And so it should be protected. This life is all we know we have. Suffering should not be seen as irrelevant or acceptable just because an afterlife exists. Senseless, needless suffering is never acceptable.
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Well, once one decides that this is their ruling paradigm, you will (like Patrick) no doubt succeed in selecting your data and tests to fit what you decided beforehand was true. I prefer to keep a more open mind (and hope). So I choose not to discard that entire milieu of testimonies, that I have been exposed to about things both big and small in peopleâs lives. And yes --there are the many apparently unanswered prayers too; I am not blind to those. Letting all of that in and not just that which will confirm my own beliefs on this, I choose hope. And I gain much hope from God through prayer and will continue to pray. Iâm glad that real prayer is so much more than a mere scientific activity.
Not so. Unlike Patrick, I am not an Atheist. I am a theist. At worst, a deist. At one point in my life, I was even a practising Christian. In fact I still hope one day I can be again and strive to reach that point. Why else would I bother? My views have no bearing on the beliefs of others. I cannot change a made-up mind. To try and do so is an excellent example of futility.
But I cannot sweep objections under the carpet in order to maintain a happy bliss in ignorance. I cannot deny that it truly does seem like our prayers are not answered. And if the prayers of the mother for her dying child are left unanswered, I will not be so arrogant and selfish as to assume that mine are worth even uttering.
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The act of prayer is an act of piety in that Christians strive to imitate Christ. The notion of answers to prayer can be understood as (a) the mystery of the relationship between a Christian and God, with the Holy Spirt interceding for us, and (b) any and all answers are primarily ways that Christ strengthens our faith.
We need to remember that even after spending a lot of time with Christ, listening to Him, the disciples ended up saying, teach us how to pray. This came from Jews who followed the teachings of Moses all of their lives. They began to understand that prayer was more then following a formula, or seeing a type of commerce between supplicant and God, and thus could quantify when and how God would answer any and all prayer.
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@Find_My_Way
I donât have a single answer for the hard questions you have. I have never prayed as hard as I did when one of my best friendsâ husband was dying of cancer while she was five months pregnant with their first child. He died and I cried a lot. A friend of mine was blown up in Iraq despite the daily prayers of his mother for his safety. I donât know why people I have prayed for over and over again have stayed mired in addiction or depression or painful illness. I donât know why marriages of people I love have crashed and burned and spewed collateral damage all over the place. Life is really hard and messy and it sucks to be a human a lot of the time.
But isnât the definition of faith knowing what we hope for and donât see? (Heb. 11:1)
Four years ago, my husband and I sold our house, gave away most all of our stuff except a few boxes in my parentâs crawl space and what would fit in ten footlockers and we moved with our three young kids to rural Mexico. At the moment, Iâm back in the States for a few months, but normally, we do development work in the middle of a drug war zone in an indigenous area where people work for $3 a day when they can get it. We spent half our time for the last few years living in a two-room mud house on the side of the mountain with no running water and unreliable electricity. Ten year old girls are sold into marriage by their fathers for cases of beer; babies die a lot; decapitated heads are left on bridges by the cartels; the police, politicians, military, and local drug lords are in collusion and 90% of reported crimes are unsolved. I know people who have had family members abducted and left dead on the side of the road. Almost every woman I know there has been touched in some way by sexual or domestic violence.
I just put all that out there to let you know the world I live in when I say that I am utterly convinced that God hears my prayers and the prayers of the people I live with and has personally come through for me and people I know with miracles and healing and protection and provision over and over again. I donât even really know how to talk about a lot of the stuff to people in the U.S. because it doesnât make sense. I usually just end up feeling like Iâm trying to be Godâs PR agent and market the life of faith to a public that really just wants to look not buy. It feels like I am pimping out something sacred.
I donât think youâll ever get cold hard evidence that God answers prayer or cares for his children. The way God answers prayer and expresses his care is intimate and deeply personal and it is an act of sheer vulnerability for someone to even try to put it out there for other people to scrutinize and examine. I have been praying for you, Benjamin, since you posted in the Civil War of Christian theology thread, that God would really show up for you in a transcendent way and that the love of Christ would touch you more deeply than it ever has before right where you are numb or hurting.
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Prayer is very important. God hears every prayer because he is beyond time as we know it. A person who does not believe in prayer is missing out on so much. Pastor, you are correct. I like what you have said. God bless.
