Prayer: to what avail?

I pray every day; a couple times throughout the day, and every night with my wife. I’ll pray anywhere and anytime where I can find peace and quiet.

Inevitably the question arises regarding whether or not prayer actually works, or whether there is any use in it. My answer: it depends. Let me first articulate where I believe prayer might be ineffective, and subsequently move on to what kind of prayer I have found to be fruitful.

Many types of prayers are pleas to God. For example, people ask God to bless them for upcoming periods, to watch over their loved ones, to heal them of some affliction etc. It is these types of pleas that I find troublesome, both in consequence and in principle.

Let’s take consequence first. Does God answer every prayer? Surely not. Obviously two people praying for contradictory things cannot both be answered. More than that, we see unanswered prayers every day. Heck, non-believers parade around scientific studies done on prayer that supposedly have demonstrated that this type of prayer does not work. I myself have asked God for reasonable things of which I never saw their fruition manifest.

Perhaps, some might say, I did not have enough faith. Perhaps. However, I have witnessed plenty of cases where those praying had more than enough faith. One such case happened at the church I attend--what could be called a mega-church. Almost two years ago the church’s pastor’s wife was diagnosed with cancer. She fought it for almost a whole year. Throughout this year thousands, and I mean thousands, of people were praying for her healing, including countless pastors (from Joel Osteen to Joyce Meyer) and church leaders. Not enough faith? I think not. Yet, this faith was not vindicated, and the pastor’s wife lost her battle with the cancer. So, it seems that God does not answer all pleas, no matter how desperate and sincere.

This brings me to principle. Why, we might wonder, did God not answer those prayers and heal the pastor’s wife of cancer? Was it not His will to do so? Obviously. But then why pray, if God will not alter his will to accommodate ours? Maybe God only answers prayers when our will is in line with his will. But, God’s will will always necessarily manifest, whether ours is aligned with it or not. So, what’s the use? If our prayer is against the will of God, then God’s will won’t be changed, but if our prayer is in line with God’s will, then God’s will will inevitably happen, and there is no use praying.

So, pleading prayer seems problematic. Is there, then, any pragmatic value we can salvage regarding prayer? Yes, I believe there is.

Prayer, at least for me, is simply a time to give thanks to God, express my hope in Him, and meditate on his love, goodness, and mercy. Meditating on the love of God is incredibly transforming for me. It literally makes me a more patient, loving, caring, kind, compassionate and generous person every day. When I don’t pray I don’t feel like myself, and when I do pray I feel like my “true” self. Prayer is our connection with the divine, not a time when we come to ask God for this or that.

This type of prayer has also convinced me that it is not only Christians who can encounter the love of God. While a Muslim might think they’re praying to Allah, I see no reason to believe that they’re not in touch with God Almighty simply because they call him by a different name. We’re all tapping into the divine source of life, though we might not know it.

A consideration of (a restricted) religious pluralism

My father unexpectedly passed away early last year. His passing was commemorated with a memorial service whereby dozens of family members and people who had known my dad attended and offered their condolences. Many people stood up and nostalgically told stories illuminating the integrity and humorousness that my dad always employed in the public eye—you see, my dad was an extremely well-known television reporter here. I greatly enjoyed these stories, because they illuminated many aspects of my dad that I was not there to witness.

 I spent the whole twenty-two years of my life with my dad by my side, and (due to my parent’s divorce) I spent the last eight years of my life with simply my dad and I. So, I always felt like I knew my dad better than anyone else. If people said he was funny, I knew how much funnier he was. If someone said he was caring, I knew how caring he really was. With that in mind, my dad, like everyone else, was not perfect, and he certainly had major flaws. And it was these flaws that almost no one, apart from family, knew about. I felt that I alone had the most accurate and intimate understanding of who my dad was.

But, does this mean that those individuals who encountered my dad on a much more superficial level did not really know my dad? Well, while they didn’t know my father as intimately as I did, I fail to see that this entails that they didn’t know him at all. For they surely had experienced accurate aspects of my father, e.g. his charm and sense of humor, and could indeed make positive knowledge claims about what made him him.

It is probably being wondered at this point exactly what such musings have to do with the title of the post, namely, religious pluralism. Well, I believe an analogy can be drawn here with regards to our portraits of God. For when we gaze upon the face of Christianity, we see a multitude of interpretations of God and his will. The Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Unitarians, Eastern Orthodox, and Lutherans obviously all disagree about certain aspects of what God is like and which theological doctrines accurately reflect his will—otherwise there would be no reason to differentiate these denominations. But, do these differences in interpretation of God entail that these different denominations do not worship the same God? Certainly not. Just like the differing interpretations between me and someone who only knew my dad superficially does not entail that we both did not have the same individual in mind as John Morris—my dad’s name, obviously.

