Petitionary Prayer
Prayer is not just asking for things, but making requests is an important part of what people do when they pray. Some Christians are confident that God frequently grants prayer requests. However, a significant number of Christians have doubts about whether prayer requests actually make a difference. They may recognize that praying about needs or wants sometimes has psychological benefits for the one who prays or that it sometimes helps motivate useful action, but doubt that it produces changes in what happens that can’t be accounted for in these terms. When something good happens after someone prays, we can easily wonder whether it would have happened anyway.
Doubts about the efficacy of praying are often connected with the experience of praying for something and not receiving what is asked for. It is easy enough to explain such an experience in a case where the prayer is selfish or ill conceived. But there are times when people wholeheartedly ask for something that is urgently needed, and the requested help does not come. Some people are content to say that God knows better than we do when some benefit should be granted. But this kind of explanation often rings hollow. A vivid awareness of a desperate cry for help that isn’t met can lead a person to wonder whether apparent answers on other occasions were just illusions.
This kind of doubt is amplified in situations in which some people get what they pray for, but others in very similar situations receive no divine help. It can be disconcerting to try to thank God for saving your family from a tragic accident or disease while being aware of people in the same circumstances who was not rescued. It can seem more plausible to think that your family was lucky than to think that God singled you out for rescue, but left others to suffer their fate.
The standard view of petitionary prayer suggests to me a picture of someone on a celestial phone line calling for help. The idea is that at the other end of the phone line, God sorts through the requests and decides that some people will be given help, but others will not. The underlying assumption is that God knows when it is best for help to be given. But if we make this assumption, it seems puzzling why requests should have anything to do with God’s decision. If God knows what is best, why doesn’t God provide help in cases where it is needed regardless of whether it has been requested or not?
Some people think that there are reasons why God might set up a system in which making prayer requests is a factor in what God does, but I don’t find any of the reasons I have heard convincing. However, the standard model is not the only option. Instead of thinking about petitionary prayer as trying to get God to do something, suppose we think of it as a way of accessing powers that God has made available. Instead of thinking that prayer is an alternative to doing something that may help, think of the act of praying as potentially causing some beneficial result.
The idea might seem crazy. Rendering medical assistance to someone might enable that person to get well, but it’s a matter of common sense that willing their health won’t by itself achieve anything. However, the conclusions we draw from common sense build on the assumption that only physical causes can produce physical effects. But there are cases that suggest that our minds are linked at an unconscious level in such a way that under the right conditions, information in one mind can be available to another mind. We might think of prayer for another as concentrating our thoughts on that person’s wellbeing in a way that might communicate a message that contributes to that wellbeing. Philosopher John Hick says, “In the case of bodily healing, another’s mind affects the patient’s mind, which in turn affects the patient’s body.” Such an idea sounds speculative, but if we are convinced that telepathic connections are real, this view might allow us to conceive how prayer requests might have effects on real-world events.
On the standard model it is difficult to understand why God refrains from offering help in cases where we think it is needed. But on this view, we can see prayer as an extension of the kind of control God has given us over what happens in the world. We recognize that our physical acts influence what happens. But prayer might allow us to influence things through mental acts as well. Of course, we shouldn’t imagine that the power to do such a thing is a kind of magic where all we have to do is wish for something and it happens. Prayer might contribute to the possibility of healing, but there may be factors beyond our control that are blocking healing. We might pray for peace in a war-torn country, but there can be forces opposing what we seek. Just as physical acts won’t always achieve a desired result, prayers for good things may not always succeed.
It may still be discouraging to pray, but not receive what we pray for. But thinking of prayer as a human act that may be unsuccessful seems to me better than thinking that good things didn’t happen because God decided to veto our request. I am sure that some people will be strongly enough attached to the standard model to reject this alternative picture. But I suspect that there are others who may find that the alternative I describe gives them renewed motivation to pray.
For a fuller discussion of this topic, see Chapter 12: Petitionary Prayer in Making Room For Mystery: Anomalous Events, Extraordinary Experiences, and Christian Faith.
