The Powerlessness of Prayer

Don’t pray for a higher authority to remedy a problem you should fix

Please God, how many times do I have to ask for something besides bread and soup?

“Our mission is to not only locate and arrest the suspect but protect others from harm,” Undersheriff Tim Murakami said. “Please pray for the recovery of the victims and the safety of the responding deputies.” (San Francisco Examiner)

Yet another mass shooting (Santa Clarita if you’re keeping score) elicits calls for prayers for the victims and their families.

If our prayers are so powerful that they can heal the victims and console those who survive them, then why don’t we simply pray in advance for a permanent end to the slaughter of the innocent?

The reason we don’t pray for an end to mass murder is that we don’t believe prayer will work.

If the wounded die after we’ve prayed for their healing, then we write off the failure as part of God’s plan. But it is our lack of a plan that has failed. We knew before going through the motions that our prayers would have no impact whatsoever.

The problem isn’t the absence of a higher power; it’s our eagerness to pass the buck to a power other than our own. “Please solve our problems so we can serve You better.”

If you don’t really believe in prayer, but you pretend to pray for a solution, then you aren’t simply avoiding good — you are…