Can Prayer Stop Evil?
My great grandfather used to say that, in business, if two partners agree on everything, one of them is not necessary. That's a useful image to keep in mind when it comes to praying. God is the sovereign, the Lord, the one in charge. So, we could say that God is the senior partner in life and humanity is the junior partner. Wise leaders encourage their junior colleagues to speak freely and exercise initiative. Effective organizations are partnerships with team members being co-creators, expressing diverse opinions, and cooperating with the overall vision and purpose of the organization.
One helpful way of seeing the world is as a partnership with God. Many churches reflect that truth by having important decisions about mission, values, direction, and congregational life come from the cooperative efforts of congregational members in partnership with God. We might call that working in the Spirit. Those decisions are usually reached through a process that includes prayer and prayerful discernment, recognizing the important role God plays in our lives.
The early followers of Jesus suffered greatly. It is impressive that they could see the good that comes from suffering. If we believe what the Apostle Paul wrote (Romans 5), suffering makes us stronger by building endurance. It makes us better by building character. By experiencing improved endurance and character, we have hope that present suffering will make us stronger and better. Finally, we can actually become more faithful because of our experience of suffering.
Evidently, the Apostle Paul experienced a very special gift that seemed to come through the suffering and challenges he had known. He discovered divine love in his life and described it in terms of a metaphor: "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." (Romans 5) The Holy Spirit connects with our spirits and we receive God's love. Creation is a blend of the material and the spiritual. As human beings, we have both a physical and a spiritual dimension. Systems and institutions of humanity also blend the material and spiritual. There is a measure of freedom that seems basic to our nature as well. We often call this free will. It refers to a belief that the creator God respects the right and responsibility people both to make choices and to deal with the consequences of those choices. From the perspective of faith, we say that even when individuals get off-track in terms of values and mission, still God respects our free will. When human institutions and systems get off-track in terms of values and mission, still God respects their free will.
We are individuals and human systems living in partnership with God and primary actors in the ongoing work of creation. The idea that we have gotten off-track in our values and our mission is difficult to refute when we look at ourselves -- at the injustice and innocent suffering in our world and the divisions in our humanity. This brings us to the matter of prayer.
What is prayer? You might say it is our conference room. Prayer is where God meets us. Prayer is a spiritual discipline, the ongoing conversation through which we grow and maintain relationship with God. Prayer is the discipline we practice to develop self-awareness and to discover the power of our partnership with God. As with so many things, our ability to be successful in prayer has a lot to do with the assumptions we make and the questions we ask. The context of prayer is how we understand the world God has made. In the Bible, there is a clear world view in which the material world has a spiritual counterpart. Every person and institution has an angel. Human conflicts are reflections of heavenly ones. This is the biblical world view.
Some people view the world as only materialistic. Others view the only reality as spirit. The world view that is emerging through science, the arts, and theology in our time, according to theologian Walter Wink, is an integrated world view. Every aspect of this material world has spirit at its core. This emerging world view gives shape to prayer.
Prayer is where life is lived. When we prayer for others, we are living the hope of the future. We are actually placing ourselves in the present reign of God's kingdom - heaven. Prayer changes things. Prayer changes us. It is our preparation for life and the primary battlefield on which our life's struggles are fought, before we ever encounter them outside ourselves. Prayer changes the world since we are part of that world. Community prayer changes the corporate atmosphere of institutions, including churches.
Prayer changes what is possible to God. God's abilities don't change, but what is possible for God changes because of prayer. Human choices control our world. The systemic dysfunction we call the powers of darkness result from human choices. Our choices along with those of all people throughout history have resulted in the powers of darkness being in control of this world. So, we return to the powerful theological understanding that we are partners with God. Our mission, the vision for this partnership, is the redeeming of persons and the redeeming of the powers: the systems, the institutions at whose heart lie spirit. God does the redeeming. We help through the imperatives of prayer. When we pray, we request God to act and we commit ourselves to participate. We are engaged in an act of co-creation in which one little sector of the universe rises up and becomes translucent, incandescent, a vibratory center of power that radiates the power of the universe.
So, why is prayer effective, or not? Let's examine the top ten reasons prayers don't work:
10. We fail or God refuses.
9. Or not!
8. Our faith is too weak
7. Or not!
6. We're too sinful and inadequate.
5. Or not!
4. We're not "pure in heart" enough.
3. Or not!
2. God says "No" out of a higher purpose.
1. Or not!
If you trust what the Bible says, you know that the effectiveness of prayer is not dependent on the amount of our faith. We just use the faith we have and, even if it is no more than a small mustard seed's worth of faith, it would be enough to move a mountain. The key is just to do it! Just pray. The only real issue in prayer is God's ability to act.
Faith is trusting that God can do something. Faith is cooperating with God and supporting God's efforts. Prayer is one way to put our faith into action. Prayer is as simple as truly wanting social justice, universal inclusion of those who are outcasts, and to love our enemy. Prayer involves more than just God and us. Prayer includes the systems and powers of darkness of our world. Free will is in play all around. We have the choice to cooperate in God's purpose - or not. Every single human being has that same choice to be selfish - or not. The systems that control so much of this world likewise have the choice to respect persons or to exploit them.
Faith tells us that God hears our prayers right away, but the response is delayed by the failure of individuals and institutions to act in cooperation with God's vision for creation - justice, mercy, and loving relationship with God. Perhaps God is waiting on us to respond to hear the prayers of the hungry and the outcast. Can it be that, in the hardships and disillusionments of our lives, God is saying to us, perhaps God is praying to us, "How long will you cooperate with systemic injustice and greed in the world?" Only God can redeem people and systems. God apparently does so only with our help. How do we go about revitalizing our prayer? We accept that God chooses to work with us as partners and as co-creators. I don't think it does any good to ask "Why?" because that's just the way it seems to be. Maybe God is telling us, "Because I said so!"
I've been a pastor for 30 years and currently am the senior pastor for Crossroads Church of Kansas City. I have earned a doctorate degree from Princeton, two master's degree (one in theology and one in music). I've worked as a musician, a church musician, a drama coach and actor, as well as a pastor. I'm married with two children, three dogs, and two cats. When people ask me what I do for a living, and I know they won't listen to me more than 30 seconds, I tell that that I work with people who are on a journey. Many struggle with finding answers to their deepest questions. Some had given up ever finding these answers - even stopped asking the questions until they came to Crossroads. Someone told me recently that they had "never conceived of church as a place that actually encouraged you to think for yourself [before Crossroads]." That's what we do and that's what I do.