes or things that can increase mortality.”

But what if organized religion isn’t your style? Can solo prayer–or even a more abstract sense of faith or spirituality–provide the same payoff?

It’s difficult to say with certainty, because going to church is easier to measure than the intimate, individual way a person might practice religion. And the research on praying has been mixed. Some studies have found that prayer can improve disease outcomes and prolong survival, while others have been less conclusive. One 2006 study published in the American Heart Journal even found that people who knew they were being prayed for before undergoing heart surgery were more likely to experience complications than people who didn’t know whether they were in others’ prayers.

But prayer has been shown to be powerful, in at least one way. It triggers the relaxation response, a state of mind-body rest that has been shown to decrease stress, heart rate and blood pressure; alleviate chronic disease symptoms; and even change gene expression. This state is typically linked to activities like meditation and yoga, and research suggests it can also be found through praying.

Given that uncertainty and the accumulating evidence supporting communal religious participation, VanderWeele says solitary practitioners might want to consider congregating every once in a while.

“Might you be missing out on something–the power of religion and spirituality–by not participating communally?” VanderWeele says. “That’s not saying, ‘You should have religious beliefs to live longer.’ That’s saying, ‘You already hold these beliefs. Maybe it would be worthwhile to consider communal participation.’”

Jesus said:

[A]ll things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive. (Matthew 21:21-22)

What did He mean? Surely, every one of us has prayed for something and not received it. The key word seems to be the conditional “believing”—in Greek, πιστεύω ((pisteúō, pist-yoo’-o; to have faith (in, upon, or with respect to, a person or thing), i.e. credit; by implication, to entrust (especially one’s spiritual well-being to Christ):—believe(-r), commit (to trust), put in trust with..Strong’s.))

This same word was used when Jesus healed the servant of a centurion:

And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed that very moment. (Matthew 8:13)

…and when Jesus healed three blind men:

When He entered the house, the blind men came up to Him, and Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to Him, “Yes, Lord.” Then He touched their eyes, saying, “It shall be done to you according to your faith.” And their eyes were opened. (Matthew 9:28-30)

…and in warning us against becoming stumbling blocks to children:

…but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18:6)

…and…

Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24)

…and…

Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him. (Mark 11:23)

…and…

He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned. (Mark 16:16)

Besides the problem of believing, we have another:

In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; (Romans 8:26)

What is it we need to know about prayer? What is the role of belief? Two aspects of prayer seem to be important: (1) The content and (2) the wanted outcome of prayer. In the Lord’s Prayer, the first wanted outcome is that the will of God be done on earth as it is in Heaven. And if we let the spirit—the inner light, the eternity set in our hearts—pray on our behalf, then we are aligned with the will of God:

…and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Romans 8:27)

When that happens:

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28)

“According to His purpose” is another way of saying that we are aligned with God’s will. It seems that our will is naturally contrary to God’s, but the good news is that we don’t necessarily have to align it ourselves—the spirit will do it for us, if we let it. I think this belief in the power of the spirit is what is meant by “belief” as used in all these passage.
Prayer which is always answered, and for the good, is: “Please God, align me with your will.”

Paul gave us an example of a prayer that is NOT answered:

Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)

Instinctively, we seem to believe that when we are aligned with the will of God we will be freed of fear and need, but this is not so. We will still have deprivations but it is through them that our power is perfected. A delicate balance exists between the mighty prayers that show God’s power and the power that is perfected in weakness. We often praise God about the wonder of answered prayer, but we seldom hear talk from the pulpit about unanswered prayer. Nobody wants to serve a powerless and ineffective God. In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus told Peter, who pulled his sword to fend of the soldiers come to arrest Him, that He did not doubt His Father could send thousands of angels to his defense if He, Jesus, asked. But Jesus wanted His Father’s will to prevail, not His own.

We all want ten thousand angels we can call on to help us when in need. This is the power we seek through prayer. But what we should seek is that God’s will be done.

David: The appeals cited in the Time magazine article included yoga and meditation, as well as prayer. Yoga and meditation are designed to cause introspection, and Jesus Himself seemed to suggest, in saying that we should pray in private, that when we pray it should be personal and introspective rather than communal.

Don: The studies mentioned in the Time article seem to show that communal worship is associated with longevity and may even have some epigenetic influence.

Donald: We seem almost to use routine communal prayer just as a way to divide time. In between sessions, we may lapse into conflict, and communal prayer at least serves to let us give voice to common purpose. But it seems also to serve more as public bulletin board than as engaging God in conversation. And speaking of conversation: We have no difficulty talking to God, but we have great difficulty listening or even hearing Him!

Aishwarya: On the few occasions I have been inside a church, I did not understand the services but even without praying I did feel a sense, as I do in a Hindu temple, of serenity, which then led to introspection.

Leena: I too have been to church a few times, and always had so many thoughts crowding my head. In church or temple, we might start with thoughts about what we want or need or don’t like but through that serene introspection we start to realize that we don’t really need what we think we need, or we find the strength to accept that we must face up to our problems. This seems to be the process of aligning our thoughts with the will of God and thereby finding comfort and peace.

David: When Jesus said “Ask for anything and you shall receive” I believe He meant “Ask for any spiritual thing you need.” Since asking for a win in the lottery or for one’s child’s cancer to be cured are not spiritual, they will not be answered. As Leena so well described, we can go through a process of alignment that leads us to acceptance of bad things and the comfort that comes from knowing that what is happening is God’s will. If all that we ask for is spiritual, then it is assured of an answer. But I wonder, what are examples of spiritual requests? Is there really only one—“Please let your will be done”?

Michael: Freedom from fear and difficulties may be the main motivations for prayer, but I don’t see that as being part of God’s plan for us. But prayer can bring psychological and emotional relief in moments of distress.

Robin: To pray for a sick child or friends may seem selfish rather than spiritual, but since such prayer is prayed out of love, than it is spiritual, since love is a fruit of the spirit.

Jay: God does ask us to live “the hard life” vs. “the easy life”. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus blessed those who are persecuted and poor in spirit. He told us to love our enemy and to give up all to help others. These are hard things for humans to do. Prayer should not only be about us and our needs and desires and troubles; it should have a communal aspect. It is “Our Father,” not “My Father” in the Lord’s Prayer. Setting aside time for prayer in a purposeful, meaningful way can help us to align our will with God’s (a better way to put it might be “to accept God’s will”). I think God answers prayer for others (vs. prayer for ourselves) and prayer for our alignment with His will.

Donald: Prayer to accept God’s will brings peace. Does public prayer lead to community peace? What is the need for public prayer?

David: Jesus said to pray in private. Yet there is a sense of holiness in grand cathedrals, mosques, and temples conducive to personal prayer as described by Aishwarya and Leena. One can pray privately in one’s head while the rest of the congregation intones a set public liturgy. They invoke a spiritual mood.

Michael: Public prayer is an affirmation of the creed of the particular church. In a Catholic church, one is required to stand up and recite the Nicene Creed.

David: Aishwarya described being in churches where she did not know what was taking place (it might as well have been a recital of the Nicene Creed) and could therefore let her mind dwell on personal, private, introspective thoughts instead. I believe such to be more meaningful and valid than the recitation of any creed or public prayer the reciters of which tend not even to hear any more what they are reciting from memory rather than from the heart. For many, it has become just background noise, while their thoughts are on the golf game after Mass.

Don: I went into several mosques during my recent visit to the Middle East. I was struck by the feelings of solemnity and reverence and solitude they induced in me. We tend to feel the same in all great edifices built for God.

Donald. We seem to agree that a quiet environment is conducive to prayer and to our spiritual journey, yet community churches—which are growing in America—are anything but quiet! We struggle somewhat with what is an appropriate amount of noise and activity, even in our Adventist churches.

Aishwarya: A community prayer is also personal at some level; but we feel that our prayer is strengthened when we pray it together with other people and will work for someone.

Robin: Scripture has many examples where Jesus, Moses, Samuel, the disciples, and others prayed for others. Jesus prayed for the disciples before his crucifixion. Paul said:

For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,… (Colossians 1:9)

But we can’t have community prayer in truth if we have not made ourselves right through prayer.

