This is part two of the Q&A series based on my interview with Thomas Prosser. Read part one here: Fear of Hell.
Part Two: Prayer and an Omniscient God
What was your experience with the Christian belief that God knows what you think?
When I was a Christian and I had a true belief in the bible, it wasn't an issue. I accepted it as one of god's attributes. It was more of an issue when I doubted. During those times when my "belief" was just my betting on god (à la Pascal), I'd think, "God would know my belief isn't genuine if he knows my thoughts! Who was I fooling?" I knew I couldn’t fool god.
To me the concept of belief is simple: to believe something means you think it is true. If you say you believe in god, that means you believe "god exists" is a true statement. I don’t think everyone has that same understanding of what it means to believe. Many people, I think, see belief as some emotional connection or feeling, or a point of commonality in a group or community. For many, "belief" is just an acceptance of whatever makes them feel good. Little regard is given to truth. I’ve talked to people about it, and few of them think of belief in terms of truth and falsehood. When I thought about god knowing my thoughts, I realized I couldn't take Pascal's Wager. If god exists and is all-knowing, he would know me and would know that my belief wasn’t the real deal.
How did you respond to unanswered prayers?
There were several occasions when I prayed, and my prayers weren't answered. It got to a point where I honestly was convinced the opposite would happen if I prayed for something - even for something as small as finding my car keys if I’d lost them. It sounds ridiculous, but then again, religion cultivates a superstitious mindset, so I'm not surprised my thoughts went in that direction.
When my friend Steve died, everyone in his church did everything that they could to pray for Steve and to ask god for him to recover. "Pray for Steve" bracelets were made. He was even anointed with oil and prayed over by church elders. Steve had a very strong faith in god, and inspired many to follow Jesus. He still died, leaving behind his wife and a daughter too young to understand why her daddy wasn't around any more. Such unanswered prayers bothered me.
I studied the Bible and what it says about prayer, and it didn’t match up to what preachers said. Preachers say that prayer is for the benefit of the pray-ers, to help us focus on god and adjust our attitudes. Sounds great, but when I looked at the Bible, well... The Bible doesn't say anything like that about prayer. Why do so many preachers say it then? I said it myself when I was a preacher! Maybe it's because prayer just doesn't work, so an alternate explanation is needed to "clarify" (or replace) what's found in the Bible.
What the Bible says about prayer is totally different from what happens in real life. This bothered me greatly. I thought either I didn't understand prayer or it just doesn't work. The more I studied the Bible and compared it to reality, the more I realized that biblical prayer is a flawed concept. Every answered prayer that is credited to god is based on questionable circumstantial evidence. For every "answered" prayer there are hundreds that aren’t. I couldn’t accept the rationalizations that people gave for unanswered prayer. The concept just didn’t make sense, it was pointless to me.
Did you blame yourself when your prayers weren’t answered?
Sure. There were plenty of times when I thought I didn’t pray enough or I didn’t pray correctly, or that I wasn’t sincere enough. I heard speakers during chapel time in Bible College talk about the "great men of the church" who had spent hours in prayer every day. Yeah. Hours. "So-and-so spent three hours a day in his closet of prayer." I thought back then: I can’t take three hours out of my day to pray! I felt inadequate as a result and thought that I wasn’t praying enough.
There are so many problems with prayer. Take my friend Steve: was his fate going to be determined by whether I pray or not? Was god going to ignore him if other people didn’t pray for him? Did we need more people praying? Did we just need more prayers to keep Steve alive? "It was god's will. It was Steve's time." Super, but if it's god's will whether Steve lives or dies, then prayer seems irrelevant.
And considering the topic of god's omniscience again, why pray if god already knows everything that's going on? Why would god make us jump through unnecessary hoops? If god already knows a person's needs, and it's his will to help that person, then prayer is at best superfluous.
I never found a coherent theology of prayer. It always ended up raising way more questions than answers. Even when I was still a minister, the first thing I stopped doing was prayer. I still studied and preached but I couldn't bring myself to pray. I couldn’t reconcile it intellectually.
Dead-Logic.com