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Thank you. But I currently do not believe your prayers will amount to anything. I accept Godâs existence, even though I find Him disappointing. I guess that will have to do for now. At least while I try to wrestle with the idea of living by faith, something I dislike immensely.
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Recently I commented that âModern science (biology and psychology) would do well to clarify what is implied by the term soul, this way, the questionâDo Humans Have a Non-Physical Soul? (And How Does Modern Science Affect the Question?)âcan be appropriately answered.â
We all know that the term soul comes from the Greek word psyche, and the answer to the question of whether or not God answers prayer is deeply associated with understanding the mechanisms of the soul (psyche).
In 1983, Bruno Bettelheim, an Austrian-born American child psychologist, released the book Freud and Manâs Soul: An Important Re-Interpretation of Freudian Theory. Here is an important passage from the book that every person seeking spiritual understanding should be aware of;
When in middle age, I was fortunate enough to be permitted to start a new life in the United States, and began to read and discuss psychoanalytic writings in English, I discovered that Freud in English translation leads to quite different impressions from those I had formed when I read him in German. It became apparent to me that the English renditions of Freudâs writings distort much of the essential humanism that permeates the originals.
In The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), which opened to our understanding not just the meaning of dreams but also the nature and power of the unconscious, Freud told about his arduous struggle to achieve ever greater self-awareness. In other books, he told why he felt it necessary for the rest of us to do the same. In a way, all his writings are gentle, persuasive, often brilliantly worded intimations that we, his readers, would benefit from a similar spiritual journey of self-discovery. Freud showed us how the soul could become aware of itself. To become acquainted with the lowest depth of the soulâto explore whatever personal hell we may suffer fromâis not an easy undertaking. Freudâs findings and, even more, the way he presents them to us give us the confidence that this demanding and potentially dangerous voyage of self-discovery will result in our becoming more fully human, so that we may no longer be enslaved without knowing it to the dark forces that reside in us. By exploring and understanding the origins and the potency of these forces, we not only become much better able to cope with them but also gain a much deeper and more compassionate understanding of our fellow man. In his work and in his writings, Freud often spoke of the soulâof its nature and structure, its development, its attributes, how it reveals itself in all we do and dream. Unfortunately, nobody who reads him in English could guess this, because nearly all his many references to the soul, and to matters pertaining to the soul, have been excised in translation.
http://www.amazon.com/Freud-Mans-Soul-Important-Re-Interpretation/dp/0394710363#reader_0394710363
Those of us who are acquainted with Freudâs model of the personalityâthe subconscious ID that seeks the gratification of basic needs, especially sex and aggression, the conscious Ego that is in contact with the world and is aware of social constraints, and the Super Ego that decides how we ought to behaveâhave a good understanding of the relationship between the different parts of the personality.
Similarly, the model of the Psyche presented by Carl Jung thatâthe Psyche is a flow of energy of opposing poles of the personality that, one day, merge, to form the personâs Collective Consciousnessâagain clarifies the operations of the soul.
From these considerations the role of prayer becomes apparent in the mental health of the individualâthe foundation for spiritual development and understanding.
Tony
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You are right, Ms. Applegate. I hope that the Holy Spirit of God will come into his life. At the cross, changes can happen. A person can see the Light there.
I must disagree. The afterlife is no wish or dream. There is much more to life than what we see here. I know that my parentsâ bodies are sleeping in their graves until the Second Coming; however, their souls or spirits or whatever makes them different from the Plant and Animal Kingdoms still live. They live with Christ Jesus in heaven (2 Corinthians 5:6-8). Nothing you could say could make me feel differently.
Ich hoffe, ich verstehe Sie richtig. Ich moechte Ihnen eine Frage stellen, und ich hoffe, es stoert Sie nicht, dies zu beantworten. Glauben Sie an Gott? Was ist Ihre Theologie? Ich bin ein konservativer Christ in der Baptistischen Kirche. Was Sie geschrieben haben, klingt gut. Moege Gott Sie segnen.
Charles
I thought at first that you spoke German; however, I am not so sure now. Here is my English translation.
I hope, I understand you correctly. I would like to ask you a question, and I hope it does not disturb you to answer this. Do you believe in God? What is your theology? I am a conservative Christian in the Baptist Church. What you have written sounds good. May God bless you. I wish to add something that I did not say in German. I have viewed the book you are talking about and it looks interesting. If anyone would look up bookworm, he would find a picture of me for the definition. Take care.