David: Though I have not attended one, I find the idea of Quaker meetings, held in almost total silence in plain, unadorned rooms, an attractive idea. They seem both communal and personal. Yet I doubt they induce the same spiritual awe as the grand cathedral, temple, or mosque. Megachurches (I gather from seeing video) are also sparsely decorated relative to a grand cathedral. They are essentially stadia, and depend (I suspect—I have not been to one in person) for any sense of spirituality solely on the skill of the preacher in introducing his or her version of God to the audience. The skill of the preacher is in making each one of the thousands of people in the audience feel that he is addressing them and their needs and wants personally. It’s hard to criticize that, if a person in the audience is suffering and finds some relief through the preacher’s words and/or through the sense of community, but it still does not seem to me to be the best way to encounter God.

Donald: Sometimes we pray for a miracle. Are we asking for divine intervention? Do we expect prayer to be answered without it?

Don: We seem to want to harness God’s power. We want the ten thousand angels. We don’t want a God who doesn’t respond in that way.

Aishwarya: We want to know that when we are helpless, we can rely on God’s help.

Robin: Maybe we need to re-evaluate whether we should be asking for something or should it be more praise? Should we praise Him or petition Him?

Joyce: When I pray for someone undergoing a crisis—an illness, for example—to be relieved of their burden, sometimes praying together with a group of wonderful people, the answers don’t come the way we want them. The answer often is “No.” So then we pray that the person in crisis will at least be comforted. If they are, is it because God answered in person, or because somebody said “I’m praying for you”? And since God knows what is going to happen, and is not going to change His mind, and hundreds of people may pray for different results for the same thing, does it matter what we ask Him for? But we can’t help praying when we read a news story of three children dying in a fire—we automatically pray in our minds for some comfort for the distraught parent. They don’t know they are being prayed for. We just hope our prayers help, somehow, sometime. Or maybe we are praying to comfort our own distress at hearing such awful news.

Robin: Maintaining even unanswered prayer helps us to develop faith in God, and we may not know why He does not answer until we meet Him.

* * *

Don: How do we make sense of a prayer for revenge? Can God honor such a prayer? More than we might wish, Samson is like us. Each of us is a gift from God. As children, we are drawn naturally to God, which is how we know that children have faith. Indeed, Jesus said that to have faith, we must become like children.

As we mature, we are prone to rebellion, to lust, to pride, and to self-serving. We discover that the commitments made by our parents before our birth must be internalized by us, or else they are not very valuable. Our tendency toward selfish ambition is fraught with heartache and, ultimately, spiritual blindness. The story of Samson is a metaphor for the story of all of us. But as it was with Samson, so it is with us that loss of sight often rekindles insight.

Samson’s hair is a key element in the story. It is, I think, a metaphor for grace. Grace is dispensed by God on as as-needed basis. We can cut it off, but we cannot increase it—only God can do that. If we shear our heads, God already has a plan in place to re-grow the hair, to replenish the grace we have cut off. He is inexorable in this—we cannot stop Him.

Grace is the source of our spiritual power. It strengthens our spiritual resolve and puts us back on track t fulfill our spiritual destiny.

Samson was a judge. He was called to deliver God’s people. That was his destiny, and in the end, by God’s grace, he fulfilled it. But to do that, the old Samson—full of pride, selfishness, and the deliberate truncating of God’s grace—had to die. Samson might be considered a holy warrior, a jihadist. To Muslims, the real meaning and the greatest manifestation of jihad is the jihad with one’s self, and this Samson had to fight his own pride and self-assurance. It is a kind of personality suicide. We too need to fight our tendency to pray for an easy life, freedom from fear, relief from want, to be at the front of the line, and other self-centered desires.

The Psalms are full of revenge prayers. For example, this one, where David wrote from captivity about God wreaking vengeance on the enemies of Israel:

Remember, O Lord, against the sons of Edom
The day of Jerusalem,
Who said, “Raze it, raze it
To its very foundation.”
O daughter of Babylon, you devastated one,
How blessed will be the one who repays you
With the recompense with which you have repaid us.
How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones
Against the rock. (Psalm 137:7-9)

O that You would slay the wicked, O God;
Depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed.
For they speak against You wickedly,
And Your enemies take Your name in vain.
Do I not hate those who hate You, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against You?
I hate them with the utmost hatred;
T
hey have become my enemies.
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
And see if there be any hurtful way in me,
And lead me in the everlasting way. (Psalm 139:19-24)

As for the head of those who surround me,
May the mischief of their lips cover them.
May burning coals fall upon them;
May they be cast into the fire,
Into deep pits from which they cannot rise.
May a slanderer not be established in the earth;
May evil hunt the violent man speedily. (Psalm 140:9-11)

We are used to praying for protection and gain. Hannah prayed for a son, knowing how hard life would be in that society at that time for a widow without a son. Jonah and Job and many others prayed for themselves. This is a result of our fallen nature, of stripping off the spiritual grace that is so important for spiritual development.

Samson himself was the first element in his prayer. The prayer itself was second. God was third. Does God answer selfish, self-serving prayers? Prayers for revenge? Does He answer if the prayer aligns with His will?

I don’t doubt the veracity of Samson’s bringing down the house. But was it in answer to his prayer? He had been used an ox for years in captivity, turning a heavy stone wheel to grind grain. So his already giant and powerful body must have become enormously strong—strong enough, perhaps, to pull down two support columns in a building that could not have conformed to modern construction safety codes. The writer of Judges certainly saw it as an answer to prayer.

At a minimum, we can derive from this story how God was seen by the Israelites at this time. As Paul indicated, all stories in Scripture are inspired and underwritten by God:

God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. (Hebrews 1:1-2)

But the stories were told by God to men (“the fathers in the prophets”) in bits and pieces (“in many portions and in many ways”). That was then; now (“in these last days”) it is different. The communication medium now is Jesus, and that is bound to alter the communication. This does not negate the value of the Old Testament. It does not undermine its inspiration. Jesus relied on it and often taught from it. But He also used it to contrast His own message. In the Sermon on the Mount he repeatedly emphasized that people should be thinking differently from what they had been taught before.

The greatest contrast between the revenge prayers of the Old Testament and the message of Jesus is the prayer of Jesus on the cross for his oppressors: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

My confidence that the Old Testament needs to be viewed from the perspective of the writers, of the people of the time and place, arises out of the story of Samson, when his wife Delilah betrayed him:

She said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And he awoke from his sleep and said, “I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him. (Judges 16:20)

The concept of God departing from Samson was clearly believed by the writer but is antithetical to everything else in the Bible that shows God will never leave:

Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the Lord your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. (Deuteronomy 31:6)

Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, “I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you,” (Hebrews 13:5)

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

When God appears to give up on us, it is actually us giving up on God, turning our backs on Him, walking away from Him:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. (Romans 1:18-27)

Despite the biases of the writer of Samson, God’s grace still shines through, symbolized by the regrowth of Samson’s hair:

However, the hair of his head began to grow again after it was shaved off. (Judges 16:22)

God’s grace can no more be stopped from emerging than hair can be stopped from growing.

In some ways, Samson’s prayer is of confession:

Then Samson called to the Lord and said, “O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me just this time, (Judges 16:28)

The thief on the cross with Jesus also asked to be remembered. When we realize our sinful, fallen state, we ask to be remembered with God’s grace. This is why Samson, even after such a profligate life and destructive suicide, was included in the “faith hall of fame”:

And what more shall I say? For time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, (Hebrews 11:32)

It signifies that there is hope for you and for me.

David: The problem I have is that the Old Testament limits our view of God. Painting Him as a vengeful God—the antithesis of the forgiving God of Jesus—seems to me to do, and historically to have done, far more harm than good. There are Old Testament stories of people with good Christian attributes, and why not? There have always been such people throughout human history, in all parts of the world. I am sure there are Buddhist and Hindu stories about people who loved and forgave. The fact that such stories can be found does not of itself validate the old Scriptures as God-inspired and representative of the true God, but the stories of un-Christian people such as Samson do, of themselves, invalidate the Old Testament as God-inspired and representative of God. Giving any credence to such stories encourages bloody crusades and jihads and bombings and burning of mosques and churches, and is utterly antithetical to Christianity at least, and probably to other religions as well.

