Why Bother? The Problem of Prayer

Posted on August 31, 2019 by salooper57
Photo by Amaury Gutierrez on Unsplash

Why should people bother to pray? For many people, both religious and irreligious, this question does not seem to have a satisfactory answer. They still pray when desperate – who doesn’t? – but even then, they can’t see the sense in it. If God already knows everything that is going to happen, if he has already decided what he is going to do, our prayers are irrelevant.

I recently corresponded with an intelligent man who has concluded that “Christian belief is illogical.” One of the reasons for this is that the Christian God “exists outside of time” and so has always known what will occur in every moment within time, effectively making what we call free will impossible. And if free will is impossible, how can the Christian God hold people responsible for their actions and beliefs?

I think there are answers to these questions, or at least there are reasons to question the validity of the questions, but one can immediately see how this understanding of God would undermine prayer. If “what will be, will be,” praying is an exercise in futility.

One way Christians have responded to this problem is to say, “We don’t pray to change what is going to happen but to change ourselves,” but this answer seems quite inadequate. If nothing changes because of our prayers, then, perforce, the person praying does not change either. If prayer can change the person praying, then it can change other things too.

The biblical writers and the people whose stories they told saw other problems to prayer but not this one. They took for granted that their prayers made a difference. If they prayed, something would (or at least, might) happen that would not happen if they did not pray.

Perhaps they were just more naïve than we are. They didn’t have an Einstein or a Bertrand Russell confusing them about the nature of time and God’s relationship to it. The term “confusing” is not ill-chosen. There is still no general agreement on the nature of time either in Einstein’s field of theoretical physics nor in Russell’s field of philosophy. Indeed, Russell and his Cambridge colleague J.M.E. McTaggart could not even agree on whether there is such a thing as time.

So when we say that prayer is a problem because God “already” knows what is going to happen we are not treading on solid ground. We do not understand the words we are using, including the word “time,” nor do we understand God’s relation to it. This remains one of the deepest mysteries of existence.

It is better to come at the problem of prayer from the perspective that God created a world that was good, as the first chapter of Genesis says repeatedly, but not complete. For the good work of creation to reach its fulfillment, God made creatures capable of interacting with him, and one of the ways in which these creatures interact with God is through prayer.

If we approach prayer from the perspective that God created a world with space in it, a world in which either one thing or another can happen while remaining within God’s overall plan, this particular problem of prayer goes away. In fact, we begin to see that this arrangement is a necessary condition for the fulfillment of God’s intentions for a mature humanity.

If we approach this problem of prayer from a richly biblical perspective, that God has made room in the universe for our prayers to change things, it goes away. But other obstacles remain.

Two of the biggest are, to put it baldly, God and us. God’s will and his ways will always be an obstacle to prayer for the person who does not know God or share his interests. But to the person who is getting to know God (who is “growing in the knowledge of God,” to borrow St. Paul language), God’s will and ways become an invitation to pray.  

Prayer, for such people, becomes an adventure and seeing answers to prayer – sometimes quite remarkable – a source of joy. This is precisely the life God planned for us and the one Jesus taught his followers to expect: “…my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name … and your joy will be complete.”

First published by Gatehouse Media.

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Why Would I Jump out of an Airplane at 14,000 Feet?

Posted on August 29, 2019 by salooper57
Photo by Sean Mungor

The answer to the question in the title is: Because I want to. I’ve wanted to for decades. When I was younger, I often dreamed I was flying. In my dream, I would jump in the air and just float, at will, over the neighborhood, the city, the countryside. Sometimes when I got into bed at night I would hope for that dream.

But that is flying, not falling, which is presumably what happens when one steps out of an airplane. However, a friend who solo-dives once told me skydivers don’t feel like they’re falling; they feel like they’re flying – Superman-like. That, he said, is why they wear altimeters: they need to be reminded that they are heading to earth and need to pull the cord.

I was going to jump about five years and wanted to use the jump as a fundraiser for Beginnings Care for Life – a remarkable non-profit in our community. I even asked area pastors to join me and raise money for their favorite charities but none thought that “jumping out of a perfectly good airplane” was a smart idea.

Just before paying for my dive, I discovered the outfit that would take me up had a terrible reputation, so I gave up on the idea. A year or two ago, a friend at church. Jeanette Dembski, did a tandem dive for her 80th birthday and I told her that I’d always wanted to do that. Earlier this year, she told me she was going to jump again and asked if I’d be interested in joining her. I said yes without hesitation.

So, here I am again, scheduled to jump on September 15. I still want to use the jump to benefit others – the babies and children in our community, along with their parents. If you’d like to know more about Beginnings Care for Life, check out their website at http://www.beginningscare.com/. If you’d like to assist them in their good work by supporting my jump, go to https://www.gofundme.com/f/jumping-for-beginnings-care. All gifts, minus the 3% fee gofundme charges, go directly to Beginnings Care for Life.

