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[Semper Fi]

I don't understand the point of prayer if God already knows what I want and will do what he wants at the end.

I know that God is not a vending machine, a genie or a wishing well. I also understand that prayer isn't always about asking for things for selfish reasons. Prayer is also for worshipping and saying thanks to God, I understand all that. But the Bible also tells us many time that we should ask God and he will answer. Jesus talks a lot about asking God for what we want as individuals and as groups, especially when 2 or more people pray together.

But since he is God and he knows our minds, our desires, or past and futures, and knows what we want before even asking him, and HIS WILL will triumph at the end no matter what we do, why ask at all?

Shouldn't we just praise him, worship him and thank him in every situation and expect anything? (Death, sickness, pain, trouble, blessing, health, promotion, protection, temptation, trubulation, love, depression, breakthrough, etc...)

[jimwalton]

The Bible is quite clear that God is responsive to prayer. It's not all prearranged, set in stone, and "will do what He wants at the end." Instead, the Bible portrays prayer as an actual communication with God who listens, responds, changes His actions or holds the course.

> But since he is God and he knows our minds, our desires, or past and futures, and knows what we want before even asking him, and HIS WILL will triumph at the end no matter what we do, why ask at all?

Remember the story of Abraham, Gn. 18.16-33. God responds to Abraham. And the story of Lot, Gn. 19.18-22? God does Lot's will instead of what He had wanted. God is responsive. Check out also Jer. 18.1-12: God changes with our responses.

[Deedee]

Doesn't that mean God chooses sub-optimal outcomes in order to appease humans? Presumably God, left to his own devices, will choose the best choice - why would God respond to Abraham, if God's initial choice is, by definition, the best? Why would Abraham ask God to change his mind?

[jimwalton]

Thinking through the logic and the practical nature of it, God is nothing but tyrannical and uncompassionate if He's not truly responsive to us. The only way to be responsive is, simply put, to be responsive, which means not every path is ideal.

Matthew 19.8: “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning."

> why would God respond to Abraham, if God's initial choice is, by definition, the best?

God is responsive because He's personal and compassionate. He is teaching us, working with us, and helping us through life. The way to do that is not with a heavy-handed tyranny, but instead with flexibility, compassion, gentleness, patience, and wisdom.

> Why would Abraham ask God to change his mind?

Abraham is on a learning curve (God isn't). Abraham is trying to figure out how God's wisdom and justice work together (Gn. 18.25). And, by the way, he isn't necessarily changing God's mind. There's nothing in the text to suggest that God would have done anything less than what Abraham is asking.

[Semper Fi]

The "God" portrayed in the Old Testament is a totally different God than the New Testament God. I'm talking about God in the New Testament, Jesus's father.

[jimwalton]

I agree with /u/a_forerunner. In the OT, God is portrayed as compassionate, merciful, full of lovingkindness, faithful, and guiding the world by wisdom. He is the Father, a shepherd, and a refuge. At the same time He is a God who judges evil and sin. In the NT, Jesus/God is portrayed the exact same way.

[Regression]

> It's not all prearranged, set in stone, and "will do what He wants at the end."

Does this mean god does not know the future?

[jimwalton]

There's a vast difference between "prearranged" and knowledge of the future. Suppose for the sake of argument that I know you LOOOOOVE chocolate. Every time we go out, you order chocolate ice cream or chocolate dessert or whatever. So today when we go out, I know you're going to order chocolate. I know you; you always do. I haven't made you do it; I haven't prearranged it, but I know.

Suppose I know my child hates pickles, I mean hates. Suppose I know my child loves cookies. Now, when I see my child in a situation having to decide between the two, I know what he/she is going to choose. I know. But I haven't forced that or prearranged it. Knowledge isn't the same as "prearranged."

Now put that scenario into God, who sees all time as present; there is no such thing as "future." His knowledge is complete. His knowledge, also, is not causative (knowledge can never be causative for someone else). My knowledge of something never has power to cause something in someone else. Knowledge is not causative. God sees, but He hasn't prearranged. He doesn't make you make that decision. He knows you deep to the heart, soul, and mind. There is nothing about you prearranged, nothing set in stone, and yet He knows the "future."

[Katelyn]

> The Bible is quite clear that God is responsive to prayer

Statistics respectfully disagree.

[jimwalton]

Statistics are impossible with regard to prayer. It's like saying, "How many miles are there in a pound?" Prayer is not a scientific pursuit because there are too many parameters and unknowns to structure a reliable experiment, and therefore statistical analysis and reliability is out of reach. For instance, here are a few things you'd have to know to scientifically assess the effectiveness of prayer:

1. We have to be able to isolate those events on Earth that are actions of God and those that aren't. If we can't create clean categories here, our data may be tainted.

2. We have to be able to guarantee that only certain people (and none others anywhere else in the world) are praying in a certain way for a certain outcome. Any stray prayers unknown to the researchers may skew the data. In addition, we would have to know that absolutely no one in the world was praying for those in the control group. One pray-er, again, may skew the data, and therefore any statistical conclusions. If we can't guarantee exactly who's praying with absolute certainty, then the data may be invalidated.

3. We have to establish objective criteria for what constitutes an answer to prayer and what doesn't. After all, in the Bible God at times uses very normal people and normal circumstances to answer prayer. If we can't define clearly what constitutes an answer to prayer, then the data is invalid. Also, sometimes God answers prayer not in the ways people prayed, but in other ways to answer their prayer by arriving at a different end by a different means, but still what they prayed for. We'd have to be able to define that. And sometimes God answers prayer partially. We have to be able to define that.

We cannot expect reliable and repeatable results suitable for scientific and statistical analysis. Prayer isn't like that. We can't expect to be the ones holding the cards and managing the output. Prayer isn't like that. We can't expect remarkably better results from a scientific and statistical viewpoint. Prayer isn't like that either.

We know that God answers prayer didactically, not empirically. Causation (of any kind) can't be measure empirically without fully isolating variables and replicating results. Revelation ( = being told by God) is the only way we know ANYTHING about what God is like or how God acts. Generally, when we affirm something as an "answer to prayer," this is not on the basis of an absence of physical/biological efficient causes, but on the belief that God works by means of those causes.

There is also the truth that the purpose of prayer is not to motivate God to do something. God does what God will do according to His wisdom, which is not ultimately contingent on anything that anyone else does. He can choose to respond to human input or choose to ignore it, depending on many conditions and complexities. This is a corollary of a divine attribute called Aseity. Christians who know their theology should already affirm this.

So if you were trying to produce a defeater for Christian theology, this isn't one. I would have given the same answer if you'd just asked, "How does prayer work?" As I hear it, your conception of "God answers prayer" is people who pray for things [would] get them at a rate better than random chance would predict (ah, statistics again). You KNOW that this is not how a Christian understands "God answers prayer." So now this is the question you need to ask: What use do you have for a God who will not give you things you ask him for?

If your answer turns out to be "none at all," than nothing I (or anything in Christianity) can say can help you. We do not serve God because we get things from him. God cures our sins and makes us like him, and that has nothing to do with answering our prayers (unless that is what we are praying for, which it should be, and note that these things can't be empirically measured). If the answer is anything else, however, this issue is really a technicality. Why do we pray if not to motivate God to action? Why does God not make his existence self-evident (in this case by answering prayers?) What is the significance of God hearing and acknowledging our prayers if he does not intend to respond? Theology can answer all of these (some more clearly than others), but these discussions are really only apprehensible after divine existence is established; you can't really debate the character and behavior of something that doesn't exist.