I think it is reasonable to believe: (1) That Jesus quoted from the Old Testament simply because that’s all He had to work with! It’s all His contemporaries knew. He Himself was born into that religion of the Old Testament. (2) That Jesus and his followers had to be diplomatic in their treatment of an established religion they were actually seeking to overthrow, so maybe there is some lukewarm tipping of the hat to the Old Testament here and there but it hardly figures front and center in the life and ministry and messages of Jesus, or so it seems to me.

Donald: It seems to me the two Testaments provide different perspectives that help us figure out our place in God’s plan for humanity. Time provides a similar perspective: Old graveyards house the remains of people once large in life but now long forgotten.

We are admonished to say “Thy will be done” but what we want to say is “My will be done.” How can we have a good and right perspective from a time and place where we are at the center of time and place? Do we have to wait for our time and place to pass before we can truly take an objective perspective?

Kiran: The Samson story is about selfishness. If we had his powers, would we too not be arrogant and self-centered? His prayer of vengeance against the Philistines and his act of destruction may have been a cry for vengeance on himself. He was spoiled in life, always getting what he wanted. In his last moments, he abandoned his selfishness and embraced altruism.

Mikiko: The Israelites had been bad so often. God chose Samson to save them, and gave him his power.

David: I see no altruism in Samson or his prayer. His request to be remembered sounds very different from that of the thief on the cross. I read it as an arrogant: “Hey, you there, God! Remember me???!!! There’s something I need you to do for me. I want to get revenge on these rotten Philistines. Help me to kill them.”

Robin: The Philistines wanted to wipe out the Israelites. If God had thought that Adolph Hitler and the Nazis would have turned to Him, they would not have been defeated. God is the judge for all time, not just Old Testament time. People then hardened their hearts and tried to be their own gods. God’s own people started looking at the means rather than the ends by embellishing their laws, until in the New Testament God revealed that He is more than just judgment and would rather be known for mercy and grace. That message can be found in the Old Testament too but it was not the focus, nor was it the focus of the people of Old Testament times and places.

Aishwarya: Lord Shiva blessed the demons who prayed to Him sincerely for power and wealth, by granting their wish. The demons then used their enormous power to loot and destroy the people around them. The good people then prayed to the other gods to gang up on Lord Shiva and put a stop to it.

The content of prayer is immaterial—what matters is the sincerity of prayer. We are God’s children, so He will grant any prayer so long as we are sincere about it, even a prayer for revenge. But granting such prayers serves to let people see that power and wealth can be misused, and to remind them that there should be more to prayer than sincerity.

David: The problem is that God doesn’t listen to the sincere prayers of innocent people “collaterally damaged” by revenge prayer, if we buy the Samson story.

Chris: At one point in his life, Samson began to lose sight of his need for God and His grace as he grew more independent. At the very end of his life, he once more accepted his total dependence on God. We need God’s grace, or we are not going to love God and our neighbor. We will grow self-centered, like Samson.

Kiran: From Abraham on, the Old Testament is about tribal competition and warfare. But God committed not so much to destroy the enemies of Abraham’s tribes than simply to bless Abraham’s tribes. The formation of Israel led to changes for the better in the treatment of slaves and of women. The point is that there is progress in the way people treat one another, even in the Old Testament; progress toward the kingdom of heaven as Jesus described it. It’s the progress that matters.

Mikiko: The Israelites were God’s chosen people. They did many bad things (Judges 31) and were given over by God to the wicked Philistines for 40 years. But in His mercy and lovingkindness, Jehovah God used Samson to help Israel defeat the Philistines.

Don: We will be discussing the concept of a “God of judgment.”

Is there a risk in believing that one is a part of “God’s own people”? That God is more interested in and will support me and my tribe at the expense of others? It seemed to corrupt the Israelites.

Donald: If I think I am chosen, then my perspective is bound to be different. How much we spend on our own education and comfort reflects our perspective on where we think we stand in the Universe, and most of our students stand pretty close together. So the challenge is to teach them a pathway that will take them to places showing them different global, civic, and other perspectives. The rest is all self-improvement, but if we allow that perspective to dominate, we end up with a false sense of our place in the Universe. How can we be humble, believing that we are terribly important to God?

Don: To believe that we are special to God is intoxicating. It is subject to misuse and tends to disable our relationship with others.

* * *

Jay: Samson was a “superhero”—a man possessed of exceptional strength who was a hero to his people, the Israelites. He was eventually tricked by his Gentile wife into revealing the source of his strength (his hair), and was lulled by her to sleep so that her servants could cut his hair and render him susceptible to capture by his enemies, the Philistines, who blinded him and held him for years in captivity. One day:

It so happened when they were in high spirits, that they said, “Call for Samson, that he may amuse us.” So they called for Samson from the prison, and he entertained them. And they made him stand between the pillars. Then Samson said to the boy who was holding his hand, “Let me feel the pillars on which the house rests, that I may lean against them.” Now the house was full of men and women, and all the lords of the Philistines were there. And about 3,000 men and women were on the roof looking on while Samson was amusing them.

Then Samson called to the Lord and said, “O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me just this time, O God, that I may at once be avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.” Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and braced himself against them, the one with his right hand and the other with his left. And Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” And he bent with all his might so that the house fell on the lords and all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he killed in his life. (Judges 16:25-30)

Samson’s prayer seems to be aimed at inflicting revenge while committing suicide. On the face of it, the story seems preposterous, but that does not necessarily mean there is no lesson in it or that Samson’s prayer has no meaning. Does it tell us anything at all about the relationship between God and Man? Does it tell us anything about prayer?

Donald: I wonder why it is referred to as a story, rather than history? Does it make any difference? Samson’s prayer seems to say “Let me get even for the harm they’ve caused me” rather than “Let me get even for the harm they’ve caused You, God”.

David: It’s an Old Testament prayer to a vengeful Old Testament God. It is not a prayer one can imagine Jesus praying. The story seems designed as propaganda for the God of Israel, not the universal God of all Mankind.

Don: It starts with the idea that Samson became a successful judge because of a vow his parents made before he was born. There is Scriptural precedent where barren parents make vows to God for their child/ren, so perhaps there is some significance in that. But although the emphasis in the story is very much on Samson, perhaps it holds more meaning if we examine what it says about God. It says, for example, that our strength derives not from our own effort but is God-given; but there may be much more.

Jay: A story that tells of a vengeful God who answers vengeful prayer is a bothersome story. It does not indeed sound like a prayer Jesus would pray. Its perspective comes undoubtedly from the Israelites of that time. Perhaps that is the lesson: It shows how people understood God at that time. Perhaps it helps enlighten us about the changing nature of Man’s relationship with God over time. The problem is that if it causes too much cognitive dissonance, the reader’s mind will throw out that faintly illumined baby of enlightenment with the dark and dirty bathwater. But if it does not, what does the mind make of the baby?

Donald: Looked at from today’s perspective, Samson’s destruction of the temple was an act of terror for the purpose of revenge. If the story is about a relationship with God, is it about our communal relationship with God or about our individual relationships with Him? Israel owned Samson’s God. He was their national, communal, God.

David: We in this class have come to understand “Our Father” as the God of the entire global human community. The Samson story is a square peg we are desperately trying to hammer into the round hole of our understanding of God (inadequate as that is bound to be). Don has led us through other more or less preposterous Old Testament stories—Jonah, Jacob, Job—to arrive at some enlightenment, which was achieved partly by ignoring preposterous bits such as being swallowed alive by a fish. But, to me, Samson is a step too far. If there is an important message in the story, why bury it so deep that it is impossible to find? If we are seeking enlightenment about the nature and nurturing of our relationship with God (individual and communal) need we look any further than the New Testament, and in particular the Gospels?

Michael: The story is a bit strong in terms of its focus on the Israelites even compared to other Old Testament stories, but even from the perspective of a contemporary Israelite I don’t see how the story would have been seen as any more than the story of an egotistical loser bent on revenge.