I’ll write a post-jump post and try to put into words what it is like to step out into the air at 14,000 feet. I’m hoping it feels more like flying than falling.

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Nevertheless: God’s Will and Our Will

Posted on August 28, 2019 by salooper57

Jesus taught his students that God is good and kind and loving. He’s better than we ever dreamed! But what about when things go sideways? Is he still good, kind, and loving when the thing we most fear happens? And what are we supposed to do then?

Before listening to this sermon, it would be good to read Mark 14:32-42. But take off your shoes before reading: you’ll be on holy ground.

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Our Faultfinder in Heaven?

Posted on August 24, 2019 by salooper57

I still remember where we were when our oldest son took his first steps. He was a year old, give or take a few days. We were in a cabin in northwestern Ontario. Joel had been pulling himself up and standing for a few weeks, but while we were there, he took his first steps. He got one solid step in, followed by a two-step Lindy Hop, and then crashed to the floor.

We all cheered. You’d have thought he’d won the Nobel Prize. Instead, he took three wobbly steps. Three wobbly steps, but full of promise. We knew this was just the beginning.

One can imagine the same scenario with a different outcome. We’re in the cabin. One-year-old Joel is standing up with his hands on the sofa, and I’m urging him to come to me. I say, “Come on, son. You can do it. Come on.” He turns toward me. He lifts and extends his foot. We all hold our breath. He shifts his weight – he’s taken his first step! He then quickly takes another and another, then goes crashing down in a heap.

And that’s when I say: “That’s all you got? What’s the matter with you? I give you a year, and all you can give me is three lousy steps! You are such a disappointment to me.”

Some people think God is like the critical, impossible-to-please me in the second scenario. No matter what we do, he thinks, “That’s all you got? You’re such a disappointment to me.” But the God of the Bible is not looking for opportunities to criticize but to reward.

What we think when we think of God matters. People frequently think of God as the Great Faultfinder in the Sky and themselves as big disappointments. Jesus, however, revealed a Father who is eager to celebrate his children’s first faltering steps and to reward them. He knows those first steps are just the beginning.

Jesus pictures God as a Father who is on the lookout for opportunities to reward his children. God is like a mother who walks into the kitchen after being out in the garden and finds that her eight-year-old has opened a cake mix, cracked eggs, and is proceeding to bake a cake. The five-year-old is holding a cracked egg in her hand. There is egg on the floor, on the refrigerator, and on the kids. There is more cake mix on the counter than there is in the bowl. The kitchen is a disaster.

When the eight-year-old sees mom, he says, “We’re making you a birthday cake!” (even though her birthday is six months away). Mom looks around at the devastation that was her kitchen, wonders whether she needs to call FEMA, and then says, “That is so nice! What do you say we finish making the cake, clean up a little, and then go out for ice cream as a reward?” Mom celebrates and rewards the intent, not the result.

That is a God-like moment. We think God is set on getting things done perfectly and that we, in our frailty and foolishness, are messing up his plan. But our thinking is confused. God is not intent on getting things done; he is intent on getting people done. We think God’s goal must be something like toppling dictators or ending abortion or stopping human trafficking when his real goal is to change people – including dictators, abortion providers, and human traffickers … and you and me.

God is intent on getting people done – in the words of St. James: “finished and whole, not lacking anything.” We think he is concerned with the global economy or the fractured moral state of the West or at least with the makeup of the Supreme Court – and he is – but those things are secondary. God knows the global economy and the Supreme Court are temporary while people are eternal. He knows that lasting change doesn’t happen in polling stations or federal courtrooms; it happens in people. So his goal is to transform people into the likeness of the one true Human: Jesus.

Ideas matter. The idea that God is our Father in heaven, not our Faultfinder there, matters. It is a liberating thought, full of hope and promise.

First published by Gatehouse Media

Posted in Peace with God, Spiritual life, Theology | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Come Home: Does God Want You Back?

Posted on August 19, 2019 by salooper57

Young marrieds Jim and Jane Flynn were swimming in Lake George in New York state. When Jim got out of the water, he realized his wedding ring had slipped off and was somewhere  at the bottom of the lake. Jane continued to wear her ring but Jim’s was lost.

Thirty-nine years later, a woman snorkeling in Lake George spotted something shiny on the bottom. She at first thought it must be a bottle cap, but when she retrieved it, she found it was an engraved wedding ring, with the anniversary date inscribed on the inside. After some research, she found Jim and Jane and returned the ring to them. How surprised and delighted they were to find it again! Jim now sleeps with it under his pillow.

To have the cherished thing returned after a long absence is a cause for celebration. That is just what Jesus says in Luke 15, only there we discover that we are the cherished thing! God cherishes us and wants us to be with him, no matter how long ago we hit bottom. Luke 15 shows us it is never too late to come home.

