Dirty Secrets of Prayer
God’s gaslighting
It’s all your fault!
And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” — Matthew 21:21–22
It’s because you have no faith! — says the pastor whose prayers also go unanswered.
It’s because you’re praying for something that’s outside of God’s will! — Says the Bible teacher who also wishes that God’s will would be a little more kind and palatable.
It’s because God’s answer can also be no. Because what you want is not always what’s good for you! — says the Sunday school teacher who also says no to any further questions.
It’s because God is not a wishing well! — says the frustrated theologian whom nobody seems to listen to.
What all these disparate excuses have in common is that they all place the blame on you. Jesus does not keep his promise in that verse because you are a faithless, immature child who’s trying to ruin God’s grand plan and who thinks he’s just there to be your magic genie!
The real guilty party
Christianity teaches that everything is our fault. God is blameless. Though we didn’t ask to be created, it’s our fault that God created us with this fallen nature. It’s our fault that we’ve made such a mess of creation by behaving according to our flawed design. And it’s our fault that Jesus does not give us what we pray for for all the reasons given above.
It’s only when the scales of guilt fall from our eyes that the real reason shows itself — the dirty little secret behind the whole prayer debacle. First of all, whose idea was it? Did we ask Jesus to be our wishing well or genie in the bottle? Nowhere in the scriptures will we find such a request.
So why did Jesus say it? And whose fault is it that he did?
Obvious truths
Supposing he did say it, why can’t believers get what they pray for? Why can’t God heal Johnny after his car accident? Why can’t he make Mary’s boyfriend Tom propose to her?
Atheists will answer that it’s because God does not exist. Others may answer that it’s because God does exist, but does not care about us or intervene in our affairs. But what if God does exist and did create the world? Would this be the same god who would make such a ridiculous promise?
For to create a world, especially one designed for all of life to evolve and recycle itself on its planet, may require a degree of planning and foresight. Any intelligent consciousness that created a planet and life upon it would understand the consequences of giving humans — even just a few faithful followers — everything they asked for.
Let’s imagine the kind of world Jesus’s promise would lead to.
- Nobody would ever die. If God answered the prayers of faithful Christians and saved every Johnny who was ever at death’s door, Christians would never die. They would only need one other faithful Christian to pray for their safety, recovery, or survival. Non-believers would notice, everyone on the planet would convert to Christianity, and the whole human race would become immortal. Then with everybody having babies and nobody dying, the planet would be overrun with us.
- People would be split in half. What if Mary wasn’t the only one who wanted to marry her boyfriend? What if another Christian woman, just as full of faith as Mary, also prayed that Tom would marry her? Or what if Mary’s mother was opposed to the marriage and prayed that Tom would not marry Mary?
- Reality would be rent asunder. Every sports match would have faithful Christian fans for both teams praying that their team would win. Every day would pit farmers praying for rain against brides with outdoor wedding plans praying for sun. Every company would pray for itself to snatch market share from its equally faithful competitors. Every book or movie would have to become a blockbuster, forcing everybody to spend all their time reading and watching just to fulfill the writers’ faithful prayers. Both candidates would win every election. And society would break down because everybody would be rich and nobody would have to work.
Gaslighting
There are plenty of scenarios to explain how such lunacy made its way into what is billed as the instruction book for mankind. There’s the perennial mistranslation excuse, the not-to-be-interpreted-literally excuse, the but you’re only supposed to pray for more faith excuse, and the Jesus never said it — it was added by scribes and dishonest clerics excuse.
Theologians may prefer to consider that maybe Jesus actually said it, but wasn’t supposed to and God was not pleased. Maybe this is why God forsook Jesus on the cross? Or maybe God approved of Jesus saying it because it would serve as a stick to beat believers over the head with for not having enough faith?
None of these excuses matter. Whether God exists or not and whether Jesus really said it or not don’t change the obvious reason that we rarely get what we pray for. The reason is simply that this power would destroy our plane of existence, rent the universe asunder, forcing us to make a desperate call to Dr. Who to come back and delete it from history.
What matters is that, despite what our religious leaders tell us, it’s not our fault. It also matters that our theologians and religious leaders neglect to mention the obvious. They instead shift the blame onto us.
We are always falling short, never doing enough to repay our free gift of salvation. We aren’t tithing enough, praying enough, trusting God enough, working for the church enough, witnessing enough, or going on enough missions to earn our keep in the Kingdom. Our unanswered prayers are just one more testament to that.
We are guilty, guilty, guilty.
Until one day we just open our eyes and our brains and think about it.