Mikiko: The Israelites did bad in Jehovah’s eyes so He gave them over to the Philistines for 40 years, and appointed Samson to judge them during 20 of the 40 years. God’s injunctions about not cutting Sampson’s hair and so on might seem like a children’s story but we are assured that…

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness…. (2 Timothy 3:16)

Chris: Before he was born, Samson was singled out to begin the deliverance of Israel from the hands of the Philistines. This was God’s plan. There were rules he was expected to follow (though it was his parents, not him, who had agreed to them). No matter that he broke most of them, God’s plan for him did not change. Every time he utilized his superpowers, Scripture says “the spirit of God came upon him.” So no matter Samson’s transgressions, God stuck with him and in the end the plan succeeded and God’s will was done. Perhaps that is the meaning of the story: That God’s plan for us does not change, despite what we may do.

David: It seems to me such an argument, based upon this particular story of Samson, tacitly accepts that God’s plan was for Israel and its God to rule the world. Tell that to the Buddhists and the Hindus! Of course God’s plan is God’s plan, but we can’t hope to deduce His plan from an obvious piece of propaganda that relies, furthermore, on magic: “Subscribe to our God of Israel and you too may successfully wrestle with lions!”

Chris: The Israelites were oppressed. God’s plan is for us to live in harmony with one another.

Jay: But is it God’s plan for oppression to be ended by violent means?

Michael: We think of Samson’s prayer as the cause and the destruction of the temple as the effect—as the outcome of the prayer. But if we disagree about whether this was the outcome God planned, logically we must conclude that no outcome can reliably be linked with an antecedent prayer.

Donald: In pictorials displayed during Sabbath School, we were constantly reminded of Old Testament stories such as Jonah and the whale, Moses in the basket, Daniel in the lion’s den, Moses at the Burning Bush and parting the Red Sea, and so on. The stories are dramatic and therefore evoke memorable imagery. With the obvious exception of the Crucifixion, stories from the New Testament—the Sermon on the Mount, for example—tend to lack drama, so are not as memorable.

David: We have talked in depth and rejected the notion that God will resort to magic to answer our prayers. We’ve relied heavily on Isaiah’s statement that God’s ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts. We’ve concluded, from this and from Paul and others, that God does answer prayers, but does so in His own time and in His own way, therefore we may not even recognize His answer when it comes. Samson lived a magical life and his final prayer asked for magic. It’s true that Jesus answered a few prayers for healing immediately and magically, and He was the one who said “Ask and ye shall receive,” but in our earlier discussion of this we seem to have concluded that His Way, Truth, and Life were nowhere near so facile as that; that He meant we may ask and we will receive, but what we receive is unlikely to be in the form we expect. (Prosperity gospel preachers, of course, get rich by preaching the opposite!)

Jay: Samson’s was indeed an “Ask for magic and receive it”, cause-and-effect-sort-of prayer. That is a bad ask. Jesus would rather pray unselfishly to end the suffering of others.

Chris: In the end, God’s will for the beginning of the deliverance of Israel was done and it aligned perfectly with Samson’s will for the destruction of the temple. Perhaps when the will of Man aligns with the will of God, magic ensues! If Samson had prayed simply to have his sight restored, it would not have happened.

David: Why would the God of all people side with one national interest over another? Any politician or stateswo/man’s speechwriter could concoct a hundred stories showing that God is on their side. But that’s all they would be: Stories depending purely on rhetoric and drama and magic for their persuasiveness.

Donald: We can often find correlations in retrospect.

Jay: Samson’s story has taken us further than usual from our comfort zone. Perhaps that is the inevitable result of trying to approach the unfathomable.

Jay: Daniel, a Jew, became a favorite of the non-Jewish king of Babylon. The king’s nobles were jealous of Daniel and, knowing his devotion to the Jewish God by seeing him pray at his window (visible from the street) three times a day, they conspired to persuade the king to decree a 30-day prohibition on any prayer not directed at him, the king. Transgressors were to be put to death. (The story can be found in Daniel 6.)

Daniel, obedient to his God, and as expected by the conspirators, ignored the prohibition and continued to pray at his window. They promptly reported him to the king, who was distressed but could not overturn the decree, so Daniel was thrown into the lions’ den and left to his (presumed) inevitable fate. The following morning, when the door to the den was opened, Daniel walked out without so much as a scratch on him.

The king was impressed by the apparent protective power of Daniel’s God and decreed that this God was to be worshiped henceforth. Daniel’s detractors were thrown into the lions’ den, along with their wives and children, and none survived.

Daniel’s story tends to be told, especially to children, as an example of obedience; but it might usefully be examined from the perspective of prayer. Daniel’s willingness to enter the lions’ den was a statement that prayer is more important than life itself; that prayer is worth dying for. Further, Daniel evidently was unwilling even to compromise. He might, for example, have closed the shutters to his window, so that he would not have been observed to be breaking the decree.

Kiran: It seems to me the story is not about prayer but about loyalty. Prayer was just Daniel’s way of showing his loyalty to God.

Chris: Through prayer, Daniel had developed such a strong relationship with God that his mortal life mattered little to him—he trusted God completely.

Donald: It is a childish story in its preposterous plot of hungry lions sparing one man while devouring everyone else. And what did Daniel feel was worth dying for: Was it his relationship with God, or the act of prayer itself? And why would he not compromise, and avoid praying by the window?

Jay: Aren’t prayer and a relationship with God inseparable, at least as it seemed to Daniel? Is not prayer essential to building and maintaining a relationship with God?

Jazlin: Daniel had a close relationship with the king as well. Perhaps in ignoring the decree he was arrogantly testing the strength of his relationship with both God and the king.

David: What would have been wrong with obeying the decree? If slapped in the face, the ideal Christian response is to turn the other cheek. Would praying to the king not simply have amounted to turning the other cheek on Daniel’s part, after having been slapped in the face with the decree? Is life not so sacred that suicide, whether in the form of stepping willingly into a lions’ den or of strapping on a suicide bomb vest, is not a sin?

Kiran: It would be difficult to maintain a relationship with God if one were prohibited from communicating with Him. And since He cannot be seen, prayer is the only direct medium of communication, though of course one can communicate indirectly through one’s relationship with one’s fellow wo/men. It seems to me that prayer is essential to having a relationship with God, but it need not be done ostentatiously in one’s window.

Jazlin: Jesus also told us to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, so Daniel might legitimately (from a Christian perspective) have obeyed the king’s decree on that basis. The decree was more a matter of paying respect to the king than of worshiping him. Daniel seemed to want to test the king’s friendship for him. He was acting a bit like a spoiled brat.

Kiran: The decree seems to me to have been about worship, not mere respect. Daniel was responding to the same sort of challenge presented to the disciples who were told to eat unclean animals, and to the Hebrew worthies Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego who were told to bow to the false god of a predecessor to Daniel’s king.

Jazlin: When I visit a Hindu temple I have no problem eating the sacrificial food that is left for the gods there, because I am not a believer of the Hindu faith. If I were, I would not eat it.

Michael: In Catholic school we were told that the prayer of saints as they were martyred would have protected them from the pain of torture. But it always struck me that the protection did not extend to their necks, since their heads were invariably cut off (I mean, of course, that they died) in the end. Death appears to be God’s limit. When it comes down to the wire, God seems powerless. In Daniel’s case, I share the view that he was just being arrogant.

Jazlin: Daniel was testing God as well as the king.

Chris: Daniel’s detractors knew exactly what Daniel did in his daily life, including who his God was, why Daniel prayed to Him, and how important was his relationship with his God. Daniel had probably discussed all of this with them–they had been thrown together in life, they knew one another. There can have been few secrets between them. So they knew which buttons to press. They knew that his relationship with God was sacrosanct and that he would therefore not interrupt it, not even temporarily for just 30 days.

Donald: But he went over the top. He could have kept the relationship with God intact throughout the period of decree simply by praying in private or in his head. Prayer should not be public and ostentatious anyway.

Mikiko: Jesus said we should pray in private (Matthew 6:9), but in Daniel’s case, he was required to pray facing the Ark of the Covenant. The window happened to face Jerusalem, where the Ark was then located. So he was being ritual, not ostentatious.

David: Jesus taught that our indirect relationship with God through our brother and sister should take precedence over our direct relationship with Him through worship at the altar. If we have a problem with someone, we should forget about the altar and go fix the problem. Daniel could have done that, but he chose to stay at his window, which was essentially his altar.