Posted in Peace with God, Theology | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

What Is God Up To Now? (God’s purpose in our world)

Posted on August 17, 2019 by salooper57

I’ve had my share of discussions with people who identify as atheists. I respect them, for the most part. There have been a few whose anger damaged both the rationality of their argument and the mutual respect that would have made our discussion profitable. But anger and flawed reasoning are hardly unique to atheists.

Most people I’ve met who identify as atheists do so not because reason has compelled them but because experience has led them to believe the God presented in the Bible is unlikely to exist. That experience is generally characterized by two realities that are impossible to ignore: first, the overwhelming present-ness of physical things, coupled with the underwhelming present-ness of spiritual things; and, second, the undeniable presence of evil, expressed as suffering.

The first of these two realities raises the question: Why is God, if he exists, not more obvious? I’ve heard the question put like this: If God requires people to believe in him in order to go to heaven, why doesn’t he help them believe by giving them a sign? Why doesn’t he write across the sky, in neon colors, “I am here”? A God who demands people believe in him or be destroyed, yet offers them no help to believe, must be evil and malicious.

The second issue, the presence of evil, raises a closely related question: If God exists and is the all-powerful and all-good being Christians claim he is, why doesn’t he do something about suffering? Why do babies die and children starve? Why do the strong abuse the weak and get away with it? Why do earthquakes demolish churches filled with worshipers? A good God wouldn’t allow people to suffer like this, so there must not be a God or, if there is, he must not be good.

It should be noted that people who reason like this are not starting from a neutral position between belief and unbelief. They haven’t “passed go” but they’re still trying to collect their 200 dollars. They have ignored the principal arguments for the existence of a creator (for example, Aristotle’s “Unmoved Mover” argument, refined by Aquinas and others) and are arguing against the existence of God on secondary grounds.

It should be admitted, though, that those secondary grounds are very real and troubling. But it is not just atheists who find them so; believers do too. It might surprise some atheists to learn that these troubling questions were asked by believers long before they made their way into the atheist’s playbook. They are, in fact, ensconced in the pages of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures.

The biblical Job, for example, agonizes over his suffering and is angry that God has not done something to stop it. The biblical psalmists repeatedly and bitterly ask God why he hasn’t shown up on the scene. In a poem of overwhelming pathos –a messianic psalm, at that – the author cries, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?” Jesus quoted these words from the cross.

These questions turn some people into atheists, but the thinkers mentioned above prove it is possible to grapple with them from within a framework of faith. The atheists are right to ask them, but they ought to know that the same questions have been asked for thousands of years and answers other than “God does not exist” have been found.

Approach these questions with the assumption that God does not exist, and there are simply no answers. But approach them from the perspective that God not only exists but that he has good purposes in mind for his creation and intends to develop humanity into a race of glorious, free, wise, and loving beings, then answers become available.

If this summary of God’s purpose is accurate, the next question is: “Given this, what are we to make of the hiddenness of God and the conspicuousness of evil?” And the answer – a biblical one, at that – is: God makes his hiddenness and even human suffering to serve his objective of developing a society of all-embracing love and goodness in which he and humans live together in joyful community.

That is what God has been up to.

First published in Gatehouse Media

Posted in Theology | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

The Emu and the Kangaroo (Matthew 28:18-20) – What Is Baptism All About?

Posted on August 13, 2019 by salooper57

Many countries have a national coat of arms, often featuring magnificent beasts and birds, like the majestic lion and the soaring eagle. They carefully chose such images to convey the idea that their people are courageous and strong.

The Australian coat of arms also features two animals: The emu, a graceless bird that can’t even fly, and a kangaroo. Courage and strength are hardly the first things one thinks of when seeing the comical-looking emu and kangaroo. Why did Australia choose those two animals?

Because they share a common characteristic with which the Australians identify: Both the emu and the kangaroo can only move forward, not back. The emu’s three-toed foot causes it to fall if it tries to go backwards, and the kangaroo is prevented from moving backwards by its large tail.

People who are baptized have chosen the emu and the kangaroo for their coat of arms. They are going forward with Christ. They have made their decision, and they will not go back!

This sermon investigates the relationship between the church and the kingdom of God, particularly as it relates to baptism.

Posted in Church, From the Pulpit, Sermons | Tagged , | 2 Comments

The Forgiver

Posted on August 8, 2019 by salooper57

During the closing song at a special service in an Indiana state prison, Chuck Colson noticed one of the inmates, a man named James Brewer, singing out at the top of his lungs. Colson says the man’s face was radiant. James Brewer had come to know Jesus Christ in prison and his life had been transformed.

