UNANSWERED PRAYER

Ask and it will be given to you.

                                                                                              Matthew 7:7

Scenario One.  Indulgent parent says to child: you can have anything you want.  Child replies: “Right then, I’ll have ten ice creams and ten giant chocolate bars.  And I want ‘em now!”  In the process of saying no, parent points out damage to teeth, digestion, being sick etc.  Child – especially if previously sick from previous overindulgence – might well see the truth of this, but would be justified in querying why such an open-ended offer should have been made in the first place.   

Scenario 2.   The Christian farmer who has prayed for rain might welcome the storm that occurs on Saturday.  But it might be bad news for the long-planned church fete.

Scenario Three.  Six people pray to be given the job they have seen advertised.  Five of them – or perhaps all six – will have their wish frustrated.

Scenario Four: Dawkins style.   Sick people in a hospital ward.  See if prayer works.  Pray for half of them, and see if the half prayed for get better.

It will be seen, I hope, where this argument is headed.  Unless we are to make God into the Genie of the Lamp, and know in advance what the correct answer ought to be, how can we even be sure whether our prayer has been answered or not?  In the case of Scenario Three, the immediate job offer may have failed because there is another one, in the very near future, to which I am much better suited; and I felt let down at the time only because I did not have the big picture. 

 

There are lots of seemingly-irresponsible promises in The New Testament.  (Promises relating to this life, I mean: promises about the next are a matter of faith).  If James 1:6 – “But he must ask in faith, without a doubt in his mind; for the doubter is like a heaving sea...” - is bad enough, then Matthew as a whole is far worse.  "Who among you will offer his son a stone when he asks for bread?" (7:9). Simple. God will. Or so it must sometimes seem to suffering humanity in times of plague or famine. God feeds the birds of the air (Matthew 6:26). That may be true enough as a generality; yet many of us will have seen images of birds that have died en masse of starvation through changes in environment that God has permitted, even if He has not initiated.  And what about those seabirds caught by an oil slick? 

"If two of you agree on earth about any request you have to make, that request will be granted by my heavenly father." (Matthew 18:19). A truly breathtaking promise. And demonstrably not true.  In the First World War, the whole Church on both sides of the conflict prayed for peace, but the fighting continued.  You could say the end of the War was caused by prayer, rather than by the exhaustion of the combatants, or the intervention of the Americans – or that these were the result of prayer – but you’d have a hard time proving it.

And to give the most altruistic of examples, Christians prayed for the Jews once they realised what was happening in the concentration camps.  But the deaths continued. It would be the coldest of cold comfort to say that only six million died, when it could have been thirteen million

“Say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done.”   (Matthew 21:22) What about the resultant tsunami, never mind the ruin to an established landscape?  It sounds like a nightmare from the wildest and most irresponsible reaches of fairy tale. 

There is a saying about Mohammed and a mountain that has no record in Islamic writings.  It can, in fact, be traced to Francis Bacon.   The story is that when Mohammed told believers he could move a mountain, and was then unable to do so, he explained himself by saying that Allah had been merciful: had the mountain really moved, the observers would have been crushed. 

This presumably, was intended as a piece of anti-Islamic propaganda.  For me, insofar as it does anything at all, it redounds to the credit of Mohammed.  If faith will move mountains, then Richard Dawkins is in the right, and faith is something we need as little of as possible. 

Fortunately, most of us are not concerned with moving mountains.  Faced with one, road builders tunnel through it, or curve round it.

The rest of the verse – “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” – is even more notorious: as witnessed by the disgruntled testimony of former believers who had tried that promise and found it did not come true. 

Herod put himself in an awkward position by making a foolish, over-expansive promise.  How would God deal with a request, made in full faith, for the head of John the Baptist, or some equivalent troublemaker?   Or for a night with Angelina Jolie in her prime?

It could be argued that neither of these requests could be made in Christ’s name, since Christ would not have sanctioned murder or adultery.

But Christ healed those who were afflicted with disease, and if I pray now to be healed in the way that they were then, then  that, surely, is in Christ’s name; and to deny me would be to show intolerable favouritism to those who happened to be alive when He was on Earth? 

