How does prayer really work? Part 2

Blaise Pascal said, "God instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality."

And so we are asked to pray. But we wonder: if I didn’t pray, would have the prayed-for event happened anyway? That is the question. But is that a good reason for not praying? I’m no so sure. Of course, all events have been decided before our world was even created. But it seems to me that if we pray, this prayer was one of the ingredients in the event actually happening. What is really interesting is this: it’s possible our prayers are part causes of past events, for God’s omniscience can take into account prayers in the future for past events and affect the event that way.

This doesn’t mean our prayers can change an event that is already settled in the past. If we think so, then it is our thinking and pondering this (rather than the ceasing of prayer) that is one of the causes of the fixed past event being what it is. As Lewis says: “My free act contributes to the cosmic shape.” Our acts have been taken into account before all worlds, but our consciousness of having performed an act meets in our lives, on a space/time coordinate in the space/time block.

Knowledge of an event’s having happened it also a factor. I cannot pray for a past event that I know to have already been fixed. Psychologically, it isn’t possible. The fixedness of the past event is an expression of God’s will, and to pray for the past event’s undoing would be the violation of that will.

This leads to all the absurd experiments skeptics and science-minded people try to play with prayer. We’ve all heard of the studies that have one group of people with cancer in one room, and another group of people in another room with the same cancer. 100 people pray for one group’s cancer to be healed, and another room has no people praying for it. In nearly all these studies, the room without prayer is the room with the most recession of cancer. Therefore (they bellow!), prayer is a pipe-dream. But all of this is absurd.

The scientist can say that if the prayer-group prayed for the room with the recession of cancer, they would have - by a fluke - gotten credit where no credit was due. It was merely Nature taking its course. But ‘Nature taking it’s course’ is only one of the links in a chain, we can reply. These links are hooked up with the links in God’s will, which in turn take into account a possible prayer.

Think of the psychological state of a someone who knew (empirically!) that his prayer caused events he concentrated on. It would turn less into edifying prayer than magic. I’m not supposed to think this particular event happened because of a prayer; I’m suppose to believe all events are answers to prayer, whether the answer be a granting or a refusal. All that happens is this. When you pray for an event, and the event happens, your prayer played a part in the event’s happening. But if the event doesn’t happen, the prayer hasn’t been ignored, but refused, for your good and the good of the universe. And if you didn’t or don’t pray for an event, your not praying was a factor in the event’s not happening.