Posted in reply to the post by NathanSW:
Hello Edward,
I have to refute some of your logic here, or at least offer an alternative perspective:
First, a caveat -- I am not a Christian, so I cannot speak for them or their way of thinking. But let's look at the logic that you propose -- That if God knows everything that is going to happen then it is already all planned out, and prayers shouldn't make a difference. It's already baked into the cake, as it were, so appealing to the Almighty doesn't make any sense. But even assuming that omniscience and fate are a part of the equation, by that logic, why is anything happening at all? If God already knows how it will all end up, why bother to let it play out? Why not just cut to the chase, already?!
I would posit that it is because there is value in process. People often watch movies they've seen before, but knowing the outcome doesn't mean that there is nothing to be gotten out of going through the process of watching it all the way through. Likewise, I would posit that there is value in engaging the process, and perhaps prayer is an important part of the process. For instance, even in a movie you can't get to the end without first having a beginning and a middle. Even if God knows what the outcome will be, perhaps prayer is part of how that outcome is generated.
Second, I think your sense of what prayer "should do" is overly simplistic. Yours is a very mechanical interpretation of prayer, as if prayer should work the same way chemotherapy does. But does anything work the way chemotherapy does, besides chemotherapy? Not exactly -- that's why we use chemotherapy in situations where its use is indicated, as opposed to surgery, or a quick dunk in the ocean. I have some theories but do not pretend to understand exactly how prayer works (if it does -- I am debating logic, not making a positive affirmation of prayer's effectiveness), but if you think about it as being akin to asking a friend for a favor, you would not expect it to work every time. You can ask a friend for a favor, and s/he may say, "Yes," but it is equally possible that s/he will say "No." If the answer is "No," that doesn't mean that you shouldn't have asked or that asking is never effective, it just means that in this case, the answer is no.
There is also a third option -- "I'll see what I can do." So in the case of someone with pancreatic cancer, let's say prayer was used and God decided to "see what I can do" -- that might mean killing the cancer cells outright, or it might mean setting circumstances in motion to get that person to a better doctor, or to getting away from the carcinogenic causes of their cancer, or some other option that none of us, not knowing the Big Picture, could even think of. Or it might mean that the best that can be done is to help the person come to terms with the inevitability of their death so that their final moments on Earth are as peaceful as possible.
Third, I think a lot of people who pray also have an overly simplistic understanding of how it works. Many people pray to ask God to give them what they want, but even if that happens, God will not change the nature of what is being asked for. So for example, if someone asks to meet their "soul mate," God might grant that wish, but what a soul mate actually is and what the person imagines it to be are often two very different things, and rather than the "happily ever after" fairy tale that they have in their minds, it turns into a dramatic nightmare -- because a soul mate is someone who reflects your own stuff back to you far better than anyone else. So the most effective prayers are not requests for trinkets and favors, but for guidance, strength, and wisdom (a distinction that is, in fact, made in the Biblical story of King Solomon).
What say you?
Kind Regards,
Nathan