More on Prayer and a Noninterventionst God
DaNutz! called me out in the comments section about a non-interventionist God. You know, I don't have a handle on this. I'm not sure I go as far as Borg and Crossan, but I've been moving away from an interventionist perspective, in large part because of the evidence.
I do pray that God will intercede. I pray for healing and for wholeness and I believe that God hears and answers those prayers. I rejoice when things go as I'd like, but .... Then there are the prayers of those whose prayers never get answered, or seem not to be answered. Is God deaf? Or should I look elsewhere for answers.
Despite my growing discomfort, I do believe that God is active in our lives. But you know part of our problem is that we think we're ahead of God. Maybe prayer is listening for God's gracious beckon to follow him and be a co-creator of reality.
Jurgen Moltmann speaks of prayer opening us up to the reality of God s o that we can break out of the "hall of mirrors of our own wishes and illusions in which we are imprisoned. This means we wake up out of the petrifications and numbness of our feelings." Instead of being an opium it is the "beginning of a cure for the numbing addictions of the secular world. " Indeed, he says that "the person who prays, lives more attentively." (Jurgen Moltmann, Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, Passion for God, Fortress, 2003, p. 62).
Yes, I need to do more thinking about prayer!
I do pray that God will intercede. I pray for healing and for wholeness and I believe that God hears and answers those prayers. I rejoice when things go as I'd like, but .... Then there are the prayers of those whose prayers never get answered, or seem not to be answered. Is God deaf? Or should I look elsewhere for answers.
Despite my growing discomfort, I do believe that God is active in our lives. But you know part of our problem is that we think we're ahead of God. Maybe prayer is listening for God's gracious beckon to follow him and be a co-creator of reality.
Jurgen Moltmann speaks of prayer opening us up to the reality of God s o that we can break out of the "hall of mirrors of our own wishes and illusions in which we are imprisoned. This means we wake up out of the petrifications and numbness of our feelings." Instead of being an opium it is the "beginning of a cure for the numbing addictions of the secular world. " Indeed, he says that "the person who prays, lives more attentively." (Jurgen Moltmann, Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, Passion for God, Fortress, 2003, p. 62).
Yes, I need to do more thinking about prayer!
Comments
Oh well, I'm curious, and probably a fool. I do fear that Christian obsession with having prayers answered by God creates an unhealthy reluctance to act on our own. I've seen people completely unable to act because they were "waiting for God to show them the way". They usually get stuck or finally figure out how to see a sign in their scrambled eggs then get on with whatever it was they wanted in the first place. But that is just my opinion.
I usually use prayer to line up my priorities the best I can with what I think is God's then I figure whatever happens next probably happened because I made it happen that way. That probably explains all the self-help new-age stuff that seems to help people too.
Thanks for the follow-up post!
I liked the way Rabbi Kushner put it in one of his books about good things happening to bad people--prayer is simply being in God's presence. It isn't asking for "him" to change reality to our benefit.