Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
I used to think that, among all the Republican candidates for President, Marco Rubio—the Conservative Kennedy—would ultimately get the nod (Trump is still leading the pack). I don’t like his views, but he doesn’t seem as much of a nutcase as Carson or Trump, and I wouldn’t have to scourge myself with whips if he was elected. However, he’s still marinated in faith, and, as the Christian Post reports, Rubio undertook some theodicy in a talk in New Hampshire on November 30. Like all the GOP candidates, he parades his tiresome faith at every turn.
Rubio answered his rhetorical question about why God let the Paris attacks and the Twin Towers attack occur by raising one of the tired old tropes of Christianity: God’s plan is beyond our ken, but, in the end, it leads to ultimate justice (the video of his remarks is at bottom). The CP report:
The 44-year-old senator continued by saying that even when people pray to God for guidance, they are often not given the answers they want.
“We are ordered to have peace. The peace that you are left with is not the peace of ‘it’s going to all work out great.’ [JAC: Except that it will—see below.[ We are not promised that,” Rubio stated. “Those of us who share the Christian faith, the only thing we are promised is adversity. We are told you will be discriminated against, hated, you will be persecuted. Obviously, we are fortunate to live in a country where the persecution is relative compared to other parts of the world.”
. . . Rubio then explained that he was asked during a campaign event a few days prior, “Where was God on 9/11? Where was God in Paris?”
“I said, ‘where God always is — on the throne in Heaven.’ The question was how could God allow these bad things to happen? It always challenges us to understand that God’s ways are not our ways,” Rubio argued. “What we may interpret as bad, and most certainly is in the case of Paris or 9/11, even that is part of a broader plan for the universe and for our lives that we are just not going to know the answer to. God’s ways are not our ways.”
In other words, God Works in Mysterious Ways. How, then, does Rubio know that God is good rather than evil, or that he even takes an interest in justice?
Rubio then said that God’s master plan confuses people during challenging times just as small children are confused as to why their parents would let doctors hurt them with needles when getting a vaccine.
“All that child understood at 3 years or 4 years of age is that my father and my mother, who love me, is allowing a stranger to stick a needle in my arm, in this case, some other region of the body, and it hurts, it hurts a lot. ‘Why are they allowing me to be hurt by this stranger? I don’t understand that,'” Rubio said of his child. “But I understood. While that needle hurt for 3 or 4 seconds, that needle was going to prevent something much more dangerous and much more painful and much harder later on.”
What gets me about this is that Rubio asserts that “God’s ways are not our ways,” but then uses an example showing that God’s ways ARE our ways: like children, we’re given pain for some reason we can’t understand, but it’s given because it make things come right at the end. How does Rubio know that?
If God’s ways are truly mysterious, then how do we know anything about the nature of God? I suppose Rubio would reply that the Bible tells us about the nature of God. But then the Bible also tells us about God’s ways. The relevant example is the story of Job, whose sufferings were inflicted by God just to test whether he’d remain pious in the face of suffering. In other words, God tortured Job as a test of loyalty. And, I suppose, that’s why God killed off all those Parisians and New Yorkers—to see if the rest of us would retain our belief (and presumably our salvation) in our sorrow.
Of course, a God having such ways is empirically indistinguishable from no God at all.
Well as theistic responses go, I’d say this is at least more mainstream and less bad than the answer some of the other GOP candidates would probably give. I’d rather have a ‘classic theist’ in the chair than someone who states that 9/11 was punishment for allowing gays to marry or espoused divine command theory or whatever. I bet Hilary would give basically the same answer. Not that its a good answer, only that when it comes time to pull the lever, this answer wouldn’t be data I’d consider.
Man, you beat me to it. Anything is preferable to, “Well, God told me it was because of X”.
Digging the marinated in faith image.
Okay to dig, just don’t eat any of it.
The “…on the throne in Heaven” thing suggests a target audience that are something less than Sophisticated Theologians.
On my visit to Japan this summer I most definitely found the Throne of Heaven.
No, I think “Throne of Heaven” is fanciful enough to pass into the “beautiful metaphor which is not meant to be taken literally” category of Sophisticated Theology. After all, that’s a pretty big category.
The throne? As in, one? One throne, several billion people. Sounds more like hell to me. Especially if God’s always on it.
Yes, who appointed that misfit to boss!?
Religious management discipline is notable by its absence.
Torbjorn IIRC you’re not an American, so at the risk of ruining the joke I’ll explain it to you. In American English, throne can also be a reference to the toilet. Also known as ‘the porcelain throne.’ One throne in all of heaven? And God’s always on it? What a mess. 🙂
It always challenges us to understand that God’s ways are not our ways,” Rubio argued. “What we may interpret as bad, and most certainly is in the case of Paris or 9/11, even that is part of a broader plan for the universe and for our lives that we are just not going to know the answer to. God’s ways are not our ways.”
And if God’s name is ‘Allah,’ then the bad things that happened to good people in Paris or on 9/11 can magically turn into GOOD things that happened to BAD people! It always challenges us to understand that maybe, from God’s point of view, we’re actually the Damned. And that’s a good thing! Doesn’t matter what we think. Allah’s ways are not ours (PBUH.)
When small children are confused about why Daddy hits them over and over again with a belt, they find it hard to realize that he’s only doing that because they’ve been just that bad. If they die, then the world had to be saved from their toxic presence. God doesn’t promise peace on earth, but a perfect Heaven from which the wicked have been purged. We are all part of that plan, whichever role we play.
Wow, what a misguided unfortunate. ‘God’s way are not our ways’. What lazy thought. There ought to be an entrance exam for one to run for public office!
Public office entrance exam (multiple choice):
A. God is a myth not real.
B. Adam and Eve cannot be the bottleneck.
C. Evolution is true.
D. All of the above.
Essay question:
State in your own words, why evolution is true.
Trying to determine which one of these republican candidates is worse or best is really a waste of time. They are all at the bottom of every chain that matters.
Rubio makes stuff up as he goes, just like the rest. Makes no difference because the ignorant don’t care. God sits up there on the throne and out comes all that stuff that Rubio is throwing back. Absolute and total nonsense.
He says we have been biblically ordered to not be afraid. Then in the next minute we are told that we will be hated and persecuted.
Well, damn good thing you had already said, no need to be afraid. Then the next time some guy slaughters a bunch of us, don’t fear because he works in strange ways. He is right…even a 2nd grader would say – Bullshit.
“Trying to determine which one of these republican candidates is worse or best is really a waste of time. They are all at the bottom of every chain that matters.”
I agree. And to beat the dead horse again, the biggest implication for the next POTUS will be the majority on SCOTUS. NONE of the republican candidates will do anything but create an unbeatable conservative court. And with no SCOTUS term limits, a super-majority of religiously driven ideologues would be a generational catastrophe.
Yes, and if you look at the House of Rep. there already is a catastrophe. So yes, we may put a democrat in the white house but with this congress we still have a big zero.
If Rubio is right, does that mean everything is permitted? If God didn’t want us to do something, wouldn’t he stop it to protect His plan?
sounds like the excuse I can see Catholic priests giving to excuse their abuse.