Jazlin: Daniel’s prayer at the window was his way of witnessing.

Kiran: Much as we want to build a relationship with God indirectly through our care for others, we so often fall short. The direct way, through prayer, saves us from that failure and reminds us to keep trying to turn the other cheek.

Don: Could prayer be more for people than for God? Is the proper outcome of prayer to benefit people rather than God? God knew Daniel and his faithfulness—Daniel had nothing he needed to prove to God. The true beneficiary of his action in continuing to pray was the king and his subjects, including the Jews of Babylon.

Jay: If the story was intended purely as Jewish propaganda to support the supremacy of the Jewish God, the aspect of prayer would not have been necessary. The story is about the power of God to protect and save those who are faithful to Him, yet prayer is at the crux of this story. Did it have to be the crux? If so, why? Some of us seem to think it’s because of prayer’s importance to our relationship with God, but Don suggests its importance lies in its impact on our relationship with others.

David: Daniel went willingly to a horrible death the lions’ den, yet Jesus did not go willingly to face a horrible death on the cross. He prayed, in the garden of Gethsemane on the eve of his death, that His “burden” would be “lifted”—but only if it was God’s will. The difference between the willing sacrifice of Daniel and the unwilling sacrifice of Jesus perhaps means that sacrificial death is a matter for the divine, not to be contemplated by mortals.

Don: From Daniel’s point of view, death might have been preferable to a life without prayer.

Aishwarya: If a relationship is good, there is no need to test it. Especially in a life or death situation, one is not going to worry about testing relationships with those around one. If there is a way out of a needless death, just take it. Don’t debate the minutiae. If I am unemployed but pray ritually at set times three times a day, and I am offered a job interview at one of those times, I am not going to jeopardize the job opportunity for the sake of one prayer session. It’s not a matter of prioritizing job over God: My relationship with God is such that I know He will understand that there are things I must take care of in the mortal world. Maybe a friend needs my help to fix his car and it happens to be prayer time—God would want me to help my friend.

Michael: Unfortunately, religion creates the misconception—the illusion, even—that God is an external entity in some far-away place called Heaven. I think God is internal—He is part of us, therefore the relationship always exists and is unbreakable.

Jay: Can it be strengthened?

Michael: On my part, perhaps, but not on God’s.

David: Perhaps Daniel was reaching out to the God who was evident in the king’s concern for Daniel. As Don, said, the king was the real beneficiary here. Why can’t the Bible just say so?!

Mikiko: We must obey God rather than men. (Acts 5:29)

Donald: There is great value in hearing new and sometimes startling insights from people of other faiths. It makes us look afresh at our Scriptures and tends to bring greater enlightenment.

Jay: If you thought Daniel’s story was a bit over the top, wait till next week, when we will discuss the story of Samson, to be found in the Bible’s Book of Judges, chapters 13 through 16.

* * *

…pray without ceasing;… (1 Thessalonians 5:17)

Don: What does this statement mean? It appears within a set of instructions on how to live and behave given to members of the growing Christian church in the Greek city of Thessaloniki by the Apostle Paul:

But we request of you, brethren, that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you, and have charge over you in the Lord and give you instruction, and that you esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Live in peace with one another. We urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone. See that no one repays another with evil for evil, but always seek after that which is good for one another and for all people. Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit; do not despise prophetic utterances. But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; abstain from every form of evil.

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass.
Brethren, pray for us.

Greet all the brethren with a holy kiss. I adjure you by the Lord to have this letter read to all the brethren.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. (1 Thessalonians 5:12-28)

The Greek word for “without ceasing” as used in “pray without ceasing” is adialeiptos (ἀδιάλειπτος) which means constant, incessant, unceasing, unremitting. It occurs in several other passages in Scripture (bolded):

First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, because your faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world. For God, whom I serve in my spirit in the preaching of the gospel of His Son, is my witness as to how unceasingly I make mention of you, always in my prayers making request, if perhaps now at last by the will of God I may succeed in coming to you. (Romans 1:8-10)

We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers; constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father (1 Thessalonians 1:2-3)

For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe. (1 Thessalonians 2:13)

It seems much is required of us. If we obey all these instructions, there would seem to be not much time for anything else! Taken all together, do they help us to understand the phrase at issue: “pray without ceasing”?

There are various interpretations of the phrase. One is that it means we are to be at all times in an attitude of prayer, though what that means is itself questionable. Another is that we are to be always focused on God. But given the demands of life, how could we possibly be in a continual state of prayer? We have diapers to change, laundry to do, lunches to pack, traffic to fight, a timeclock to punch, bosses to please, a spouse and children to nurture, homework to finish, baths to give and to take…. There is no end to the things we must do.

So how can we incorporate prayer along with everything else? Is there a prayer for changing a diaper, and all the other things that demand our attention in daily life? Would such prayers (if they exist) be prayers for relief? For help in meeting the demand? For removing obstacles from fulfilling the demand? Would prayer work like an app for helping us? Or is prayer something completely different, something fundamental, to which Jesus alluded when He said we don’t know how to pray, and to which the disciples alluded when they asked Him to teach them how to pray?

In his blog “Jesus Alive” Steve Shirley counted the instances in which Jesus was mentioned in the Gospels as praying. (See this link.) He prayed alone, in public, before meals, before important decisions, before and after healing people, at his baptism, the morning before leaving for Galilee, before choosing his disciples, while speaking to the Jewish leaders, when feeding the 5,000 and the 4,000, before walking on the water, before Peter called him the Christ, at the Transfiguration, at the return of the disciples, when teaching the disciples the Lord’s Prayer, before raising Lazarus, before laying hands on the children, asking the Father to glorify His name, at the Last Supper, for the faith of Peter, for Himself and His disciples just before his arrest, in Gethsemane before his betrayal, right after being nailed to the cross (“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”), while dying on the cross (“My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”), with his dying breath (“Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit”), before dining with others after His resurrection, and to bless His disciples, before His ascension.

Shirley concluded that Jesus came closer to continual prayer than anyone who has ever lived. Jesus certainly showed that prayer can be prayed any time, anywhere, for just about anything. Does ritual prayer fit into this scheme, or just personal prayer? Does the example set by Jesus answer the question of how to “pray without ceasing”?

Donald: The educational discipline “Communication” is about how we communicate with one another through speech, writing and other media. If we take prayer as a form of communication with God and with others, then how we communicate in general may serve to demonstrate our relationship with God. Doing good and loving one another are achieved through communication, without necessarily involving a direct conversation with God.

Aishwarya: To me, to pray without ceasing is to communicate with God as often as possible. When we arise every day and greet our loved ones, when we delight in accomplishing some task, and even when we are happy about a new dress we bought, we are in essence ritually thanking God for the blessings of being alive, of having loved ones, of being able to make a contribution in life, and of being grateful for our gifts. It is a form of prayer, and (conceivably) it can be done unceasingly.

Jay: In Scriptural context, the statement “pray without ceasing” is immediately followed by “in everything, give thanks.” But do we really give thanks for everything, or only for the things we like? To me, to pray without ceasing requires an adjustment in attitude away from what we like and want and towards what God wants. This is supported by the statement immediately following “in everything, give thanks”, namely: “…for this is God’s will….” Bad things are included in the “everything” for which we must give thanks. This is difficult, but it seems to be necessary for building a relationship with God. It is a sort-of give and take, which is necessary even in building and maintaining our human relationships. No relationship can exist without it. If we expect otherwise, we are bound to be disappointed.

David: The OED says “to pray” comes from the Latin precare, meaning “to entreat”. But the Scriptural examples suggest a much broader definition of “to pray” as “to live life in a way that God approves”. Until we die, we live constantly, incessantly, unceasingly, and unremittingly, therefore we can pray without ceasing by living a life of which God would approve. Unless prayer is inherent to behavior, I do not see how it is possible for it to be unceasing otherwise.

Mikiko: The Ruler of the universe is deeply interested in our prayer. He wants to know about us and how we are feeling and what problems we face:

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7)

Jay: That’s a good quote for what it does not say: It does not say that God will grant your requests, but, rather, that the peace of God, which we can’t hope to understand, will guard our hearts and minds. It does not say “Ask and you shall get what you want” but “Ask and God will give you something inestimably greater than what you ask for: He will give you His peace.”