In the Gospels generally, but with Matthew in particular, faith seems to be the key ingredient in the formula. Thus the Centurion at Capernaum - "Because of your faith, so let it be” (8:13); thus the haemorrhaging woman - "Your faith has cured you” (9:22); thus the two blind men - "As you have believed, so let it be" (9:30). And conversely, Christ's power is hampered by a lack of faith. “He could not work many miracles such was their want of faith.”  Peter’s lack of faith means that he sinks in the water, and his deficiency is reflected in his generation as a whole. Have faith, will happen.

The most poignant depiction I know of the misery arising from taking this statement at face value is in Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage. Orphaned schoolboy Philip Carey has a club foot, and hears of the Matthew text through his clergyman uncle. He prays for healing through the night; but, in the morning, his foot is the same as it was. He asks his uncle – hardly the best of spiritual advisers: a clergyman in the sense that it is what he does rather than what he believes, and chock full of snobbery – for advice, and is told that he did not pray with enough faith. Philip is thus given the double whammy of not having his prayer answered and of feeling guilty for his own failure. Unsurprisingly, he later becomes a religious sceptic.

“The text which spoke of the moving of mountains was one of those that said one thing and meant another.”

Of Human Bondage: Ch4.

 

However little consolation that thought may have provided to Philip Carey, it is, in fact, the key to any answer that might reasonably be given.  The Bible does not, in fact, mean what it says, or what it sometimes appears to say.  We can see the truth of this within its own pages. 

            That Matthew 21:22 cannot mean what it appears to mean is apparent from Christ’s prayer to have the cup pass from him.  Otherwise, the prayer would have been granted, and there would have been no crucifixion.  But, “Not my will but thine be done,” is something that anyone – even a sceptic who does not believe in the efficacy of prayer – can relate to.  Leave the decision-making to the one who has the overview. 

The case of St Paul is similar.  Paul, clearly, cannot be accused of a lack of faith.  Yet at the end of his letter to the Colossians, he writes “Remember my chains.”  Why not simply invoke the 21:22 promise, and have the chains drop from him?

In 2 Corinthians, Paul speaks of the thorn in his flesh, his three prayers for its removal, and the reply: “My grace is sufficient for you.”  It is like the situation in Gethsemane.  An answer to prayer was given, but on God’s terms, not Paul’s; and not in the way that Paul, at the time, would have wished.    

 That seems to be the pattern in The Bible.  We see it in the story of David and Goliath.   Most of us have encountered a bully in one form or another.  The David story is that you will be strengthened to fight the bully.  Most of us would probably far rather that the bully went away of his/her own accord, without any action from us. 

In Animal Farm, Benjamin the donkey finds scant consolation in the fact that he has a tail to keep away the flies.  He’d rather not have the flies in the first place. 

But this side of the Second Coming, the flies are a part of our human condition in this world.  Nor should this come as a surprise to us, given who was described as The Prince of this World.  And known also as ‘The lord of the Flies’. 

 

We should be accustomed, from literature – never mind everyday speech – to the realisation that things need not mean what they appear to mean on the surface.   “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”  is neither true nor universally acknowledged – especially by rich young men –  but is a problem only if we take the words as Jane Austen’s real opinion and completely fail to understand her irony.  The horror of a moving mountain fades away if we see it as a piece of Eastern hyperbole, and realise that Christ might have had a sense of humour. 

“Take no thought for the morrow,” does not mean we should not consider a life insurance policy for the sake of our dependents.  Not to do so would clash with Paul’s injunction to take account of widows and orphans.  If you take it as meaning that we should not think so much about this life that we forget about the next one, then Christ’s statement makes a lot of sense as a condemnation of uncritical materialism.  One of the Sikh gurus said as much to a rich man boasting about his possessions: try taking even this iron nail with you into the hereafter.   

            In considering The Bible, the audience to whom particular statements are addressed seems to be absolutely key.  Some will remember the joke about picking texts at random.  Open one page and you might find, ‘Judas went and hanged himself’.  Open another and you might see, ‘”Go thou, and do likewise”.’ 