If I were to take gods’ implied word at face value, it would appear that He is saying that we should not seek to cure disease or healed the injured. It is also part of gods’ plan to murder apostates, and commit genocide against people who are not, oh, 7th Day Adventists, or whatever. In short, that we should not care about anything except our own, personal salvation and the salvation of our immediate family.
That description, a weird as it is, is not far from Christian Science and it cousins. If your child or spouse is sick, just pray God will do whatever he wants, including kill said family member.
“It always challenges us to understand that God’s ways are not our ways”
Except of course when your gods ways align with your own ways, for example homosexuality is evil, women should not have control over their own bodies, god would never allow humans to damage the planet via anthropogenic climate change, the poor are poor because they deserve it and so on.
Then, strangely enough, your gods ways seem to be crystal clear.
I saw Carly Fiorina on Fox yesterday talking about the six things that would be a priority in the early days of her presidency. #3 on the list was abortion. FFS! All the other things were reasonable ones for a president to concern themself with, whether you agree with their policy position or not, but abortion?
This is about religion “fighting back” against the “persecution” they’ve been suffering because of the trials visited upon them as they are “forced to accept” happily married same-sex couples.
Wee lesson bigots: people you don’t approve of being happy will not diminish your life in any way whatsoever unless you choose to let it.
In good will: Whatever you think about abortion, for me the question is: Why should the state mechanism of force (taxation) be imposed to supply the means to abort…at all? Get the government bullies and politicians out of the picture and out of the discourse altogether: Let those who support abortion raise funds from the private sector, like so many do. If it is a good idea (in a democratic system of free choice), the money will come. Let NOW get to work on useful things! Et cetera.
Just tossing some bread on these tumultuous waters…
It all depends on whether you view abortion as a necessary medical procedure, or something whores who are too lazy to use contraception do.
Although for most it’s an extremely difficult choice, it is also often the sensible and responsible one. Like every other form of medical treatment, whether it is necessary should be a decision between the patient and their doctor. It is not for others to be passing judgment when they don’t know all the factors, and a patient shouldn’t have to have her privacy breached and expose herself to the general public to justify the decision.
Using your reasoning, we could refuse to treat people for heart disease, strokes, lung and throat cancer etc if they smoke heavily or are grossly overweight. Let’s not treat skin cancer victims who spend too long in the sun.
If treatment for skin cancer is necessary, I’m sure charities will spring up to pay for it.
Really. You are comparing a developing potential Steve Jobs with cancer. You know, I am not for anyone stopping a woman from aborting her fetus! I am asking you to THINK about FORCING people, with which you happen to not agree, who are deeply opposed to aborting a fetus on moral grounds, to pay for that procedure.
You evidently do not allow space for people who do not wish to support your agendas. And there is no logical comparison to be made to smoking unless you say maybe people who smoke by choice or women who have unprotected sex by choice maybe ought to be personally responsible for their own choices. No. Taxes should not be used for social engineering.
Taxes are social engineering.
People who oppose war still have to pay the portion of their taxes that pay for the military. People who are morally opposed to all healthcare beyond prayer still have to pay Medicare and Medicaid. There are plenty of other things people are morally opposed to as well, but that doesn’t give them the right not to pay.
I do not see how this is social engineering, but taxes ARE social engineering. They are about creating the society of the country. You pay taxes to pay the police to enforce the laws enacted in a democracy. You have to abide by those laws even if you don’t agree with some of them.
Not sure if you are aware – but in this country the way it works is that people vote on things and then laws go into affect and we all must participate. You don’t get to say, Hey, on this issue over here (abortion) I don’t won’t to pay and you can’t force me. But that is the way the semi-democratic government works. You don’t get to bail out. Some states tried that once and it didn’t work out well.
To ….dj possi… :
Of course there never is a man involved who chooses to have unprotected sex.
And while we’re at it, let’s get the state of of building roads and other infrastructure, healthcare in general, firefighting and policing.
Let those who support those things raise funds to do these things and get the state mechanism of force out of the picture and discourse altogether.
I mean if you are not one of those welfare state “takers” you of course would have purchased s firefighting service from the private sector. And don’t you even think of getting behind on your payments for police protection.
This follows naturally from your position on abortion, right ?
AIUI the ‘cost to society’ comparison (i.e., your taxpayer burden if someone else has an abortion vs. your taxpayer burden if they have a kid) isn’t even close; the cost to other taxpayers of mere delivery is higher than the cost to the taxpayer of an abortion, and that’s just the beginning. Every year the parent takes a tax deduction for that child or receives CHIP support or food supplement, you-the-taxpayer are effectively subsidizing them even more. Then of course there are property taxes that pay for schools and such.
Society collectively spends a lot on kids. Which is a good thing; I’m sure we get good long-term return on investment out of doing so. But it also means that if a woman doesn’t want to have a kid but doesn’t have the money to abort it, its to our short term benefit as a bystanding taxpayers to just lump the cost. Because if we don’t, we’ll be lumping an even bigger cost for the next 18 years or so.
Except that taxpayer funds are already not going to abortions, and what the right is trying to do is make it so that one cannot get one at all, no matter how private their funding is.
But feel free to indulge your inner libertarian and talk about govt. being bad if it makes you happy.
“your inner libertarian”
Is that like ‘your inner fishiness?”
Probably not. Too many fish live communally.
I don’t understand the hard libertarian stance that eschews Government any more than the hard Communist stance that eschews private ownership. Government entities and businesses are both made up of humans and both types of institutions can be good or bad. Sometimes one is better than the other depending on the goal.
If we allowed everyone to not pay taxes based on some portion supporting something they don’t like, society would crumble. Let everyone who wants electricity fund it privately. Clean water? You should pay the highest bidder to clean it for you? Want infrastructure so you can travel easily? Pay the owner of the road. Almost everyone would fund a way to opt out of taxes if this option were provided and soon you’d have no Governed at all to even enforce what currency is valid to support this private utopia. This mentality brings to mind the old Fry and Laurie sketch.
Forgot to add…I’ve talked to people who make similar arguments about their tax money supporting education because they either don’t have kids or their kids are grown so they are supporting the takers who have kids in school. There is no benefit to funding education if the youth isnt your offspring…Really?
+1 Fry and Laurie!
Also agree with your exasperation with people who don’t see the need to fund others’ childrens’ educations.
“….and I wouldn’t have to scourge myself with whips if he was elected.”
that was my morning laugh right there.
Theo-idioticy is always up for a dealing to, this permanent state of being a little child the fixation that justice and meaning is for the afterlife bothers me no end.
Another Republican madman. If, as president, he must drop the bomb, it is because God wanted it, and it is for the greater good, my child.
Religion just isn’t discussed by mainstream political candidates in NZ. Politicians are judged on their own ability to do the job, and not on whether they ask a deity for help. As a result, our parliament has members who are atheist, Christian, Sikh, Jewish, Muslim, Rastafarian (though no Rastas currently), and more.
To me it’s bizarre seeing an obviously talented politician speaking like this. Here, an answer like his would result in him losing votes. A politician saying he “fell to his knees” in the tough times would be looked at sideways even by most other Christians. We have religious political parties, but not enough people have ever voted for them to get a single seat in parliament.
Politicians judged on their own ability to do the job. I’m sorry but that just won’t do here in the U.S. of A. Politicians are judged by their ability to take and get as much money as they can. Raise money by any means possible and always be on the lookout for money. And never vote sideways on the lobbies that butter your bread. The folks back home…they will usually vote for the guy with the most money.