Michael: I think personal prayer with God may be effective (though not prayer for magical solutions), but there are too many unknowns about other people for prayer prayed on behalf of others to be effective. We can be more effective by just expressing our sympathy to someone suffering, or feeding someone who is hungry, rather than by praying for them.

David: More-or-less scientific studies of the effect of prayer on healing (see here) concluded that it has none.

Don: James would agree with Michael:

What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. (James 2:14-17)

Kiran: Primal decisions are taken when we have primal needs, such as to eat. We will take any food at hand if we are hungry. But the rational mind can overrule the primal mind, as (for example) when the food belongs to someone else. A study found that Buddhists, who meditate a lot, tend to be far more rational than primal in their decisions. It would seem irrational to keep praying prayers that never get answered.

Donald: We all have moments we wish we could expunge from the record. Behavior can be a form of prayer, but obviously not at those moments. Prayer for others may be meaningful to them in that it shows your concern for them, but I agree that it ought to be accompanied by tangible help for them.

Don: It seems easy for a cloistered monk to pray without ceasing, in contrast to those of us who have a myriad worldly duties to take care of every day.

Kiran: Pentecostals especially, and Catholics, seem to pray more than we do. However, we believe that reading the Bible and listening to the word of God is a form of prayer.

David: I wonder how other religions feel about praying without ceasing.

Kiran: The Jains pray often.

Michael: But it’s impossible to pray without ceasing. What about when we sleep? Can it be prayer—resting is necessary for the health of the body—is that a way of praying?

Donald: What is the relationship between the quantity and the quality of prayer? If our relationship—our connection—with God is good, like a good Internet connection, isn’t it always on?

David: In previous meetings we have talked about prayer as focusing on the will of God. If the requirement is to pray without ceasing that God’s will be done, then the Muslims would seem to do best at it, since at the end of almost every sentence they add Insh’Allah—“God willing” or “If it be the will of God”.

Don: Why can’t God take some responsibility for meeting us halfway in prayer, by responding to us?

Aishwarya: Perhaps it’s because God is bigger than us. My grandfather was always counting and telling his japamala (prayer beads), so he was in effect constantly praying.

Mikiko: God hears whenever you pray, even in sleep.

Chris: A married man is in a constant relationship with his wife. He may not be talking with her or even thinking about her all the time, but the relationship is always there in the background. Perhaps our relationship with God is like that, and is a form of prayer.

Jay: The relationship with a spouse is a background, subconscious. relationship but it depends upon physical proximity of the spouses. It has a strong influence on our lives. How can we establish proximity to a God who is not physically present? Prayer trains my being to understand this relationship, and Scripture tell us what that relationship should be: Feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, visit those in prison, clothe those who are naked, and so on. But that does not seem like what we think of as a relationship, so we must make a conscious effort to achieve it, and that conscious effort is via prayer.

Kiran: My thinking tends to be chaotic. Some of it is good, some bad. But when I pray, I realize which is which and feel cleansed of the bad thoughts and more certain of what is good. It’s like plugging into the network and receiving a download. The outcome, usually though not always, is that I end up doing something unselfish.

Michael: We know that God is bigger than us and certainly capable of taking some responsibility in our relationship, yet we blame ourselves if the relationship is bad. That doesn’t seem right.

Donald: I have confidence that my desk lamp will light when I turn the switch, knowing that there is a powerful and competent force (the electric company) working ceaselessly to keep the electrons flowing. All I have to do—but HAVE to do, if I want light—is turn on the switch.

* * *

Don: There is a universal need to pray to a supernatural power, especially in times of need. And yet, when we analyze the concept of prayer, we find it hard to understand. It seems important to just about everyone, everywhere, at all times.

Jesus prayed often, and prayer was only thing the disciples asked Jesus to teach them. They did not ask to be taught to do miracles, or even how to preach or how to worship. This implies that there is some fundamental mystery to prayer. What were the disciples hoping to discover? What is it that we really need to learn about prayer?

Must our attitude be adjusted, in order to pray? May we pray when we are tired, depressed, or angry; or only when we are filled with joy and love and thanksgiving? Must we kneel, or may we stand, sit, or lie prostrate? Should we pray alone or with others? In the garden of Gethsemane on the eve of his crucifixion, Jesus did not want to be alone when he went to pray, and took some disciples with him.

In some religions, the position, timing, and many other aspects of prayer are tightly choreographed, and deviation is not allowed. It can be very comforting not to have to worry about the details, since they have been prescribed. The Bible tells Christians simply to pray without ceasing—but what does that mean? Muslim prayer is very similar to the Lord’s Prayer in deferring to God’s will, asking for forgiveness, and giving thanks for sustenance. But unlike Christian prayer, there is very little supplication for relief, for security, for safety.

What outcome of prayer ought we to anticipate and prepare for through study? Most people think that God wants us to pray, hears our prayers, and answers them, provided that we have sufficient faith, belief, and sincerity—which we often do not. So, many think, if our prayers are not answered, it must be our fault, not God’s.

Several principles of prayer can be found in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, starting with the Lord’s Prayer:

“When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

“And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.

“Pray, then, in this way:

‘Our Father who is in heaven,
 Hallowed be Your name.
 Your kingdom come.
 Your will be done,
 on earth as it is in heaven.
 Give us this day our daily bread.
 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
 And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.’]

For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.” (Matthew 6:5-14)

The principles of prayer that can be derived from all this are:

1. Do not put God on the spot, by praying openly in public, to answer our petitionary prayers, despite Scripture that appears to suggest otherwise:

Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:16)

There is a strong sense that the power of prayer is realized through boldness, though it seems that this applies to prayer for grace rather (or more) than to petitionary prayer for miracles. A boldly-expressed petition amounts to a demand. We need to be reminded that God is not in our service—we are in His; that He does not answer questions—He poses them. Jesus made it very clear that we are not to make demands on God, certainly not publicly.

2. Prayer should be private and personal. God’s response to our prayer will not be in the form of a miracle ostentatiously wrapped in thunder and lightning. Rather, it will be delivered in the form of a question put to us in a still, small voice whispering in our ear.

3. Prayer should be brief, though constant. We tend to think prayer should be lengthy, which then requires much forethought into its construction and much memorization to be able to utter it. But, said Paul:

In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:26-28)

4. The encounter itself is important, otherwise Scripture would not instruct us to pray. The value of Jacob’s wrestling with God’s angel was in the wrestling. Without it, there would have been no outcome.

5. Though conducted in private, prayer is communal in spirit and object. We pray not just for our selfish selves. In the Lord’s Prayer, all the pronouns are plural: “Our Father… Give us… Lead us… Deliver us…” etc.

6. Prayer calls for reciprocity. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” For forgiveness, we must first forgive others. To me, it follows that to be blessed by God, we must bless others; to receive His gifts, we must give to others; and to be loved by Him, we must love others.

David: We know from Scripture that Jesus observed his own principles and prayed often. The few prayers of His that were recorded—I recall the Lord’s Prayer itself, and his prayer in the garden of Gethsemane—stress the supremacy of God’s will.

Don: Another major prayer of Jesus is the so-called High-Priestly Prayer (John 17) which is largely a prayer on behalf of His disciples and others who believe in Him.

Mikiko: James wrote:

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. (James 4:8)

Prayer draws us nearer to God. I think the key requests in the Lord’s Prayer are “Hallowed be Thy name” and “Thy kingdom come.”

Donald: Prayer also serves as a time marker, a division between different parts of a church service.

Anonymous: Muslims pray constantly not only through their five daily ritual prayers but also through their common phrases “insh’Allah” (“God willing”, “if God wills”) and “alḥamdulillāh” (“Praise God” or “Thank God”).

Donald: So private and public prayer may serve different purposes. Ritual public prayer has a timing attached to it, so might not be sincere if the timing is bad for the person praying. We often ask others to pray for us: “I seek your prayer on my behalf.” Is it just to comfort ourselves, or do we think that prayers said on our behalf improves the chances of their being granted?