When it comes to quoting Biblical statements out of context, sceptics are even worse than worse than overenthusiastic believers.  I once heard some humanist in a TV discussion programme ridiculing the Bible because it tells us to wear blue robes with pomegranates around the hem.  Clearly, some one had randomly opened The Old Testament at Exodus. 

            As it happens, the Bible tells ‘us’ to do nothing of the kind.  That was the attire for a specific group – the priests – under the Old Covenant, and long since superseded.  That is the problem with treating The Bible as if the whole thing is still equally relevant.  Or irrelevant.  But the Bible is probably best viewed as akin to a detective story.  A murder mystery, and the consequences arising from that murder, might - in fact - not be far short of the truth.  However, to return to the analogy, progress in solving the mystery means that earlier theories become out of date; although you still need them in order to understand what follows. 

            Bertrand Russell says somewhere – citing their failure to follow their own precepts – that the Bible tells Christians to give everything to the poor, which is very good advice, only they don’t did it.

            But was this ever addressed to Christians as a whole?  This was advice given by Christ to one particular rich young man in response to one particular spiritual need.  Nowhere is it recorded that Christ said anything of the kind to the wealthy women whose generosity enabled him to undertake his ministry: had they done so, they couldn’t have continued to support him.  Paul says that anyone who wilfully refuses to work for a living shall not eat.  Paul doesn’t tell Priscilla and Aquila that they should scrap their leather-working business and bankrupt themselves. To take away the sources of wealth creation is simply a recipe for universal poverty.  Contemporary  Zimbabwe is a sad illustration of just such an event..

            Disappointing though such a conclusion us is, that promise of Matthew 21:22 was probably made to one particular group of disciples at one particular moment in time, rather then to all believers indiscriminately.  And much was demanded of those to whom much was given.  To give another analogy from literature, the “Will you marry me?” of the romantic novel is a proposal made to the heroine, not to the reader; although general observations made about marriage might be more widely applicable. 

            Some say that miracles ended with the apostles, others that they continue  still.  Whatever we may make of the cures wrought by Catholic saints or Protestant faith healers, (and there seems convincing evidence that both can occur; although some are fraudulent) we would all agree that such healings are a rarity rather than the norm.  For most of us, healing depends on the painstaking research and long training of the medical profession.  Believers may see in the abilities and devotion of hospital staff certain gifts of the Spirit, and may thank God for the genius of a Pasteur or a Jenner or a Lister in alleviating suffering.  On this view, Christ’s healings during his lifetime were a sign to his followers that illness was an evil to be resisted; not a sort of blessing, in a pantheistic acceptance that everything is God.   (And a sign to those of us who follow of what lies in store in the New Creation.)

 

The Bible is a dangerous book, and to read the whole thing in a sprit of strict literalism, with no regard to translation, genre, or original audience is to invite disillusionment; although I do not know the statistics for those who have survived or succumbed to venom or cyanide from a literal reading of the bit about poison and serpents in Mark 16:18.  Saint Paul is recorded as having survived a snake bite; but, again, that was in the Apostolic Era. 

It would be nice if we could simply sit down, pick the thing up, and have an infallible interpretation. That this is not his case is seen in the number of different churches, and the nineteen  or whatever different ways of reading Genesis 3. 

       I would not wish for a moment to suggest that there must always be an intermediary text between The Bible and the reader; or that there cannot be direct and shattering encounter through the words of the Bible between the searching soul and God.  

But for most of us, as with our medical needs, we need to rely, most of the time, on the experts: on the painstaking research and careful reading of Biblical scholars to counteract both the confusions wrought by those false teachers of whom both Christ and Paul warned us to be on our guard, and the limitations of our own understanding.   

And while nothing should be a substitute for a direct encounter with the text, most readers will welcome the opinion of another reader, especially in matters of clarification: what belongs to which genre, what to take metaphorically, and what to treat literally.   For if we need not take the moving mountain at face value, it does not follow that the language about the Resurrection should be treated in the same vein...

A reliable commentary for Protestants (or the Magisterium for Catholics) is a good safeguard against wild interpretations. And against disappointment.