Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

Beyond The Mirror – A Bill Allin Column

March 23, 2007

What Is The Truth? (Part 12)
by Bill Allin

[Caution: What follows may be offensive to some people because it is based on fact, reason and probability, not on an established belief set (religion). If you are offended by anything that does not support your belief set, you should choose to not read this article.]

Where Does Prayer Fit Into Today’s Religion?

No doubt the value of prayer is one of the more contentious issues of religion. Does it work or not? Does it work for some situations, for some people, but not for others?

Scientific studies offer little help here because their results vary. Some say that prayer does nothing--such as to help a dying person return to good health. Others, including attending physicians, claim that nothing other than prayer could account for the recovery of some terminal patients.

There is no universal agreement as to what constitutes prayer. Some religions require a particular costume, some want the person praying to be in a particular position, some insist that the prayer will only work if the person prays through a specific channel (such as through Jesus, a saint or a sub-deity).

In general, prayer is a communication between an individual and a deity (even if the prayer is conducted communally, the contact is personal and individual).

I can communicate with my wife directly while we are beside each other in bed, when we call between floors of our home, when we use a telephone or the internet (either VOIP or instant messaging). Religions and people within them differ in their beliefs as to whether God is fussier about how, where and under what circumstances we pray than my wife and I are about how we converse. If we are made in God's image, does God communicate differently with us than we do with each other?

Whether the words of prayer are spoken out loud or silently and whether the language of prayer must be formal sentences or simply thoughts--even random thoughts--varies from person to person.

Can an agnostic, who is not certain about the concept of God, pray? Though this sounds like a contradiction, it is not if the individual acknowledges the possibility that God exists and the prayer may work.

Some say you can pray for anything, including riches or love. Some say you can only expect your prayer to be answered if you pray for the benefit of another person.

A few claim that the greatest benefit they have received from prayer is from an unanswered one. That is, God did not force someone inappropriate that the person praying wanted to link with romantically to get involved in a relationship.

To understand if prayer will work, you need to decide what prayer means to you. You also need to have a clear concept of what you expect God to do and how you expect God to do it.

In general, God does not and cannot work miracles that cannot be accounted for by some scientific explanation. That is, God (an energy-based being) must have a way to do His work or fulfill His miracles in the real world. Often that would be through a person who does something.

To have a miracle happen without any scientific explanation would be the equivalent of saying that God continues to create, daily, in many and various ways. This receives little support. God would have to mostly work through people.

People function by energy impulses that travel through their brains. Every one of us has that energy and every one of us has the ability to use our energy. The question is whether we use our energy to energize or empower another person or just ourselves.

If we could use our own energy by transferring it to another person who is ill, that would not only be useful but would be supportable by science. Energy can be transferred and even converted to other forms of energy.

In other words, God could use us by having us transfer our energy to another person or by converting our own energy to some other form for us to use ourselves. Prayer could work much better if we used our own energy to accomplish what we pray for. God could use us, through our prayer, to accomplish what we pray for.

To pray for wealth or love is the equivalent of buying a lottery ticket and wishing that we could win. Someone always has to win a lottery. But most lose. A selfish kind of prayer is unlikely to succeed because God would have no way (or will) to arrange for us to win a lottery, or someone's heart, or great wealth from another source.

The only thing we can be certain of regarding prayer is that if we are not prepared to do something to make what we pray for happen, God may not be able to act on our prayer because He has nothing to work with.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a book about real and inexpensive solutions to personal and community problems most people think are inevitable evils of modern society. They aren't. We just have to look in the right place.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Contact author Bill Allin at turningitaround@sympatico.ca