John: If a communal prayer leader prays a wrong prayer, does that reflect upon the whole community? Prayer is situational: In a dangerous situation, we pray for safety; in a joyous situation, we pray to share our joy with others. A ritual, mantra-like, prayer may not serve in all situations. If personal prayer is needed to connect us personally to God, there can be no value in having a middleman pray on our behalf. God does not want mantras—he wants us to reveal what is formed in our own individual minds. A mantra can be repeated mindlessly—the thoughts of the utterer might be totally different from the contents of the mantra.

Aishwarya: Hindu culture recognizes certain days for certain gods. Monday is Shiva’s day, Tuesday is Ganesha’s, and so on. Hindu children are taught to pray to the specific gods on their specific days and in their specific temples. This results in long lines at some temples while others are empty. I wondered as a child why other cultures were able to pray to one god, in one temple, every day. I eventually decided that it didn’t matter where or when or even how we prayed.

John: If a prayer is based on a situation, time may be a factor, so having to wait in line to pray at a temple is not going to work. Why not just pray in place, personally?

Kiran: Hindus can and do pray personal prayers at any time and place. But ritual prayer is time-bound.

Jay: Ritual prayer seems to emerge from a belief structure—a religion. We tend to believe that our religion strengthens our prayers. Catholicism has its Hail Marys and rosaries, which are absent in Protestant prayer rituals. Jesus was talking about prayer that is universal, that goes beyond belief systems; but it is very difficult for us to step outside our religions.

Chris: Prayer is either ritualistic, based on religion, and spoken at specific times; or is bounded not by time or tradition but by a personal relationship with God. Is there—can there be—a balance between the two?

David: We often talk about the Bible as a book of questions, not of answers. Aishwarya’s comment about Hindu prayer practice, which (in her) prompted questions rather than provided answers, suggests that this may be characteristic of the Scriptures of all religions, not just of Christian Scripture. The questions arose out of her (Hindu) Scripturally-ordained practice, but the answers came from inside her. To me, this suggests that religions do not need to abandon their Scriptures but they do need to allow their Scriptures to be treated as books of questions, not as answers. In my reading, it appears to me that some religions and sects actively discourage and even prohibit any suggestion that their Scripture is anything but The Answer to all questions.

Kiran: I have prayed personal prayers both as a Christian and as a Hindu, and can attest that there is no difference. There is the same feeling of the existence and nearness of a higher power. Personal prayer transcends religion.

John: To get to the top of a mountain, I had to pass a cave where a bear lived. I prayed for safe passage, and continued up the mountain. Higher up, I reached a “No Trespassing” sign. I ignored it and went to the top of the hill. Coming down by a different trail, I discovered that the area was a wildlife sanctuary, and was able to observe deer and other beautiful animals. It was hard getting to the top of the hill—there were obstacles in the way—but the effort was rewarded, and the prayer helped.

Donald: Public prayer seems to be patterned, ritualistic. Personal prayer is conversational dialog with a higher power. Can someone lacking in personal prayer be sincere in corporate prayer?

Jay: The key question still centers on the purpose of prayer. Religion says it is (1) to petition God for things we need and (2) to build a relationship with God. The latter seems to be the most commonly perceived purpose. But while we may know what we want out of that relationship, do we ever stop to consider what God might want out of it? God wants us to come to him as a child, not as an adult; but we tend to want an adult relationship with Him.

Robin: We are fooling ourselves.

Michael: We don’t usually interpret the Lord’s Prayer as a call to action, but it seems to me it is: “Forgive us as we forgive others” calls upon us to take action to forgive others. If we make all of the requests in the Lord’s Prayer reciprocal (“Give us our daily bread as we give others their daily bread”, “Let Thy will be done as we help it be done”, etc.) then the whole prayer springs to life. Most interesting of all, “Let Thy kingdom come” depends upon our working to make the kingdom come right now, right here. As Jesus said: His kingdom is at hand.

David: It seems hard on a child to expect it to develop a relationship with a seemingly unresponsive father. In the Old Testament, God talks to everybody. But in the New Testament, the Father does not even talk to his own Son, at least not in my limited reading of Scripture.

Owen: The men who lowered the paralyzed man through the roof so Jesus could heal him were, by their action, praying for their friend.

Donald: It is reassuring to be prayed for, to be thought about.

Kiran: My 3 year old niece pesters her Mom in order to test the limits—to find out her Mom’s will so that she can align with it.

John: We need to be wary of the limits, of the extremes. Entering the temple of another religion to pray is one thing, but what if it is a temple that worships the devil? Stalin went to the extreme of killing religious people en masse because he found the theory of evolution more believable than Creationism.

Chris: In building a relationship with a child, the first thing we do is see to its needs. A newborn does not engage its parents in conversation. It takes; the parent gives. That is how the child–parent relationship is built.

Jay: Is it given what it wants, or what it needs? The Lord’s Prayer meets our needs, not our wants.

David: A newborn’s wants are its needs. Wants arise only as the child acquires knowledge.

Mikiko: We call Him the Heavenly Father. When Jesus was baptized in 29CE at the River Jordan,…

…a voice out of the heavens said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” (Matthew 3:17)

Spoken by Jehovah Himself, those tender words tell us much about what kind of a Father He is.

* * *

Don: I’ve been thinking all week about this statement from Jesus:

“And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.” (Matthew 21:22)

Would that include a prayer for God to change His mind about something? James said that the effective prayer of the righteous man can work wonders:

Is anyone among you suffering? Then he must pray. Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises. Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. Then he prayed again, and the sky poured rain and the earth produced its fruit.

My brethren, if any among you strays from the truth and one turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. (James 5:13-20)

Effective prayer seems to be conditional upon belief, faith, and righteousness. If that is so, then ineffective prayer—prayer that does not achieve the expected result—can be assumed to lack a good-enough basis in one or more of those conditional attributes.

There are other questions, too, such as: If we pray for someone else, whose faith matters? The person doing the praying, or the person prayed for? Is it both? Does a lack of faith in one cancel out the faith in the other? Is there some psychological value in believing we can influence God through “effective” prayer, even though we can’t? Do we do God and ourselves a disservice by claiming that we can? Or is the process of prayer more important than its outcome? Do we overemphasize the outcome at the expense of the process, which is where the real value of prayer may lie?

King David ordered the murder of the husband of a woman whom he (David) had made pregnant. When challenged by Nathan, a messenger sent by God, Samuel said:

“I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has taken away your sin; you shall not die. However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die.” So Nathan went to his house.

Then the Lord struck the child that Uriah’s widow bore to David, so that he was very sick. David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground. The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them. Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they said, “Behold, while the child was still alive, we spoke to him and he did not listen to our voice. How then can we tell him that the child is dead, since he might do himself harm!” But when David saw that his servants were whispering together, David perceived that the child was dead; so David said to his servants, “Is the child dead?” And they said, “He is dead.” So David arose from the ground, washed, anointed himself, and changed his clothes; and he came into the house of the Lord and worshiped. Then he came to his own house, and when he requested, they set food before him and he ate.

Then his servants said to him, “What is this thing that you have done? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept; but when the child died, you arose and ate food.” He said, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, ‘Who knows, the Lord may be gracious to me, that the child may live.’ But now he has died; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.”
(2 Samuel 12:13-22)

Evidently, David thought there was a chance God might be persuaded to change His mind, hence his elaborate display of contrition. Yet when God ignored him, he simply shrugged. It was worth a try. His servants were shocked.

Several stories in Scripture explicitly say that God can be persuaded to change his mind. Abraham persuaded God to reduce the number of righteous Gomorrans it would take to convince Him to stay the destruction of Gomorrah (Genesis 18). Moses persuaded God to be more God-like—to think of the bad publicity—and forbear from destroying the Israelites, after He caught them worshiping a golden calf:

Then the Lord spoke to Moses, “Go down at once, for your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made for themselves a molten calf, and have worshiped it and have sacrificed to it and said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!’” The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people. Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation.”

Then Moses entreated the Lord his God, and said, “O Lord, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians speak, saying, ‘With evil intent He brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth’? Turn from Your burning anger and change Your mind about doing harm to Your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants to whom You swore by Yourself, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens, and all this land of which I have spoken I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’” So the Lord changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people. (Exodus 32:7-14).

