The Pharisees didn't believe that a man born blind from birth could regain his sight, certainly not at the hands of a blasphemous lunatic who claimed to be the Son of God.
John 9:24-2724 A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. "Give glory to God," they said. "We know this man is a sinner."
25 He replied, "Whether he is a sinner or not, I don't know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!"
26 Then they asked him, "What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?"
27 He answered, "I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?"
I didn't have much to say about the recent study that failed to show the healing power of prayer until I got a phone call a few days ago from a friend who was dying from cancer. A few years ago she was diagnosed with a rare kind of nerve cancer and given 24 to 36 months to live. The cancer was fast-moving and always fatal within three years, and no hospital or clinic she went to would even attempt to treat her because they were sure that any treatment would fail and only degrade her remaining quality of life.
My wife and I, and dozens others, held a prayer meeting for our friend almost a year ago and asked God to intervene and spare her life. Since then she has seen numerous doctors -- most of whom turned her away -- and gone through chemotherapy, and a few days ago she called to tell me that her chemo had finished and her final test results had come in: no detectable cancer in her body.
So, that's hardly a scientific study, but despite the predictions of the doctors her treatment was astoundingly and inexplicably effective.
Studying the "power of prayer" is interesting, but I think it misses the point in a lot of ways. Prayer doesn't have power, God has power. Praying to God isn't like rubbing a magic lamp and making a wish, and it's not like putting a dollar into a vending machine and making a selection. Prayer is a conversation with your creator, who has his own agenda that all-too-often doesn't match up with yours because you're selfish and short-sighted. Jesus himself prayed to be delivered from the cross and was denied. If God decides that it's better for a man to suffer physically for spiritual purposes, does that mean that prayer has no power or that we simply don't know what to pray for? Perhaps Jesus' prayer was meant to serve an an example to us: God is more concerned with our spiritual well-being than with out physical health.
Good for your friend, but there are countless examples the other way. When I was in high school, a fundy Christian school no less, the whole school prayed day in and day out for my Bible teacher's kid to recover. Sadly, but unsurprisingly, none of this extended the boy's life by a single day.
Clearly, the former. Either prayer influences God's behavior, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, there's no power in guessing what God's going to do, and then praying for that.
Prayer is a great mystery and I think in the huge majority of cases, prayer only changes us not God. I get bothered when I hear phrases liek "Prayer works" as if its some sort of cosmic vending machine or casting a spell. Like Mr. Williams said, prayer has no power.. God has the power. Does prayer influence God's behavior? Who knows, and what doest it really matter? We were commanded to pray thats whether we understand what happens behind the scenes or not.
X: Tim's right on this one. In my experience it's much more important that I change than that God does.
Actually, Michael, Jesus DID get what he prayed for... remember, his prayer was to be delivered from the cross if it was possible, but that the Father's will would be done, not his. And that's what happened... God's will was accomplished through his death and resurrection, so he did get what he prayed for.
John S: Fair enough!
Tim:
I understand you were commanded by some guy who heard from some other guy who heard from yet another, etc., that God commanded you to pray. However, that same version of God also promised that faith would enable the believer to move mountains, not that it would merely cause him to be OK with where the mountains are now.
OK, but in that case, why bring up your friend who was mysteriously cured of cancer? If prayer "worked" in her case, it failed miserably in the case of my Bible teacher's son. If prayer wasn't supposed to influence God's actions, it neither "worked" nor "failed" either time; rather, it produced exactly the same result that an atheist would have brought about merely by wishing/hoping for the same result.
Also, if the message of your prayer is really intended for you, not God, why direct the message to God? Why not just meditate instead?
X: Interesting questions. Let me address the tail-end of the issue where you said that prayer "produced exactly the same result that an atheist would have brought about merely by wishing/hoping for the same result."
Even if I were to grant that prayer doesn't influence God, the the "result" is only the same insofar as it relates to physical healing. The internal change of heart would not be the same in an atheist as in a Christian, by definition.
Further, there are mentions in the Bible where prayers did affect God's actions, such as Abraham's appeal for God to spare Sodom. I don't think our appeals to God need be any less effectual.
I disagree. If prayer doesn't influence God, then for all intents and purposes, you're really not talking to God, just to yourself in a roundabout way. In that case, doing so may well bring internal peace, but only in the same way that an atheist's idle musings on the issue also might. If anything, the atheist may find inner peace more easily, since he won't have to square a bad event with the existence of a God who could have prevented it. It's much easier simply to accept that "s*** happens" than it is to accept that an all-good, all-powerful God would allow it to happen to people who did nothing to deserve it.
I wasn't disputing that the Bible claims prayer worked in certain instances. Of course it does. The question is not whether the claim exists, but whether any real evidence exists to back it up. If (and admittedly, it's a big "if") you agree with the findings of this study, the answer would seem to be "no."