If this guy fell to his knees he was most likely praying for more money.
sub
I think “God works in mysterious ways” can be reformulated into a scientific hypothesis:
“God works in ways entirely consistent with His nonexistence.”
And now, it becomes the job of the theologians to falsify the hypothesis.
2000 years of crickets chirping (& more for some other religions) suggests that the hypothesis is ready to be raised to the status of theory.
LOVE IT!
Something there reminds me of a bumper sticker seen in southern Sweden:
Dear god, please protect me from your belivers!
Doesn’t want transplants to be available or something? (livers) Giggles.
The man has to get elected first –– as a Republican –– and to do that he will have to express these cliches. All politicians have to nuance this stuff. Heck, Bill and Hillary outright lied yet Bill was effective. Hillary is a Master at evasion…
My choices: Kucinich who has less charisma but solid experience in governing with two parties; Fiorino, who has no experience in government, but understands the principles of limited government and rule by the Constitution; or Rand Paul, because he recognizes the debt is an issue and also grasps the meaning of legitimate government; lastly, Rubio, who gets my vote so far, because he offers a reasonable, legal and just method for various groups of illegal immigrants to attain legal status. I need to learn more about these four. Clinton is out: she strikes me as an Eva Peron type. Power-monger. I cannot get out of my memory the time when she was chairing an inquiry as a senator, and goaded a young man being questioned as whether he should not just commit suicide. Chilling. Brought up memories of Vince Foster. She is a cold person.
Before you tell us which candidate you support, you should get his name right. Dennis Kucinich is a former liberal Democratic representative from Ohio. I think you’re referring to the current Ohio governor, Republican John Kasich.
I can not find this goading story you speak of. Give us details so we can verify it, or it’s just another fairy tale.
Look up ‘callow’ in the dictionary. You’ll see a picture of Rubio there.
From Eric: “Well as theistic responses go, I’d say this is at least more mainstream and less bad than the answer some of the other GOP candidates would probably give. I’d rather have a ‘classic theist’ in the chair than someone who states that 9/11 was punishment for allowing gays to marry or espoused divine command theory or whatever. I bet Hilary would give basically the same answer. Not that it’s a good answer, only that when it comes time to pull the lever, this answer wouldn’t be data I’d consider.”
Is nuance such a bad thing? I like Eric’s response best in a political decision, usually which is: “Choice 1: not so good…choice 2: ACK!” Better than war. But all these responses resonate with me. I do not HATE religion. I just recognize it for what it is and move on. And am well-read enough to engage in discourse with the religious in a loving way.
I do not HATE cancer or traffic accidents. But I don’t engage in discourse or loving ways with them either.
I’m curious what a “loving way” is in this context.
Wait a minute, Rubio believes in vaccination? He just lost MY vote.
Wait a minute, Rubio believes in vaccination? What’s up with THAT?
Excuse double post in error.
I’ve always thought that when someone says “God works in mysterious ways” it means they’re admitting they don’t have the foggiest f’in idea what their sky fairy is all about.
Believers think in mysterious ways.
Since its founding in the mid-1850s, evangelical Protestants has always been a major constituency of the Republican Party. Now, conservative Catholics have been added to the mix (due largely to the abortion issue). It is therefore not surprising that religious talk is so surprising among the presidential candidates, particularly Rubio and the even more odious Ted Cruz. Even Trump tries, although his efforts are laughable. These candidates have become quasi-ministers, trying to assure the base through the universal cop-out that no matter what evil happens in the world, it is all part of G*d’s plan. Humans are too dumb to understand it. They are saying things no different than what actual priests and ministers say. And, as always, the faith addled will fall for it. It’s a strategy that can’t fall and makes for great politics by the Republican candidates.
Several thoughts:
1. What is the point of prayer if a believer asks god for something and the prayer isn’t answered, or something worse than what was asked for is received? One might just as well not pray and take what comes as being the dictates of god.
2. “Throne of god” came about at a time when
kings or emperors seated on thrones were leaders of the state. If one had to posit a deity, what kind would a democracy have (other than none)?
I could see a polytheist pantheon potentially being democratic. The monotheisms, however, are completely authoritarian dictatorships.
For those interested in a more serious discussion on the subject,
I recommend highly
Bart Ehrman’s “God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question–Why We Suffer”.
It was this issue rather than historical Jesus studies that caused Ehrman to abandon his Christian faith.
Sometimes God’s mysterious ways means giving a kid in the First World a yellow kite. Other times, they involve millions of kids in Africa starving to death on an annual basis. Who are we to question the motives of a fictional vindictive psychopath?
Every time I see the word ‘theodicy’ I automatically read it as ‘theidiocy’ – which is about right I suppose.
Why is it that the “mysterious ways” in which the Lord supposedly works are strikingly consistent with with randomness? Why is it that religious folk have no problem “understanding” that favorable developments are the work of god, but somehow the explanation for unfavorable developments is always unknown and mysterious and cannot be understood?
Moreover, Rubio and his ilk haven’t really thought through the consequences of their theory that god sometimes allows bad things to happen because of some greater good that we can’t comprehend (like his hypothetical 3 or 4 year old). If that is true, then how do we mere mortals know what evil we should try to stop, and what evil is just part of god’s mysterious ways? Why should I report an infant locked in a hot car if the child’s death might be part of some greater good that I’m just too gosh darn stupid to see? Should I really take the chance that I might screw up god’s plan? Help me out here Marco.
Finally, let’s take this whole argument back one step further. Under what other circumstances would we ever allow someone who commits a despicable act (or who fails to prevent a despicable act when it’s in his power to do so), to avoid blame by concluding that perhaps we just don’t understand his mysterious ways. The very concept demonstrates the absurd length’s religious folks will go to rationalize a completely irrational position. If we genuinely accept that as a valid argument then we should immediately empty the jails and prisons, since it may be that our failure to understand the mysterious ways of the prisoners had erroneously led us to believe that they had committed crimes.
To add to your point, how does one go about distinguishing between an evil act having been stopped by God and an evil act having been stopped by people? Sure, theists say God put people in the right place at the right time when we do stop acts of evil, but these evil acts never seemed to be stopped by God alone, without the presence of humans. An evil act stopped by God alone is indistinguishable from an evil act that actually occurred.
That is Ben’s “Why doesn’t Jesus call 911?” — when for example he sees a priest raping an 8 year old boy/girl?
The child being given the needle analogy is of course and old trope, and a similar analogy I’ve often seen is the animal who is shot with tranquilizers and captured. The animal sees this as a bad thing, but it just doesn’t know that the humans doing this are actually working for it’s welfare – they have moral reasons for moving it to a place where it won’t die but will thrive.
What that entirely misses is: if that’s the case, if a being is suffering apparent harm and can not or does not know, or is not told, the reasons, then that being is completely justified in presuming things are as the seem: they are being attacked. You can’t blame the animal for presuming it is being attacked, and if an adult isn’t giving a child good reasons for stabbing her with a needle, the child is certainly justified in
presuming the worst.
So merely alluding to “there could be a good reason” is utterly empty without God actually supplying the reason.
