In 2006 the largest scientific study on the effects of prayer found that it provided no benefit to the recovery of cardiac bypass patients. The strangers offering the prayers were two Catholic monasteries and a Protestant faith group. The type of prayer being invoked is known as intercessory prayer, or praying on behalf of another. It is a form of petitionary prayer, whereby we ask our god for something.
But is science even capable of investigating the supernatural at all, especially a supernatural being whose existence transcends our own, and whose knowledge and power is beyond our comprehension? There are many reasons to think the mismatch between science and such a being would result in an impassable gulf preventing any investigation whatsoever.
Such a being could clearly know all about the study and intervene, or not, according to Their own motivations. To believers a god’s desire to maintain Their Divine Hiddenness would likely prevent Their presence from being revealed in a scientific study of any sort. To non-believers it would only provide further evidence that no such being exists. The end result being a stalemate. Only if the study provided evidence for a god’s existence would such a stalemate be broken. But would a god who cherishes Their Divine Hiddenness ever do so? Would They ever allow a prayer study to be the method by which They revealed Themselves to us? Is such a study even indicative of how the Divine can be influenced? As if there is some sort of cosmic tally sheet in the heavens that once you accumulate enough prayer marks The Greatest Love becomes compelled to intervene? Surely there is more to it than this?
To step back though for a moment, a more fundamental question for me is whether prayer is required at all in order to petition The Greatest Love? If true would it not mean They are advantaging, for example, theists over atheists and thereby playing favorites? Something which I have already stated I do not believe will ever happen.
If by “playing favorites” we mean The Greatest Love shows unfair bias towards those who pray over those who do not then no, I do not believe this is the case. Instead I believe The Greatest Love listens to the hearts of all of Their children. They know what is in those hearts. Those hearts can belong to theists, or atheists. Theists can worship the Abrahamic god, the Hindu gods, or any other god(s). The desires of all of our hearts are listened to even if those desires never manifest into a formal petition via prayer. Prayer is not required for The Greatest Love to hear you. A desire originating from your love is all that is needed.
But even in the narrower case where, for example, two theists pray a petitionary prayer but only one of their prayers is answered, can we not simply conclude that The Greatest Love has a favorite? No. I do not believe so. Consider the parent who fulfills one of their child’s heartfelt requests, but not the request of another of their children. Do we chastise that parent for playing favorites? Do we tell ourselves they love one child more than the other? Of course not. This is nonsense. There are so many explanations for how such decisions are made. And a great many of those decisions are based on an equal love for both children. They take into account the individuals and circumstances both past and present, all of which are unique. The greater good of the entire family is also considered.
So it is, I believe, with The Greatest Love. An unanswered prayer in no way reflects a dimming of Their love for the petitioner. Their love for all of us is infinite and will remain forever so. Yet there are still a great many heartfelt prayers that go unanswered. Desperate pleas to save loved ones from tragic ailments or selfless petitions to help victims of violence or despair. These examples are all prayers of love which I believe are heard by The Greatest Love. And I also believe that there are times, by Their own intention, that even such prayers as these go unanswered.
I believe this because of the seventh message: “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. But it had to be this way.“. Some theologians and philosophers posit a god that cannot act unilaterally in our World. But because of this seventh message I do not. Instead I believe The Greatest Love can and will act intentionally in our World to help answer prayers within the constraints They have placed upon Themselves. At least a part of those interventions include speaking to us. An inner voice that calls out to our love. Our free will ensures we can ignore such a voice but nonetheless such messages represent a powerful influence over the individual and combined across all of humanity it represents a powerful influence over our World. An influence They can leverage to answer our prayers.
There are other actions that I believe The Greatest Love will not take, or perhaps even cannot take. It is Their love which is infinite, not their power or knowledge. For example I do not believe They would ever violate a law of nature. To do so would make certain aspects of our Universe unknowable to us by leading our science in directions that take us further away from Their ultimate truth rather than closer to it. Instead I believe more knowledge of our Universe will continue to become available in time. This was discussed in an earlier post and it means there will be times when The Greatest Love must leave a prayer unanswered if it would require a law of nature to be broken.
Then there is the question of what happens when a good can only be attained if a prayer goes unanswered. Would The Greatest Love leave the prayer unanswered in order for that good to be realized? This opens a number of follow-up questions around how “goods” are evaluated by The Greatest Love. How do They decide which good is greater than the other?