As soon as the song was over, the Prison Fellowship Team began shaking hands and saying goodbye. Brewer returned to his cell, walking shoulder to shoulder with a Prison Fellowship volunteer. Colson was meeting the governor in Indianapolis in just two hours, so he followed them and urged the volunteer to hurry.

“We’ve got to go!” he called to the volunteer, but the man answered, “Just a minute, please!”

Colson shook his head.  “I’m sorry, but the plane is waiting.  We have to go right now!”

The volunteer said, “Please, please, this is very important.  You see, I am Judge Clement.  I sentenced this man to die.  But now he is born again. He is my brother and we want a minute to pray together.”

Colson said, “I stood in the entrance to that solitary, dimly lit cell, frozen in place.  Here were two men – one black, one white; one powerful, one powerless; one who had sentenced the other to die.  Yet there they stood, grasping a Bible together, Brewer smiling so genuinely, the judge so filled with love for the prisoner at his side.”

Forgiveness. God is the Forgiver: he can forgive anyone – even me; even you. And because we are the Forgiven, we are called to forgive, just as God does. “Forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13). To forgive like God puts us in a place where remarkable things can happen in our lives.

Posted in From the Pulpit, Peace with God, relationships, Sermons | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Christians and Mental Illness

Posted on August 5, 2019 by salooper57

My son Joel Looper (PhD, University of Aberdeen) just published a moving article that looks at Christians and mental illness in Church Life Journal, a journal of the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. Check it out and share your thoughts here.

Shayne

https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/the-theophany-icon-and-mental-illness/

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The Millennials Migration from the Faith

Posted on August 3, 2019 by salooper57

Another young, prominent Evangelical Christian has left the fold. Joshua Harris was 21 years old when he wrote, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye.” Since being published in 1997, his book has sold over a million copies and has been hailed by conservatives for its guidance in navigating relationships with the opposite sex. Last year, Harris renounced the book. This year, he renounced the faith.

Harris joins other high-profile Evangelical millennials in the flight from faith. Non-Evangelical millennials are also leaving – a recent study suggests more than half are already gone – but they are more likely to drift from the faith quietly, not buzz the deck as they fly away. When people like Harris – people who have made a name for themselves precisely because they were Evangelicals – leave the faith, they make headlines. Depressing headlines.

Why are we seeing this exodus of young Christians, Evangelical and otherwise? Why is it happening now, at this point in history? Can anything be done to turn it around?

The reasons for the flight from faith are manifold and to catalogue them would require a book-length treatment. It is possible, however, to highlight a few key (and sometimes overlooked) issues. For one, segments of the media display an antipathy for the faith and this generation, more than those that came before it, is constantly awash in media.

In the West, the Church was once the principal medium through which information about society and life was transmitted. The daily newspaper challenged the church for this coveted position in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, before its influence was contested by the advent of radio.

Movies and newsreels came crashing in next. By the time I came on the scene, television was king of the hill. All of these media sought not only to inform their audience but to transform them. Whether it was to unite the citizenry against the Axis powers, or reorient people to a new view of sexuality, or to direct consumers to an advertiser’s product, media intends to shape its users.

If one thinks of each medium as a stream that supplied the surrounding countryside with ideas, by the time television came along the various media had converged into a mighty Mississippi, transporting America on its current. But in the social media age, millennials have been swept out to sea. One study finds millennials spending 5 to 7 hours a day on their phones. Subtract time spent working, sleeping, and viewing other screens and there is virtually no time left.

It is impossible to overstate the impact immersive media has had on people’s thinking. This is particularly true when it comes to sexuality, which has received enormous attention in news, entertainment, and social media. A changing view of human sexuality – changing in predictable ways, given the nature of media attention – has certainly played a major role in the flight of young Evangelicals from the faith.

There are additional factors that contribute to the millennial migration. The culture-wide postponement of marriage, which is related to changing views of sexuality, has had an impact. So has the decreasing birthrate. Many millennials fled the Evangelical camp over its support for President Trump, which they considered blatantly hypocritical.

Behind all of these, though, lies the Church’s failure to present a compelling gospel to millennials. The roots of this failure reach back many centuries, at least to the later Scholastic Period, when churchmen became obsessed with how one gets to heaven. The Bible itself does not obsess over the topic. St. Paul’s magisterial letter to the Romans, for example, only mentions heaven twice, and neither time has anything to do with how people get there. Yet that is all some young Evangelicals ever heard about. To their minds, heaven is what the faith is about and they have decided heaven can wait.

The Church must reintroduce people to the gospel of God’s kingdom, as related by Jesus and the apostles. Heaven – yes, wonderfully so, and only through Christ’s cross; but also the revolutionary hope of God’s rightful rule and the Church’s role in preparing for it. Where this hope is truly present, individuals and communities are consistently transformed.

Yet many millennials know almost nothing of it. That must be remedied, now rather than later.

What do you think? Let me know!

Published by Gatehouse Media

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