But then the Christian will typically say: but God has shown us previously that He is Good, Loves us and we can trust Him. Oh. Ok, then we CAN adjudicate God’s character from the evidence of His actions. Well then, you can’t just arbitrarily (as Jerry points out) allow only one type of evidence – whatever would support the conclusion God is good – and disallow counter evidence.
And since that’s the case, it makes the “God is beyond our ken” trope completely moot.
We are left to judge the best we can, from the evidence, as the Christian is already doing.
And the “mysterious ways” response is completely contradicted by the existence of The Bible. The whole book is purportedly a record of God’s ways AND his moral reasoning.
It’s like they suddenly have amnesia, forgetting that for virtually every action God takes in the Bible, the reason for that action is explained. Given we have an entire book showing just how awful God’s moral reasoning is when he’s addressing us directly, why in the world should we have “faith” God’s reasoning any better when He’s Off-Stage?
In the OT his “moral reasoning” mostly seems to have to do with his anger. Confidence inspiring.
For the fun of it, I went to Amazon and looked at the blurb on the inner flap of the Arno Froese book that Professor Coyne referenced. It is reproduced below. I do not know whether to laugh or cry. Here is a bit of wisdom I’m sure we can all agree upon. If your prayers aren’t answered, you haven’t prayed enough. Just keep on doing it; maybe you’ll get lucky.
_________________________
Does God ignore certain prayer requests? We know that He hears the prayers of His people, but how many times have you brought certain petitions before the Lord and then, when the results you hoped for-even expected-did not occur, you became angry and assumed that God was disregarding you? How can you know whether your prayers align with God’s will? What role does unconfessed sin play in communicating with God and His responses? These are some of the many thought-provoking questions we will explore throughout this book.
Prayer is one of the most important aspects of our Christian life, yet many of us become discouraged, disappointed and disheartened regarding the quality of our prayer lives. We may become angry when a prayer is not answered according to what we think we need. We have no difficulty in proclaiming God’s sovereignty to others, while personally finding it tough to accept that God knows what is best. Often we may even find ourselves desperate and depressed, crying out to the Lord for deliverance…yet He seems to send none. What must we do? Rather than become upset or angry, we should evaluate the circumstances regarding our communion with God and meditate on His Word. First Corinthians 10:13 promises that God will not give us more than we can bear: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way of escape, that ye may be able to bear it! .” Unfortunately, when we feel like we are coming apart at the seams, and it appears that there is no way out, we find it much easier to focus on our surroundings than to saturate our minds with the many expressions of love and concern such as this that God reveals in His Word.
As we view this subject of unanswered prayer, we must look at two issues: first, whether our request is Bible-based, aligning with God’s perfect plan for us; and second, whether we have prayed diligently enough. Too often we pray only once regarding certain situations and give up after a short time because we regard the lack of an immediate response as a signal that God is ignoring our request. Our prayers must graduate to a level of urgency! Prayer should illustrate an “I-can-do-nothing-without-You” attitude to the Lord. We show our complete reliance on Him when we pray. In essence, our prayers demonstrate that we believe without a shadow of a doubt that He is “…able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us” (Ephesians 3:20). If we give up after bringing our request before the Lord only a handful of times, then we must ask ourselves how important this request was in the first place.
While we should pray without ceasing (1st Thessalonians 5:17) and pray diligently and fervently, we must never forget that God is not a vending machine, nor is He a genie. He is Almighty God! For example, contrary to the teaching from certain pulpits, we cannot demand that God take away our debt in the name of Jesus; however, we can pray that the Lord would help us become better stewards of all that He has given to us. We cannot command the Lord to change our financial status; however, we can ask the Lord to “give us this day our daily bread” (Luke 11:3). See the difference? Which prayer do you think brings God the most glory?
You are about to enter into the lives of many great men of God who made requests of the Lord, requests that He chose to deny for His reason, His purpose, and ultimately, His glory. You may identify with some of these circumstances, but what is more important, we pray that these character studies will help you better understand why some prayers are answered and others are not. You will also learn that it is more important to look at the big picture and see that the way things turn out is usually better than we expect! The content of Dear God, Thank You For Not Answering My Prayer will remind you that God’s plans are perfect, while our idea of what we feel we need is imperfect. The Lord knows what is best for us, we need only trust Him.
It is our prayer that you will be encouraged, edified and exhorted as you continue to press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call!
—————-
“God is not a vending machine”
That explains a lot.
“So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours.”
Gospel of Mark, 11:24
“Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”
Gospel of Matthew, 7:7-11
“And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”
Gospel of Matthew, 21:22
“Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.”
Gospel of John, 14:13-14
“Is any one among you suffering? Let him pray . . . . Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects.”
James 5:13-16
Over and over and over again, Jesus and other biblical figures promise the Christian faithful that whatever they ask for in prayer will be granted to them. Contrary to the excuses that have been fabricated by Christian apologist, the bible does NOT say that god will “answer” your prayers, such that sometimes the answer might happen to be “no.” Moreover, the bible does NOT say that god will grant your prayers “if he thinks you’re worthy,” or “if he thinks it’s best for you,” or “if it’s consistent with his plan.” Instead, god repeatedly and unequivocally promises to GRANT the prayers of the faithful. To the extent that the prayer requests of millions upon millions of devout Christians go unfulfilled on a regular basis, there are only two logical explanations: (1) god does not exist; or (2) god is a liar.
“The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” – James 5:16
“There is no one righteous, not even one” – Romans 3:19-20
Well, that about wraps it up for prayer, eh?
Someone should have pointed this out to the makers of The War Room.
Thanks for the quotes, gluonspring. I’m sharing them with friends.
Dear Senator Rubio,
Your god sounds like an asshole.
Sincerely,
as always, Christians want to claim that prayers work, but when they don’t, then their god is ever so mysterious. If one believes the bible, prayers always should work, there should be no question about why they didn’t. And no excuses needed invented by puny humans.
Elijah had the right idea when he taunted the prophets of Baal for being unable to get their god to call fire down from the sky: “Shout louder!” he said. “Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.
Here the Bible itself shows us what real gods do and what imaginary gods do, and how we should react to imaginary gods: with scoffing.
I think Elijah had a great idea too. I’ve asked Christians to participate in an altar competition. Funny how they always offer excuses why they won’t do it and why their god can’t do this anymore.
Bart Erhman explains it much better than I can
Three things I don’t agree with:
– The claim that we don’t know why there is suffering.
– The claim that Truth doesn’t exist.
– The claim that Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris say that religion is responsible for all the evil things in the world.
Ya know, these sons of bitches, if you ask them a question with a scientific basis, they’ll be quick to say that they’re no scientist, but ask something like this and they’re theologians right from the gate.
Very true. But my guess is with religion – no facts, no evidence required and they love that.
One sure way to know when a politician is lying. Watch his lips. If they are moving…..he’s lying.
… Marco Rubio—the Conservative Kennedy …
It’s anathema among the most-conservative Cuban-Americans to be compared to a Kennedy — and has been since JFK declined to supply air support to the failing 1961 Bay-of-Pigs invasion, leaving stranded members of the CIA-sponsored Brigade 2506 to be slaughtered or taken prisoner on the Playa Girón.
