Thoughts and prayers

The whole concept of prayer, for me, is a tough one to figure out.

Whenever there is a tragedy, like the recent mass shooting in the church in Texas, we see immediate responses from people who want to express their concern and use the phrase "thoughts and prayers." And the last few times events like this has happened, the response from a large section of the country has been to make fun of or belittle the concept of "thoughts and prayers." As one national Democrat said, "Prayers are for pastors and priests; we need action!" And even some in the faith community like to throw out that prayer is not enough, using the verse in James that says, "Faith without action is worthless" (my translation; the most common translation is "so faith without works is dead also," from James 2:26). They say "Prayer alone isn't doing enough."

I admit the phrase "thoughts and prayers" is a bit of a cliché. It's what you say when you don't know what else to say, like saying "I'm sorry for your loss" at a funeral. You want to say something to express your sympathy and emotional distress over what has happened, while at the same time showing some measure of compassion for the survivors. So we've reduced it to the phrase "thoughts and prayers" (I think the "thoughts" part is simply added in so as not to offend those who might not believe in "prayers.")

Yet what else can most of us do in the face of horror, tragedy, and pure evil?

If you believe there is a God, and you believe that God is in control, then you pray.

If you don't believe in God, then you rely on your own strength, or the collective strength and ideas of those around you, to try to figure out what can be done to stop (or at least reduce the chance) this from happening again.

Those people might even say, "Yes, pray!" but that along with prayers we need more and tougher laws - as if laws ever really stopped evil. Heck, even those of us who believe in God recognize that despite the fact that Moses received the Ten Commandments straight from God, and a whole book of laws was written with some pretty horrible punishments for those who violated those laws, those laws were probably being broken before the next morning's camp fires were put out to start the days' march.

So what do we do in the face of such evil?

Those of us who believe, turn to God.

Those who don't believe point to horrible evil like the shooting in a church in Texas and say, "See? Prayer doesn't work. There is no God to protect the innocent."

But those people don't understand how prayer works. Heck, I'm a Christian who has read the Bible and attempted to follow the teachings of God my whole life, and I can't say I fully understand how prayer works. I mean, if God is unchangeable, how can prayer change things? Yet we're commanded to pray, and told to ask for things that defy the logic of whatever situation we're concerned about. We're told that somehow, someway, our actions and our faith here on earth affect things in Heaven. Even Jesus, at one point, said he was limited in his earthly ministry by a lack of faith (Mark 6:5 - "because of their unbelief, he couldn't do any miracles among them except to place his hands on a few sick people and heal them...")

Prayer is not a magic phrase that gives us what we desire and protects us from all harm. I can pray for things that are, ultimately, bad for me or my community and God in His wisdom won't grant my request. I can pray for things that are outside the will of God and God is under no obligation to even consider my prayer, as heartfelt as it might be. I can pray for what seems perfectly right and reasonable for my own situation, but I don't have knowledge of the bigger picture (think of the first chapter of the story of Job).

My prayer is to be aligned with God's will. Can I change God's will? There is certainly evidence in the Bible that suggest when people pray, God can decide to not do something He was thinking of doing, or put off doing something to give the people time to repent and get it right.

At the very least, my faith commands that I pick up my figurative cross and keep moving forward, and prayer is a way to both focus on God in the midst of everything that happens and, yes, to ask for supernatural courage and strength and wisdom to do the right thing when it seems impossible.

And the crazy thing is, sometimes we see the impossible accomplished, we see logic defied.

Other times the outcome doesn't change to reflect the way we wanted it to be, but we come to accept it because we do believe in a sovereign God who has the whole world in His hands, whose Will will be accomplished, and we believe that His Will is perfect, beyond our understanding. We've seen over and over that horror quite often gives way to salvation, that suffering has led to improving the lives of thousands, if not millions. As the Bible says in Genesis 50:20, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives."

The simple truth is that neither those of us who pray and those of us who demand more laws really have a human answer for stopping evil. It has existed since just after the world began. For all of our knowledge and advancements and enlightenment, we still haven't figured out how to stop famous actors from sexually assaulting young men, or teachers from taking advantage of students, or angry people from killing those who make them angry, or dictators from eliminating millions who oppose them, or people engaging in activities associated with expressions of love that result in disease and death, or someone from simply walking into a Dollar General and taking something without paying for just to see if they can, or ... you can fill in the seemingly endless blanks of evil actions, big and small, that we witness every day.

More and more, I realize that while not everyone believes in God, if we lived the way we're told to live in the Bible - care for one another, encourage the timid and weak, be careful how we eat, work, have sex with only one person for your entire life, care for the environment, don't tell lies, don't build monuments to people or things that are man-made, be content - we could eliminate almost all the problems and many of the diseases that have the potential to make our lives so tragic. It really does sound like the way man was meant to live.

Of course, we don't do those things because we want what we want and believe its "not fair" that I should deny myself those things I desire.

Teaching people "right" and "wrong" and writing laws to prohibit behavior we find unacceptable, while at the same time encouraging people to "be who you are" and "do what you want" and to not let society define you, is a contradiction. It just doesn't work. How can society tell you to "be who you are" and then turn around and condemn you and demand you change because it now deems your behavior to be offensive? I'm not saying we shouldn't teach and talk and write laws and hold people to standards, but its clear that those actions are basically bandaids on a bigger problem.

Then you get into prayer. God changes lives by changing hearts. I've seen it. I've witnessed it. I've experienced it. And you can explain it however you want, but those explanations are usually after the fact. To the person who has been changed, they know - they know - something miraculous took place, something unexplainable, something beyond the norm.

So in the face of evil like we're witnessing every day - we pray. We pray for forgiveness, for humility, for love, and for change; real change that must start with me, but powered by God's grace and mercy and power and love because, quite frankly, it's hard for me to change. Sometimes it's hard for me to fully understand why I even need to change.

So we pray for wisdom, and guidance, and courage.

How else can we know what action we are called to take?