The other day I disappeared down a rabbit hole into a biblical cyber-wonderland where I stumbled upon an intriguing website. It promised to harness the power of thousands of global prayer warriors, all bending their earnest heads over prayer requests submitted online with the click of a button.
“The internet has allowed us to create a MASSIVE congregation to lift your prayer requests to a whole new level!” the website trumpeted. “The bible tells us that through agreement in prayer, the Lord shall grant us all that we desire!”
This makes sense. I was reading recently that if a petition reaches 100,000 signatures it attracts an official response from the White House (the most recent contender is a plea to return Justin Bieber to Canada). In the same way harnessing the prayer power of thousands of people world-wide means that presumably God will be forced to put down whatever important piece of legislature or needlework he’s tinkering with and take notice.
“Brilliant!” I thought to myself as I prepared to open windows labelled “Prayer Requests” and “Praise Reports.” “This should be entertaining….”
On the landing page: “Nick found God and came back to our relationship. I knew that prayer would work. We’re happier than ever now!” Stacey H, Hunstville, TN.
“My business is prospering and I know it’s because of your powerful prayers. How can I ever thank you guys enough?” Ricardo E, Al.
At this point I confess I was snorting internally (internally. One doesn’t do this out loud, alone, at home…) And then I started scrolling through the requests.
The bank is foreclosing on our home. We need money for a headstone for our five year old. My husband has mesothelioma. We cannot pay our medical bills. My son has autism. I don’t want my husband to leave me. I’m 60 and I have no medical insurance. Please. Please. Please. (And praise for a cat called Punkin who miraculously recovered from a fatal kidney disease. Very graphic description.)
Most of these requests were poured out in gasping prose without proper punctuation or spelling – the two finger smack-downs, by and large, of the chronically illiterate. It’s a generalisation of course, but the Prayer Warriors, letter by excruciating letter, painted a portrait of America’s long term, lonely, heartbroken working-poor.
And it wiped the smile off my face good and fast.
These are people grasping after exactly what the champions of the website so tantalisingly dangle as the outcome of ‘making prayer work for YOU!’- stable homes and families, secure incomes. They’re people who call out to Jesus because no one else appears to give a damn. And they’re willing to pay for it. The website encourages people who submit prayer requests to ‘make as large a donation to the ministry as you can afford’. And the guiding principle seems to be – what goes around comes around. The more you give, the more you get.
My take on prayer has always been that it changes ‘not so much the mind of God as the hearts of men (and women)’.
But this is a website devoted very much to changing the mind of God, based very much on the idea that it can be changed by applying large scale pester-power to bring about urgent, tangible outcomes.
Look, I don’t know how prayer works. I believe in God as love: close and present in the world wherever love is close and present and mystically, even where it’s not. That Love is powerful. Does it grant a tax return that saves a family from destitution or haul a cheating husband back to faith or a sick cat back from the grave or a business to financial prosperity in response to a request posted on a website accompanied by a financial donation?
I don’t know. I doubt it. In fact I think that kind of juxtaposition of payment and prayer and prosperity is a bit sick.
But here’s what I do know.
Those requests were real. They came from people who desperately needed help; who wanted to believe in the power of a Father Figure to save and salve. And they believed absolutely that their lives had changed because of the prayers of others.
A Prayer Warriors website probably wouldn’t take off in quite the same way in Australia – there’s a deep-seated scepticism about God and His inclination to meddle in our lives Down Under. But surely there’s a similar aching desperation among many in our community?
The other morning- quite early- I answered a knock at the door in my pj’s (the ones that fortuitously look like matching T-shirt and shorts). It was Graeme, a friend of ours from up the road who lives in a housing commission unit on his own and spends many hours of his day walking the streets with his dog. As far as I know, he’s never been employed. He has a cleft palette that makes it extremely difficult to understand his speech.
I invited him in and he talked for an hour, maybe more, over a cup of tea that sat untouched while Bobby, his little dog, perched on his lap murmuring longingly at one of our cats.
Graeme made multiple attempts to leave before finally heading off for the remainder of his day (walking Bobby).
“Thank you,” he told me repeatedly. “I talk too much, I know. Thank you. I just needed to talk to someone normal. Someone who listens.”
A few days later a wrapped present was delivered to our door. Inside, a gold framed picture of Jesus with a glowing heart and halo. He’s not a religious bloke, Graeme, but this is what he chose to give me. It’s not the sort of thing I usually have on the kitchen dresser but it’ll be there for a while.
I’m not a fan of the one-click approach to prayer. But I could learn a lot from listening to the voices of those who are desperately in need of the magical, anonymous hand of God to rearrange their lives. It’s a powerful, poignant reminder of what ‘faith’ can mean to different people.
And of the significance of someone flesh and blood who may not be able to change things, but who listens anyway.
Maybe this is what the urge to pray is all about. Maybe this is what it means to seek the ‘other.’ And maybe this is where we could all stand a little less cynicism and a lot more love.
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