Rubio has a strange, only-in-America religious background, one that hints of opportunism. He was born and baptized into a Catholic family, but was also baptized, and practiced for several years as a child, as a Mormon when his family lived in Nevada. The Rubio familia returned to the Catholic fold upon leaving Nevada, and Rubio made his First Communion at age 13 (six years later than the norm). Rubio continues to be a Catholic, at least nominally, but his stronger religious affiliation as an adult has been with Christ Fellowship, a south-Florida Evangelical mega-church. (It’s been common among Miami’s rightwing Cuban population to defect to Evangelical churches, finding Catholicism too liberal for their liking.)
Rubio is articulate (sometimes to the point of glibness), and a topnotch retail politician. He came out of nowhere, as a little-known state legislator, to beat popular two-term governor Charlie Crist for the 2010 GOP nomination for an open Florida US Senate seat. Following his meteoric rise, Rubio was often referred to as the Republican (or Hispanic) Obama — although, unlike Barack, who shone during his keynote address at the 2004 Dem convention, Rubio and his water bottle flubbed his launch as a national figure when presenting the Republican rebuttal to the 2013 SOTU address.
“Obviously, we are fortunate to live in a country where the persecution is relative compared to other parts of the world.”
You’re not persecuted at all you idiot.
Sorry PCC, I shouldn’t have called him an idiot but that type of statement really gets me.
Apropos of this discussion this story just appeared in my Facebook news feed. While watching uncounted children die horrific deaths all over the world God, nevertheless, took time out to save this one infant. Of course, he didn’t do it himself. That would violate the God Prime Directive. But he did manage to have one of his acolytes do it.
Well as theistic responses go, I’d say this is at least more mainstream and less bad than the answer some of the other GOP candidates would probably give. I’d rather have a ‘classic theist’ in the chair than someone who states that 9/11 was punishment for allowing gays to marry or espoused divine command theory or whatever. I bet Hilary would give basically the same answer. Not that its a good answer, only that when it comes time to pull the lever, this answer wouldn’t be data I’d consider.
Man, you beat me to it. Anything is preferable to, “Well, God told me it was because of X”.
Digging the marinated in faith image.
Okay to dig, just don’t eat any of it.
The “…on the throne in Heaven” thing suggests a target audience that are something less than Sophisticated Theologians.
On my visit to Japan this summer I most definitely found the Throne of Heaven.
No, I think “Throne of Heaven” is fanciful enough to pass into the “beautiful metaphor which is not meant to be taken literally” category of Sophisticated Theology. After all, that’s a pretty big category.
The throne? As in, one? One throne, several billion people. Sounds more like hell to me. Especially if God’s always on it.
Yes, who appointed that misfit to boss!?
Religious management discipline is notable by its absence.
Torbjorn IIRC you’re not an American, so at the risk of ruining the joke I’ll explain it to you. In American English, throne can also be a reference to the toilet. Also known as ‘the porcelain throne.’ One throne in all of heaven? And God’s always on it? What a mess. 🙂
Well, now I see why Heaven is so great. There’s no facilities to be found in Hell.
Not sure whether or not this is God’s throne in heaven
https://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/toilet-title.jpg
…except for the fence around the property.
Have to say it — Holly crapper
And if God’s name is ‘Allah,’ then the bad things that happened to good people in Paris or on 9/11 can magically turn into GOOD things that happened to BAD people! It always challenges us to understand that maybe, from God’s point of view, we’re actually the Damned. And that’s a good thing! Doesn’t matter what we think. Allah’s ways are not ours (PBUH.)
When small children are confused about why Daddy hits them over and over again with a belt, they find it hard to realize that he’s only doing that because they’ve been just that bad. If they die, then the world had to be saved from their toxic presence. God doesn’t promise peace on earth, but a perfect Heaven from which the wicked have been purged. We are all part of that plan, whichever role we play.
Wow, what a misguided unfortunate. ‘God’s way are not our ways’. What lazy thought. There ought to be an entrance exam for one to run for public office!
Public office entrance exam (multiple choice):
A. God is a myth not real.
B. Adam and Eve cannot be the bottleneck.
C. Evolution is true.
D. All of the above.
Essay question:
State in your own words, why evolution is true.
Trying to determine which one of these republican candidates is worse or best is really a waste of time. They are all at the bottom of every chain that matters.
Rubio makes stuff up as he goes, just like the rest. Makes no difference because the ignorant don’t care. God sits up there on the throne and out comes all that stuff that Rubio is throwing back. Absolute and total nonsense.
He says we have been biblically ordered to not be afraid. Then in the next minute we are told that we will be hated and persecuted.
Well, damn good thing you had already said, no need to be afraid. Then the next time some guy slaughters a bunch of us, don’t fear because he works in strange ways. He is right…even a 2nd grader would say – Bullshit.
“Trying to determine which one of these republican candidates is worse or best is really a waste of time. They are all at the bottom of every chain that matters.”
I agree. And to beat the dead horse again, the biggest implication for the next POTUS will be the majority on SCOTUS. NONE of the republican candidates will do anything but create an unbeatable conservative court. And with no SCOTUS term limits, a super-majority of religiously driven ideologues would be a generational catastrophe.
Yes, and if you look at the House of Rep. there already is a catastrophe. So yes, we may put a democrat in the white house but with this congress we still have a big zero.
If Rubio is right, does that mean everything is permitted? If God didn’t want us to do something, wouldn’t he stop it to protect His plan?
sounds like the excuse I can see Catholic priests giving to excuse their abuse.
If I were to take gods’ implied word at face value, it would appear that He is saying that we should not seek to cure disease or healed the injured. It is also part of gods’ plan to murder apostates, and commit genocide against people who are not, oh, 7th Day Adventists, or whatever. In short, that we should not care about anything except our own, personal salvation and the salvation of our immediate family.
That description, a weird as it is, is not far from Christian Science and it cousins. If your child or spouse is sick, just pray God will do whatever he wants, including kill said family member.
“It always challenges us to understand that God’s ways are not our ways”
Except of course when your gods ways align with your own ways, for example homosexuality is evil, women should not have control over their own bodies, god would never allow humans to damage the planet via anthropogenic climate change, the poor are poor because they deserve it and so on.
Then, strangely enough, your gods ways seem to be crystal clear.
I saw Carly Fiorina on Fox yesterday talking about the six things that would be a priority in the early days of her presidency. #3 on the list was abortion. FFS! All the other things were reasonable ones for a president to concern themself with, whether you agree with their policy position or not, but abortion?
This is about religion “fighting back” against the “persecution” they’ve been suffering because of the trials visited upon them as they are “forced to accept” happily married same-sex couples.
Wee lesson bigots: people you don’t approve of being happy will not diminish your life in any way whatsoever unless you choose to let it.
In good will: Whatever you think about abortion, for me the question is: Why should the state mechanism of force (taxation) be imposed to supply the means to abort…at all? Get the government bullies and politicians out of the picture and out of the discourse altogether: Let those who support abortion raise funds from the private sector, like so many do. If it is a good idea (in a democratic system of free choice), the money will come. Let NOW get to work on useful things! Et cetera.
Just tossing some bread on these tumultuous waters…
It all depends on whether you view abortion as a necessary medical procedure, or something whores who are too lazy to use contraception do.
