The Unknowable Power of Prayer

What is the power of prayer? It doesn’t seem like it works to use prayer to ask for things or to request certain outcomes, for a new car or for the Cubs to win the World Series. (Here at the Blasphemy Blog, we have tried both, to no avail.) We do pray for people who are in trouble, but again, not usually with the expectation of a certain outcome. It’s not that we don’t hope that God will cure the sick upon our request; it’s that, deep down, we know that God is not a genie. God does not grant wishes.

And yet, we pray.

Why? And why claim that prayers have power if it’s obvious that praying doesn’t affect outcomes?

Well, one response to this is to deny that prayers are ineffective when it comes to just getting what you want. The way you explain away all the times that people pray for things and don’t get them, according to this argument, is to say that the people praying in those cases were bad people who did not deserve to have their prayers answered. This line of reasoning tends to favor the winners of history, though, because hey, if God thinks you’re a good person, why won’t He answer your prayers, huh? Obviously I’m good because I have everything I want, and if God doesn’t think I’m good why doesn’t he just take away all my goodies?

But this line of reasoning is wrong, because we all know that bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. This isn’t to say that we always understand why, but we know that this happens.

Another way of looking at the power of prayer would be to say that, merely by requesting something of God, you are humbling yourself to God, and this is powerful in and of itself, whether you get what you ask for or not. Submission to God’s power is not necessarily a central tenet of the Christian faith, especially these days, but other faiths certainly regard it as central. The word “muslim,” for example, means “one who submits” in Arabic. Exactly what would make such a submission a positive, powerful action is not clear. Perhaps this submission to the will of a powerful God puts things in perspective and makes us realize the insignificance of our own desires. Then we would be able to see ourselves as part of a community of our fellow human beings.

But where, you might ask, is the power? Does it come from people being united in communal submission to an omnipotent deity? Is there power in mass submission?

We believe in God at the Blasphemy Blog, but we don’t see any particular evidence that submitting to God is what God wants us to do. It’s possible, but given the inherent mystery of God’s nature, who’s to say? We’re inclined to believe that, if prayer has power, and if that power comes from God, it is, like God, mysterious. If we are somehow able to commune with the mysterious entity that created everything out of nothing, this is not going to be the same thing as understanding that communion. Understanding is a whole other thing. We at the Blasphemy Blog have never heard a direct statement, request, or command from God, and we have been listening very diligently.

How frustrating, to be so close to God, to have God all around, and yet not be able to speak to God directly, without worrying that it’s just your own head you’re talking to. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have a customer service-model? It would, it would. It would be nice if the power of prayer was accompanied with a user’s manual, so we would know exactly what our power is. But that is our blessing, and our curse, to be so imbued with powers we do not understand. We have to sit around asking how we did that, without even knowing what it is we did.