But even when a good is great does that mean all prayers that collide with it must be ignored? Consider what I believe to be the greatest of all goods: the never-ending progression of The Divine Plan. That Plan is the blueprint meant to draw us ever closer to Them. If answering a prayer would prevent any furtherance of such a Plan I cannot believe that it would ever be fulfilled. But here there is an infinite ocean of grey expanse that only The Greatest Love can navigate.
For example if answering a single prayer would slow our movement towards Them, but not jeopardize it, by one day, one year, or even one millennia would They ever do so? How do you even compare extending the Plan by a few days to answering a prayer that pleads for a loved one to survive a life-threatening illness or accident? Of course if it is our own loved one then it would be easy for us to favor the latter, regardless of how the extended timeline of a Divine Plan would impact others and countless future generations. However for The Greatest Love there are no simple prescriptions because They have no favorites. I believe They love all Their children equally while also having billions of us to consider. Given such an infinite and equal love for all of us along with competing prayers and greater goods it is remarkable that The Greatest Love intervenes at all in such an impenetrable calculus. But I believe They do intervene, when and where They can. Their divine love for all of us compelling Them to act upon our desires so long as the infinite ocean of grey remains navigable.
None of the above may provide comfort to the grieving petitioner whose prayers have gone unanswered. That impenetrable calculus mentioned above sounds cold and detached. But I must note that it is not some form of mathematical proof that churns out “intervene” or “do not intervene” answers. Nor are our prayers impassively vetted by a detached celestial accountant. Instead our prayers are compassionately heard by the Divine heart of The Greatest Love. A heart that is impacted by us, and which struggles with Their decisions.
Yes. I believe that is the case.
The seventh message makes Their anguish clear to me. I believe They struggle with the consequences of Their actions. Their interventions can cause suffering to occur. Suffering that, although They could foresee with varying degrees of certainty, still pains Them even when the tragedies unfold as expected and the greater goods are achieved.
So if our desires are heard by The Greatest Love even when they are not formalized into prayer, why pray? Because The Greatest Love listens to all of our prayers, and cherishes each one of them. Prayer is not required for Them to know our desires but the act alone gives prayer a tremendous power: the power to provide solace to the petitioner. Even if those prayers cannot be answered the fact that they were heard can provide us with solace. The simple act of formalizing our desires into a prayer with the knowledge that such prayers hold the ear of the Divine can provide tremendous comfort. And I believe it to be true.
But can an omniscient being not know in advance what we will desire making prayers redundant? First off I believe The Greatest Love is not omniscient. They freely gave up that quality when They gave us free will. Next I believe our desires, and how they are formed, is a part of our free will, and so The Greatest Love cannot know our desires before they are formed. Moreover They cannot go back in the past to influence a decision we make in the present. It would represent a circumvention of our free will. Playing with us, like a puppeteer plays with their puppets. The Greatest Love does not treat us as Their puppets. When They gave us free will They limited Their own omnitemporality by preventing Themselves from acting in the past in order to force a desired present. As such the past can no longer be altered but can be viewed by The Greatest Love with perfect precision. It allows Them to understand how we came to be and to know us better than we know ourselves. They look to the past for such knowledge, but never touch that past.
What is done is done.
But I do believe The Greatest Love not only listens to all of our prayers, They cherish all of them as well. They cherish our conversations with Them, but They cannot answer all of our prayers. Many must be met with silence. This was the case when one of Their greatest prophets, Jesus Christ, prayed for deliverance in Gethsemane just before his betrayal, torture, and eventual crucifixion:
There are, no doubt, passages in the New Testament which may seem at first sight to promise an invariable granting of our prayers. But that cannot be what they really mean. For in the very heart of the story we meet a glaring instance to the contrary. In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from Him. It did not. After that the idea that prayer is recommended to us as a sort of infallible gimmick may be dismissed.
C.S. Lewis
And so The Greatest Love sits with us in our grief. Our pleas for deliverance unanswered but always heard. Their face contorted in anguish as our pain becomes Theirs. If we could see what They can see; know what They can know; and love how They can love, perhaps we would understand why our petitions were unanswered. But we cannot possibly do so. Instead we are free to question Them. Cry out to Them. And yes, we may even come to abandon Them.
But They will never abandon us.
Through it all They will continue to love us infinitely, unconditionally, and eternally.
This is what I believe.
A Love Story 