Although for most it’s an extremely difficult choice, it is also often the sensible and responsible one. Like every other form of medical treatment, whether it is necessary should be a decision between the patient and their doctor. It is not for others to be passing judgment when they don’t know all the factors, and a patient shouldn’t have to have her privacy breached and expose herself to the general public to justify the decision.
Using your reasoning, we could refuse to treat people for heart disease, strokes, lung and throat cancer etc if they smoke heavily or are grossly overweight. Let’s not treat skin cancer victims who spend too long in the sun.
If treatment for skin cancer is necessary, I’m sure charities will spring up to pay for it.
Really. You are comparing a developing potential Steve Jobs with cancer. You know, I am not for anyone stopping a woman from aborting her fetus! I am asking you to THINK about FORCING people, with which you happen to not agree, who are deeply opposed to aborting a fetus on moral grounds, to pay for that procedure.
You evidently do not allow space for people who do not wish to support your agendas. And there is no logical comparison to be made to smoking unless you say maybe people who smoke by choice or women who have unprotected sex by choice maybe ought to be personally responsible for their own choices. No. Taxes should not be used for social engineering.
Taxes are social engineering.
People who oppose war still have to pay the portion of their taxes that pay for the military. People who are morally opposed to all healthcare beyond prayer still have to pay Medicare and Medicaid. There are plenty of other things people are morally opposed to as well, but that doesn’t give them the right not to pay.
I do not see how this is social engineering, but taxes ARE social engineering. They are about creating the society of the country. You pay taxes to pay the police to enforce the laws enacted in a democracy. You have to abide by those laws even if you don’t agree with some of them.
Not sure if you are aware – but in this country the way it works is that people vote on things and then laws go into affect and we all must participate. You don’t get to say, Hey, on this issue over here (abortion) I don’t won’t to pay and you can’t force me. But that is the way the semi-democratic government works. You don’t get to bail out. Some states tried that once and it didn’t work out well.
To ….dj possi… :
Of course there never is a man involved who chooses to have unprotected sex.
And while we’re at it, let’s get the state of of building roads and other infrastructure, healthcare in general, firefighting and policing.
Let those who support those things raise funds to do these things and get the state mechanism of force out of the picture and discourse altogether.
I mean if you are not one of those welfare state “takers” you of course would have purchased s firefighting service from the private sector. And don’t you even think of getting behind on your payments for police protection.
This follows naturally from your position on abortion, right ?
AIUI the ‘cost to society’ comparison (i.e., your taxpayer burden if someone else has an abortion vs. your taxpayer burden if they have a kid) isn’t even close; the cost to other taxpayers of mere delivery is higher than the cost to the taxpayer of an abortion, and that’s just the beginning. Every year the parent takes a tax deduction for that child or receives CHIP support or food supplement, you-the-taxpayer are effectively subsidizing them even more. Then of course there are property taxes that pay for schools and such.
Society collectively spends a lot on kids. Which is a good thing; I’m sure we get good long-term return on investment out of doing so. But it also means that if a woman doesn’t want to have a kid but doesn’t have the money to abort it, its to our short term benefit as a bystanding taxpayers to just lump the cost. Because if we don’t, we’ll be lumping an even bigger cost for the next 18 years or so.
Except that taxpayer funds are already not going to abortions, and what the right is trying to do is make it so that one cannot get one at all, no matter how private their funding is.
But feel free to indulge your inner libertarian and talk about govt. being bad if it makes you happy.
“your inner libertarian”
Is that like ‘your inner fishiness?”
Probably not. Too many fish live communally.
I don’t understand the hard libertarian stance that eschews Government any more than the hard Communist stance that eschews private ownership. Government entities and businesses are both made up of humans and both types of institutions can be good or bad. Sometimes one is better than the other depending on the goal.
If we allowed everyone to not pay taxes based on some portion supporting something they don’t like, society would crumble. Let everyone who wants electricity fund it privately. Clean water? You should pay the highest bidder to clean it for you? Want infrastructure so you can travel easily? Pay the owner of the road. Almost everyone would fund a way to opt out of taxes if this option were provided and soon you’d have no Governed at all to even enforce what currency is valid to support this private utopia. This mentality brings to mind the old Fry and Laurie sketch.
Forgot to add…I’ve talked to people who make similar arguments about their tax money supporting education because they either don’t have kids or their kids are grown so they are supporting the takers who have kids in school. There is no benefit to funding education if the youth isnt your offspring…Really?
+1 Fry and Laurie!
Also agree with your exasperation with people who don’t see the need to fund others’ childrens’ educations.
“….and I wouldn’t have to scourge myself with whips if he was elected.”
that was my morning laugh right there.
Theo-idioticy is always up for a dealing to, this permanent state of being a little child the fixation that justice and meaning is for the afterlife bothers me no end.
Another Republican madman. If, as president, he must drop the bomb, it is because God wanted it, and it is for the greater good, my child.
Religion just isn’t discussed by mainstream political candidates in NZ. Politicians are judged on their own ability to do the job, and not on whether they ask a deity for help. As a result, our parliament has members who are atheist, Christian, Sikh, Jewish, Muslim, Rastafarian (though no Rastas currently), and more.
To me it’s bizarre seeing an obviously talented politician speaking like this. Here, an answer like his would result in him losing votes. A politician saying he “fell to his knees” in the tough times would be looked at sideways even by most other Christians. We have religious political parties, but not enough people have ever voted for them to get a single seat in parliament.
Politicians judged on their own ability to do the job. I’m sorry but that just won’t do here in the U.S. of A. Politicians are judged by their ability to take and get as much money as they can. Raise money by any means possible and always be on the lookout for money. And never vote sideways on the lobbies that butter your bread. The folks back home…they will usually vote for the guy with the most money.
If this guy fell to his knees he was most likely praying for more money.
sub
I think “God works in mysterious ways” can be reformulated into a scientific hypothesis:
“God works in ways entirely consistent with His nonexistence.”
And now, it becomes the job of the theologians to falsify the hypothesis.
2000 years of crickets chirping (& more for some other religions) suggests that the hypothesis is ready to be raised to the status of theory.
LOVE IT!
Something there reminds me of a bumper sticker seen in southern Sweden:
Dear god, please protect me from your belivers!
Doesn’t want transplants to be available or something? (livers) Giggles.
The man has to get elected first –– as a Republican –– and to do that he will have to express these cliches. All politicians have to nuance this stuff. Heck, Bill and Hillary outright lied yet Bill was effective. Hillary is a Master at evasion…
My choices: Kucinich who has less charisma but solid experience in governing with two parties; Fiorino, who has no experience in government, but understands the principles of limited government and rule by the Constitution; or Rand Paul, because he recognizes the debt is an issue and also grasps the meaning of legitimate government; lastly, Rubio, who gets my vote so far, because he offers a reasonable, legal and just method for various groups of illegal immigrants to attain legal status. I need to learn more about these four. Clinton is out: she strikes me as an Eva Peron type. Power-monger. I cannot get out of my memory the time when she was chairing an inquiry as a senator, and goaded a young man being questioned as whether he should not just commit suicide. Chilling. Brought up memories of Vince Foster. She is a cold person.
Before you tell us which candidate you support, you should get his name right. Dennis Kucinich is a former liberal Democratic representative from Ohio. I think you’re referring to the current Ohio governor, Republican John Kasich.