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I can agree with this. When I used to pray, I often found myself relaxing and getting things off my chest. God was as a diary then. Though He didnât and does not answer prayer requests, I can attest to the fact that prayer is a positive past time for the mental health of an individual.
Just donât bother asking for anything 
Ben, yes there is pain, suffering, and death in the world, but there is also joy, peace, and life in this world. If someone is going to obsess with the negative, they are going to be unhappy, regardless of their physical condition. This is what you seem to be doing.
The fact is that God gave us both joy and pain, and we can chose to thank God for our blessings and allow God and others to encourage us in our sufferings, or deny the goodness of life, so we can wallow in the pain and injustice of life, while blaming the Giver of Life.
If that is what you have found to be Your Way, if that is how you choose to live, then do it, but please do not blame God for your misery. As they say, Misery loves company, but you have no right to inflict others with your emotional pain, just because your way is not the right way.
My father recently died at age 99 in hospice care. The hospice worker explained that at the end the body shuts down and the dying person can no longer accept nutrition, so he or she literally starves to death. That sounds painful and it is, except she said that the body uses endorphins, natural pain killers to stop the pain, so as far as we can tell the pain is not unbearableâŚ
God does answer prayer, but more than that God has created life in a manner that is far more wonderful and beautiful than we can imagine . You can not change that by looking solely on the negative side of life, which can and does bring out the best in humanity. Much good work is going on in this world, which again you ignore. God is Good All the Time.
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I hope you are reading what Relates has written to you. There is much wisdom there. Also, I do not find believers arrogant for praying. It gives comfort to many people during time of need and during good times as well. As a Christian theologian, I must say that Jesus has His arms opened for everyone who will accept Him. Our Lord is no deistic landlord who wound up the universe like a clock and ran away from what he made. He is with us even in the worst of times. Albert Leo is correct when he wrote that prayer brought him back from World War II. I hope you will come to see that. May God bless you.
Charles
You are truly a fine man of God and I am proud to call you Brother Al.
@Tony @Patrick
I seem to fail to communicate well on internet posts, but I do appreciate your personal note.
I thought I made it clear that I believe all attempts to provide scientific proof of the efficacy of prayer are bound to fail. So I certainly did NOT believe that my own personal, non-repeatable experiences (with no possibility of a control) would constitute this kind of proof. The arrogance of such attempts might be expected (if one values Biblical support) by Mathewâs account of Satan tempting Christ to âjump through his hoopâ and he would make all mankind worship Him. And Christ said: âBegone!â
Undoubtedly many of the 20 million military personnel killed in WWII were prayed forâand died anyway. So why was I spared? And spared after receiving a wound that doctors absolutely assured me should have been fatal. I have given this experience considerable thought over the past 71 yearsâand still have no answer. Did God (or Fate) decree that I have some purpose to fulfill? If so, what was it? Perhaps to respond in this Forum. As good a reason as I can come up with. Perhaps to play some small part in the conquest of certain types of leukemia. At any rate, I awake each day thinking it is a day I didnât expect to see, and I look forward to life. For that I am eternally gratefulâto God (as Tony & Henry would say, or to Fate, as Patrick would prefer.)
Al Leo
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Al,
The reason you survived WWII is obvious: to have that great great granddaughter who will do great things for the world.
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Brad, your words were most appropriate for me. Way back in the 1960âs, when I was CEO of a small company in Chicago, my 11 yr. old great nephew, Jackie Urquhart, contracted leukemia. For over two years, with all his family raising a storm of prayers to Heaven, he bravely fought the disease, but he died anyway. Thatâs Realityâthe Reality we accept as daily life. But sometimes we each can try to affect the Reality that will apply in the future. My former mentor, Prof. Corwin Hansch, was building a research team, using an NIH grant, in an attempt to speed research on a cure for leukemia, and I accepted his invitation to join. Even if the efforts of our team provided only a modest assist, the type of leukemia which took Jackieâs life is now 95% curable. Much of the âcoming Kingdomâ may be far in the future, but shouldnât we try our best to realize some of it as soon as possible?
Sometimes we need a kick in the behind (or a blow to the head) to heed the plans God has for us.
Al Leo
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You are so wrong, my friend.
Thanks Patrick. Yes it is a blessing to watch a child soak up all the information his/her surroundings provide. As a young couple, Georgie and I took much of this for granted in our own kids. Now, in old age, we see miracles happeningâcan an egg and a sperm really turn into this little human being?
Al Leo
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