A question for my Christian friends: Why do Christians pray to god for someone to be healed, or for some specific outcome to happen. This type of prayer is also known as intercessory prayer. This is the type of prayer that I’d like to talk about in this post. I have often wondered why my Christian friends pray. Whether they pray for a sick family member to get better, for someone to get a new job, or for the safety of those caught in a natural disaster -I can’t seem to understand it. I often see posts asking for people to pray for them for these types of reasons. These post are always followed by tons of replies saying that they will do just that. Now, I understand that not all Christians believe the same things about god. For the purposes of this post I will have to make a few assumptions that I think are fair when talking about the beliefs of most Christians. Assumptions: God is good. God is all knowing. God is all-powerful. God is in all places at all times. With those assumptions in mind I asked several of my Christian friends why they pray. I’d like discuss the most common of their responses along with my objections to it. “I pray to ask god to help others” This answer was very prevalent and took several forms. While this exact wording is simply a distillation of the various answers that I heard, then I dug deeper, this is really what it came down to. These people prayed because they want super-natural help for others. They wanted god to change to outcome of a situation. Well this strikes me as strange for two reasons. The first is the implication that god needs you to tell him that someone needs help. Afterall, if he is all knowing, he already knows who needs help. Furthermore, he even knows that you want him to help that person. Secondly, there seems to be imbedded in this answer the idea that a praying Christian can somehow change god’s mind. Let me explain. If god is all knowing, good, and all-powerful, then he has chosen to allow this situation to happen. He may even be the direct cause (based on your understanding of god) and so to ask him to somehow change his plan seems to be saying that you know better than he does. I doubt that many Christians have thought of it this way. Although, if the prayer doesn’t come true they basically say the same thing by stating some form of “It must all be part of god’s plan”. So friends, why do you pray for god to intercede? Or do you?
Posted on: Mon, 07 Oct 2013 23:02:23 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015