I can not find this goading story you speak of. Give us details so we can verify it, or it’s just another fairy tale.
Look up ‘callow’ in the dictionary. You’ll see a picture of Rubio there.
From Eric: “Well as theistic responses go, I’d say this is at least more mainstream and less bad than the answer some of the other GOP candidates would probably give. I’d rather have a ‘classic theist’ in the chair than someone who states that 9/11 was punishment for allowing gays to marry or espoused divine command theory or whatever. I bet Hilary would give basically the same answer. Not that it’s a good answer, only that when it comes time to pull the lever, this answer wouldn’t be data I’d consider.”
Is nuance such a bad thing? I like Eric’s response best in a political decision, usually which is: “Choice 1: not so good…choice 2: ACK!” Better than war. But all these responses resonate with me. I do not HATE religion. I just recognize it for what it is and move on. And am well-read enough to engage in discourse with the religious in a loving way.
I do not HATE cancer or traffic accidents. But I don’t engage in discourse or loving ways with them either.
I’m curious what a “loving way” is in this context.
Wait a minute, Rubio believes in vaccination? He just lost MY vote.
Wait a minute, Rubio believes in vaccination? What’s up with THAT?
Excuse double post in error.
I’ve always thought that when someone says “God works in mysterious ways” it means they’re admitting they don’t have the foggiest f’in idea what their sky fairy is all about.
Believers think in mysterious ways.
Since its founding in the mid-1850s, evangelical Protestants has always been a major constituency of the Republican Party. Now, conservative Catholics have been added to the mix (due largely to the abortion issue). It is therefore not surprising that religious talk is so surprising among the presidential candidates, particularly Rubio and the even more odious Ted Cruz. Even Trump tries, although his efforts are laughable. These candidates have become quasi-ministers, trying to assure the base through the universal cop-out that no matter what evil happens in the world, it is all part of G*d’s plan. Humans are too dumb to understand it. They are saying things no different than what actual priests and ministers say. And, as always, the faith addled will fall for it. It’s a strategy that can’t fall and makes for great politics by the Republican candidates.
Several thoughts:
1. What is the point of prayer if a believer asks god for something and the prayer isn’t answered, or something worse than what was asked for is received? One might just as well not pray and take what comes as being the dictates of god.
2. “Throne of god” came about at a time when
kings or emperors seated on thrones were leaders of the state. If one had to posit a deity, what kind would a democracy have (other than none)?
I could see a polytheist pantheon potentially being democratic. The monotheisms, however, are completely authoritarian dictatorships.
For those interested in a more serious discussion on the subject,
I recommend highly
Bart Ehrman’s “God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question–Why We Suffer”.
It was this issue rather than historical Jesus studies that caused Ehrman to abandon his Christian faith.
Sometimes God’s mysterious ways means giving a kid in the First World a yellow kite. Other times, they involve millions of kids in Africa starving to death on an annual basis. Who are we to question the motives of a fictional vindictive psychopath?
Every time I see the word ‘theodicy’ I automatically read it as ‘theidiocy’ – which is about right I suppose.
Why is it that the “mysterious ways” in which the Lord supposedly works are strikingly consistent with with randomness? Why is it that religious folk have no problem “understanding” that favorable developments are the work of god, but somehow the explanation for unfavorable developments is always unknown and mysterious and cannot be understood?
Moreover, Rubio and his ilk haven’t really thought through the consequences of their theory that god sometimes allows bad things to happen because of some greater good that we can’t comprehend (like his hypothetical 3 or 4 year old). If that is true, then how do we mere mortals know what evil we should try to stop, and what evil is just part of god’s mysterious ways? Why should I report an infant locked in a hot car if the child’s death might be part of some greater good that I’m just too gosh darn stupid to see? Should I really take the chance that I might screw up god’s plan? Help me out here Marco.
Finally, let’s take this whole argument back one step further. Under what other circumstances would we ever allow someone who commits a despicable act (or who fails to prevent a despicable act when it’s in his power to do so), to avoid blame by concluding that perhaps we just don’t understand his mysterious ways. The very concept demonstrates the absurd length’s religious folks will go to rationalize a completely irrational position. If we genuinely accept that as a valid argument then we should immediately empty the jails and prisons, since it may be that our failure to understand the mysterious ways of the prisoners had erroneously led us to believe that they had committed crimes.
To add to your point, how does one go about distinguishing between an evil act having been stopped by God and an evil act having been stopped by people? Sure, theists say God put people in the right place at the right time when we do stop acts of evil, but these evil acts never seemed to be stopped by God alone, without the presence of humans. An evil act stopped by God alone is indistinguishable from an evil act that actually occurred.
That is Ben’s “Why doesn’t Jesus call 911?” — when for example he sees a priest raping an 8 year old boy/girl?
The child being given the needle analogy is of course and old trope, and a similar analogy I’ve often seen is the animal who is shot with tranquilizers and captured. The animal sees this as a bad thing, but it just doesn’t know that the humans doing this are actually working for it’s welfare – they have moral reasons for moving it to a place where it won’t die but will thrive.
What that entirely misses is: if that’s the case, if a being is suffering apparent harm and can not or does not know, or is not told, the reasons, then that being is completely justified in presuming things are as the seem: they are being attacked. You can’t blame the animal for presuming it is being attacked, and if an adult isn’t giving a child good reasons for stabbing her with a needle, the child is certainly justified in
presuming the worst.
So merely alluding to “there could be a good reason” is utterly empty without God actually supplying the reason.
But then the Christian will typically say: but God has shown us previously that He is Good, Loves us and we can trust Him. Oh. Ok, then we CAN adjudicate God’s character from the evidence of His actions. Well then, you can’t just arbitrarily (as Jerry points out) allow only one type of evidence – whatever would support the conclusion God is good – and disallow counter evidence.
And since that’s the case, it makes the “God is beyond our ken” trope completely moot.
We are left to judge the best we can, from the evidence, as the Christian is already doing.
And the “mysterious ways” response is completely contradicted by the existence of The Bible. The whole book is purportedly a record of God’s ways AND his moral reasoning.
It’s like they suddenly have amnesia, forgetting that for virtually every action God takes in the Bible, the reason for that action is explained. Given we have an entire book showing just how awful God’s moral reasoning is when he’s addressing us directly, why in the world should we have “faith” God’s reasoning any better when He’s Off-Stage?
In the OT his “moral reasoning” mostly seems to have to do with his anger. Confidence inspiring.
For the fun of it, I went to Amazon and looked at the blurb on the inner flap of the Arno Froese book that Professor Coyne referenced. It is reproduced below. I do not know whether to laugh or cry. Here is a bit of wisdom I’m sure we can all agree upon. If your prayers aren’t answered, you haven’t prayed enough. Just keep on doing it; maybe you’ll get lucky.
_________________________
Does God ignore certain prayer requests? We know that He hears the prayers of His people, but how many times have you brought certain petitions before the Lord and then, when the results you hoped for-even expected-did not occur, you became angry and assumed that God was disregarding you? How can you know whether your prayers align with God’s will? What role does unconfessed sin play in communicating with God and His responses? These are some of the many thought-provoking questions we will explore throughout this book.