It should be realized that differing interpretations abound between individuals even when dealing with the same referent. I will not interpret an American flag the same way a Korean will, even though we would both have the same object in front of us. Similarly, I might not understand God in the same way a fundamentalist Christian would, again, even though we have the same entity as our referent. And should this even surprise us? Should the fact that I don’t believe God commissioned Noah to build an ark, while another Christian does, entail that, therefore, our Gods are wholly different? I fail to see how this could be so. To continue the analogy, the fact that I know my dad had a temper, while another person who knew my dad did not know this, does not entail that we don’t have knowledge of the same individual. What is true is that one of us has more accurate knowledge of my dad, and I would also promulgate this regarding differing opinions of the nature of God. Since two contradictory opinions cannot both be true, it follows that only one can be correct, but this, again, doesn’t mean that both opinions do not have God as their focal point. It simply means that one has more accurate knowledge of him.

It should seem logical that I would also predicate the above thesis of differing religions. While Muslims, Mormons, Jews and Christians all have differing interpretations and understandings of God, I fail to see that this necessitates that they all therefore worship a different God. It is not at all illogical to assert that these religions have God as their focal point. What is different is their overall portrait of God. But, we have seen that differing pictures of a single referent does not entail that that is not indeed the same referent to all.

Now I, as a Christian, do believe that Christians have a more accurate portrait and understanding of God—I believe this especially because of Jesus of Nazareth. Subsequently, I believe that Muslims and Mormons have very many misunderstandings and imperfections in their portraits of God. However, I do not find that these differences necessitate that we all, therefore, worship a different God.

It is this type of religious pluralism that I adhere to, and I see it to be a kind of restricted pluralism, if you will. It is not a pluralism that claims that all religions are true, which is logically impossible. Rather, it is a pluralism that considers that we, Muslims, Christians, Mormons etc., are all worshipping the same God; granted that our worship is focalized through differing interpretations.

God's inclusive inspiration

"Ask pardon of your Lord and then turn unto Him (repentant). Lo! my Lord is Merciful, Loving. "

“Verily, that which is with God is the best for you, if you but knew it: all that which is with you is bound to end, whereas all that which is with God is everlasting.”

“ Yea, thou art merciful unto thy children when they cry unto thee, to be heard of thee and not of men, and thou wilt hear them.”

“...when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God."

Shall we care to speculate whence these verses derive? Contrary to a prima facie assumption, these verses are not from the Bible. The first two derive from the Koran, and the latter two from the Book of Mormon.

What is a Christian to make of these verses above? Is he not to agree with them? Is it not true that (as the Christian believes) God is merciful and loving, as the Koran says? Is it not true that those in service of fellow human beings are also in service of God almighty? Of course the Christian will uphold such truths regarding the nature of God. Yet, simply because other self-proclaimed holy books occasionally hit the bulls-eye regarding the character of God, this is not enough for one to grant those books the same divine status as the Bible. For there are still a multitude of verses in these aforementioned books that most Christians would adamantly disagree with. Fair enough.

However, is it not at least the case that some of these holy books are also inspired in some sense—though perhaps to a lesser degree—by God Himself? The Christian might cringe at such a thought and retort that “the Bible is the only inspired Word of God”. Yet, what exactly the word inspired means is by no means agreed upon by Christians—even fundamentalists. So if this is the case then how can we rule out a priori that other books such as the Koran, or the Book of Mormon, do not contain some hint of divine inspiration? I maintain that we cannot.

But, let us tread a step further. As I articulated above, Christians will no doubt uphold the aforementioned verses as valid reflections of God’s nature—that is, they will agree that God is merciful, loving, everlasting etc. It might seem that identifying the truth of these verses is no big deal—for an occasional true proposition about God in a written book does not necessitate that said book be labeled holy. But, an interesting question can be raised here: where does truth come from? Surely all truth derives from God himself? Just as all being, goodness, love etc., derive from God, it seems that truth must also derive from the same source. Doesn’t James 1:17 state “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning”?

But, if every good thing, which must include truth, comes from God, then surely any valid proposition regarding the nature of God must come from him as well. For where else are we to find a wellspring of pure goodness? This leads us to the conclusion that the aforementioned verses, along with hundreds like them, must ultimately derive from God. How then can we deny that these verses are not in some sense inspired by God?

I maintain that these verses are indeed inspired by God. And if they are inspired by God, then we can reach an interesting inference regarding God’s revelation: God has indeed revealed his truth outside of the Christian religion. And if this is true, then it’s time we take a closer look at religious inclusivism.