Moses had to bail out the Israelites again after they threatened mutiny:

The Lord said to Moses, “How long will this people spurn Me? And how long will they not believe in Me, despite all the signs which I have performed in their midst? I will smite them with pestilence and dispossess them, and I will make you into a nation greater and mightier than they.” … [Later, after Moses pleaded with Him:] So the Lord said, “I have pardoned them according to your word; but indeed, as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. Surely all the men who have seen My glory and My signs which I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have put Me to the test these ten times and have not listened to My voice, shall by no means see the land which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who spurned Me see it. (Numbers 14:11-12; 20-23)

God changed his mind about killing Ahab, Hezekiah, and (after they mended their ways) the Ninevites—annoying Jonah no end.

Yet God is quoted in Scripture as saying that He does not change:

“For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed. (Malachi 3:6)

This leaves us with a dilemma: If God’s mind cannot be changed, then what is the point of prayer? If it can be changed, then what is the point of God? If it cannot be changed, then we must perhaps conclude that any point to prayer lies in the process, not in the outcome. The three Hebrew worthies Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, seem to have subscribed to this view when they told King Nebuchadnezzar, as he challenged their God to save them from his fiery furnace:

“… we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (Daniel 3:16-17)

Their prayer did not look for an outcome. The Lord’s Prayer, however, does specify outcomes: The coming of God’s kingdom; The doing of His will; Our daily bread (a basic sustenance that God has already assured to the righteous, according to Isaiah); Forgiveness of our debts to others; Protection from temptation; and Deliverance from evil. Since God has already assured us of all these outcomes, then whatever we ask of him that is righteous—as all of these outcomes are—will indeed be granted.

Robin: I wonder if the Scriptural statements that God does not change refers to His character rather than His mind?

David: The angry, vengeful God who allowed one man to use God’s power to cause a three-year drought (causing, presumably, millions of innocent people to suffer and many to die, no doubt with prayers for rain on their lips) just does not square with the loving God of Jesus. With regards to the Lord’s Prayer, the request for daily bread is confusing if it indeed refers to daily physical sustenance.

Aishwarya: The outcome of prayer and whether prayer aligns with the will of God seems situational. Humans can nothing about a drought, therefore it is not unreasonable to pray to God for relief. But to pray for an A in an exam for which one has not studied is unreasonable.

Donald: If prayer is about establishing a relationship with God, as we have discussed in previous weeks, then dialog would seem to be called for. But it would be a one-sided conversation consisting mainly of requests from us and no direct response from God. This would not seem conducive to a closer understanding of God and a closer relationship with Him. But then, can we expect His responses when we pray the Lord’s Prayer?

Don: The request in the Lord’s Prayer that “Thy kingdom come” seems to me to ask that the kingdom principles of going to the back of the line, loving one’s enemies, turning the other cheek, and so on as espoused by Jesus, will become operative in one’s life. It is a radical prayer to take the way of the cross, not a frivolous appeal for an A in an exam or a win in the lottery. It is an unselfish prayer focused on giving rather than receiving.

Mikiko: In my understanding of Matthew 6:10, God’s kingdom is what comes after Armageddon—the replacement of human government by God’s governance and the removal of Satan and his angels from heaven (Revelation 12:9-10).

Anonymous: Perhaps God doesn’t answer prayers because…

If I regard wickedness in my heart, the Lord will not hear;… (Psalm 66:18)

Michael: Maybe “wickedness” in this context can be defined as asking for the wrong things.

Kiran: Some translations use “sin” instead of “wickedness”.

Anonymous: It is not a sin to pray for a new car.

David: I beg to disagree. Anything requested for oneself is a selfish request.

Anonymous: What if you need the car?

David: Suffer! This the teaching of Jesus.

Kiran: When we ask for something, God already knows. His sunlight and his rain fall upon everybody, good and bad. By nature, God is benevolent towards all His children, whether they pray or not. So sometimes I wonder, why pray? For me, prayer is comforting and helps reduce stress. Just talking about a problem (through prayer) helps reduce it.

Jay: I have no interest in changing the mind of a God who is all-knowing and who loves me. Whatever He does is to my benefit. The true purpose of prayer, it seems to me, is to help build a relationship with God, not to change His mind about anything. But building a relationship with God is not like building and sustaining a relationship with another human being, which usually involves a quid pro quo—“I’ll do this for you if you do that for me”—that grows as the relationship grows. This is not what happens with God. All that is needed to establish and sustain that relationship is to align our will with God’s. That is why the Lord’s Prayer has “Thy will be done” up front, before we get into daily bread, forgiveness, and so on. So unlike a prayer involving a quid pro quo with God, a prayer for the alignment of our will with His will always be answered.

Michael: Perhaps it’s not good to go all the way, because it smacks of predestination. It is unsettling. Something seems not fitting.

Jay: We fear that God is not a God of pure love if He allows bad things to happen. It causes dissonance. But we have to remember that God’s ways are not our ways, so second-guessing His methods and motives is futile.

Michael: As a Catholic boy I was always told that sin distances us from God. Now, it seems to me that the knowledge of my sin is what draws me closer to God. I do not mean we should sin in order to be close to God.

David: That was the case with the Prodigal Son: The more he sinned, the closer he got to his father! Dissonance is the crux of the issue. I think it stems from our conflation of the spiritual and the physical. To me, the Lord’s Prayer is a spiritual prayer. Our daily spiritual bread does not take the form of a sliced Wonderloaf. It is, rather, the nourishing recognition that God exists and is Love. To pray for things in this life—a lottery win, a cure for a loved one’s cancer—is futile. To pray for things in the next life, when God’s will alone will be done, in his kingdom, with perpetual daily nourishment for the soul is the prayer that is called for, it seems to me. We have a foot in the spiritual world by virtue of God’s spirit within us, and we have both an ability and a duty to nurture a relationship with that spirit through spiritual prayer.

Robin: Jesus told the disciples that He is the “bread of life”. I think that must mean the bread of spiritual life.

Don: Paul said:

The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 5:20-21)

So indeed sin does seem to bring us closer to God.

Anonymous: Awareness of one’s sin might bring one closer to God, but to continue to commit sin one is aware of cannot be good for the relationship.

Michael: In Catholic church I was taught that I could overcome my sinful nature through my own efforts, but it didn’t seem to work! I have to conclude that the Church was wrong.

Robin: Only God can give spiritual blessings, and only God can forgive spiritual sin.

Kiran: In prayer, we confront our true selves and evaluate our behavior as revealed in that light. It is not a matter of changing God’s mind: It is a matter of changing our own minds. Prayers helps us understand who we really are and what we really want.

Aishwarya: Or you can pray to blame God if something does not work out the way you want. In either case, the prayer brings you closer to God.

Mikiko: God knows what you want before you pray:

…your Father knows what you need before you ask Him (Matthew 6:8)

But we still must ask:

Help me, O Lord my God;
Save me according to Your lovingkindness. (Psalms 109:26)

For I am in distress; answer me quickly.
Oh draw near to my soul and redeem it;… (Psalms 69:17-18)

Chris: It’s clear that we have been given choice, so there is no question of predestination. The central choice is between God’s will and our own wills.

Enoch lived 365 years before he was suddenly taken by God. He:

“walked with God: and he was no more; for God took him” (Genesis 5:21–24)

Enoch must have been aligned with God, having walked and talked with Him for so long. That “talk” is what we would call prayer. Old family friends whose young child was badly hurt in an auto accident prayed that he would not die, and he did not until the age of 25. But his life in the interim was a life of suffering, and his parents were in anguish and regret over their prayer.

Anonymous: It shows that indeed we do not know what to pray for, or how to pray, as Paul wrote.

Donald: It seems sufficient to pray for the purpose of acknowledging God’s existence and role as our savior. All requests of God seem to go too far.

David: I don’t think we need to acknowledge God through prayer. Our spiritual groaning in the depth of our sufferings is acknowledgment enough. True prayer—which we might not even recognize as prayer at the time—is always accompanied by suffering, I believe. The Prodigal Son grew closer to his father through sin, but there was a price to be paid: Suffering. Grace is God’s gift to the sufferer. Jesus seemed reluctant to teach prayer, perhaps because he knew we don’t really need it.

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