Prayer is one of the most important aspects of our Christian life, yet many of us become discouraged, disappointed and disheartened regarding the quality of our prayer lives. We may become angry when a prayer is not answered according to what we think we need. We have no difficulty in proclaiming God’s sovereignty to others, while personally finding it tough to accept that God knows what is best. Often we may even find ourselves desperate and depressed, crying out to the Lord for deliverance…yet He seems to send none. What must we do? Rather than become upset or angry, we should evaluate the circumstances regarding our communion with God and meditate on His Word. First Corinthians 10:13 promises that God will not give us more than we can bear: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way of escape, that ye may be able to bear it! .” Unfortunately, when we feel like we are coming apart at the seams, and it appears that there is no way out, we find it much easier to focus on our surroundings than to saturate our minds with the many expressions of love and concern such as this that God reveals in His Word.
As we view this subject of unanswered prayer, we must look at two issues: first, whether our request is Bible-based, aligning with God’s perfect plan for us; and second, whether we have prayed diligently enough. Too often we pray only once regarding certain situations and give up after a short time because we regard the lack of an immediate response as a signal that God is ignoring our request. Our prayers must graduate to a level of urgency! Prayer should illustrate an “I-can-do-nothing-without-You” attitude to the Lord. We show our complete reliance on Him when we pray. In essence, our prayers demonstrate that we believe without a shadow of a doubt that He is “…able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us” (Ephesians 3:20). If we give up after bringing our request before the Lord only a handful of times, then we must ask ourselves how important this request was in the first place.
While we should pray without ceasing (1st Thessalonians 5:17) and pray diligently and fervently, we must never forget that God is not a vending machine, nor is He a genie. He is Almighty God! For example, contrary to the teaching from certain pulpits, we cannot demand that God take away our debt in the name of Jesus; however, we can pray that the Lord would help us become better stewards of all that He has given to us. We cannot command the Lord to change our financial status; however, we can ask the Lord to “give us this day our daily bread” (Luke 11:3). See the difference? Which prayer do you think brings God the most glory?
You are about to enter into the lives of many great men of God who made requests of the Lord, requests that He chose to deny for His reason, His purpose, and ultimately, His glory. You may identify with some of these circumstances, but what is more important, we pray that these character studies will help you better understand why some prayers are answered and others are not. You will also learn that it is more important to look at the big picture and see that the way things turn out is usually better than we expect! The content of Dear God, Thank You For Not Answering My Prayer will remind you that God’s plans are perfect, while our idea of what we feel we need is imperfect. The Lord knows what is best for us, we need only trust Him.
It is our prayer that you will be encouraged, edified and exhorted as you continue to press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call!
—————-
“God is not a vending machine”
That explains a lot.
“So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours.”
Gospel of Mark, 11:24
“Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”
Gospel of Matthew, 7:7-11
“And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”
Gospel of Matthew, 21:22
“Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.”
Gospel of John, 14:13-14
“Is any one among you suffering? Let him pray . . . . Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects.”
James 5:13-16
Over and over and over again, Jesus and other biblical figures promise the Christian faithful that whatever they ask for in prayer will be granted to them. Contrary to the excuses that have been fabricated by Christian apologist, the bible does NOT say that god will “answer” your prayers, such that sometimes the answer might happen to be “no.” Moreover, the bible does NOT say that god will grant your prayers “if he thinks you’re worthy,” or “if he thinks it’s best for you,” or “if it’s consistent with his plan.” Instead, god repeatedly and unequivocally promises to GRANT the prayers of the faithful. To the extent that the prayer requests of millions upon millions of devout Christians go unfulfilled on a regular basis, there are only two logical explanations: (1) god does not exist; or (2) god is a liar.
“The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” – James 5:16
“There is no one righteous, not even one” – Romans 3:19-20
Well, that about wraps it up for prayer, eh?
Someone should have pointed this out to the makers of The War Room.
Thanks for the quotes, gluonspring. I’m sharing them with friends.
Dear Senator Rubio,
Your god sounds like an asshole.
Sincerely,
as always, Christians want to claim that prayers work, but when they don’t, then their god is ever so mysterious. If one believes the bible, prayers always should work, there should be no question about why they didn’t. And no excuses needed invented by puny humans.
Elijah had the right idea when he taunted the prophets of Baal for being unable to get their god to call fire down from the sky: “Shout louder!” he said. “Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.
Here the Bible itself shows us what real gods do and what imaginary gods do, and how we should react to imaginary gods: with scoffing.
I think Elijah had a great idea too. I’ve asked Christians to participate in an altar competition. Funny how they always offer excuses why they won’t do it and why their god can’t do this anymore.
Bart Erhman explains it much better than I can
Three things I don’t agree with:
– The claim that we don’t know why there is suffering.
– The claim that Truth doesn’t exist.
– The claim that Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris say that religion is responsible for all the evil things in the world.
Ya know, these sons of bitches, if you ask them a question with a scientific basis, they’ll be quick to say that they’re no scientist, but ask something like this and they’re theologians right from the gate.
Very true. But my guess is with religion – no facts, no evidence required and they love that.
One sure way to know when a politician is lying. Watch his lips. If they are moving…..he’s lying.
It’s anathema among the most-conservative Cuban-Americans to be compared to a Kennedy — and has been since JFK declined to supply air support to the failing 1961 Bay-of-Pigs invasion, leaving stranded members of the CIA-sponsored Brigade 2506 to be slaughtered or taken prisoner on the Playa Girón.
Rubio has a strange, only-in-America religious background, one that hints of opportunism. He was born and baptized into a Catholic family, but was also baptized, and practiced for several years as a child, as a Mormon when his family lived in Nevada. The Rubio familia returned to the Catholic fold upon leaving Nevada, and Rubio made his First Communion at age 13 (six years later than the norm). Rubio continues to be a Catholic, at least nominally, but his stronger religious affiliation as an adult has been with Christ Fellowship, a south-Florida Evangelical mega-church. (It’s been common among Miami’s rightwing Cuban population to defect to Evangelical churches, finding Catholicism too liberal for their liking.)
Rubio is articulate (sometimes to the point of glibness), and a topnotch retail politician. He came out of nowhere, as a little-known state legislator, to beat popular two-term governor Charlie Crist for the 2010 GOP nomination for an open Florida US Senate seat. Following his meteoric rise, Rubio was often referred to as the Republican (or Hispanic) Obama — although, unlike Barack, who shone during his keynote address at the 2004 Dem convention, Rubio and his water bottle flubbed his launch as a national figure when presenting the Republican rebuttal to the 2013 SOTU address.
The GOP’s toughest ticket would likely be Rubio-Kasich. The betting markets, the surest sign of where the smart money is headed, have made Rubio the nomination favorite for the last month and a half, starting at 3-1 and dropping recently to nearly even money.
“Obviously, we are fortunate to live in a country where the persecution is relative compared to other parts of the world.”
You’re not persecuted at all you idiot.
Sorry PCC, I shouldn’t have called him an idiot but that type of statement really gets me.
Apropos of this discussion this story just appeared in my Facebook news feed. While watching uncounted children die horrific deaths all over the world God, nevertheless, took time out to save this one infant. Of course, he didn’t do it himself. That would violate the God Prime Directive. But he did manage to have one of his acolytes do it.