For many people, prayer just seems irrational, like “a spasm of words, lost in a cosmic indifference,” as the great 20th Century preacher George Buttrick once said.
To be honest, I also have questions about prayer. Maybe you do, too. How could you not? Think about prayer’s basic premise: it’s the idea that, at a moment’s notice, we humans can demand an audience with Almighty God, that we can carry on a conversation with the Creator of the universe, that somehow we can tell Him what to do, and He’ll do it. Through prayer, we believe we can change the course of history. Objectively speaking, that takes some hubris.
A man in his late 20s who has attended The Story once sent me his thoughts on prayer:
Hey Eric,
Prayer is probably the part of my faith that I am most skeptical about, so maybe you can shed some light on these topics.
I really don’t pray for other people because I don’t think it does any good. There have been blind comparison studies of cancer patients, with outside people praying for healing some, against a test group of patients not being prayed for. Not surprisingly, the patients being prayed for didn’t have any statistically significant extra healing rate.
Interestingly though, when you TELL the cancer patients that they are being prayed for, there is a statistical difference. This is an optimistic mindset secular benefit, showing the “thoughts” part of the political “thoughts and prayers” is just as good as the prayers, but only if you post it on Twitter.
I have a hard time believing God intercedes for us, even if we ask.
He raised some very good points here. Is there any real proof that prayer works? And what are we supposed to do with the studies on prayer that he mentioned? He’s right, after all. Researchers have performed a number of studies on prayer, and the outcomes haven’t usually been very promising when it comes to prayer’s effectiveness. A few have shown that prayer seems to work, but most studies in which a group of people were instructed to pray for a certain patient determined that prayer has no direct effect on that patient’s outcome.
Other studies have shown, however, that patients recover more successfully when they are aware they’re being prayed for, which sounds more like an emotional placebo effect than anything else.
One of my favorite studies on prayer found that its effectiveness is directly linked to the number of times someone says “Father God” while praying. But that study was published in the Babylon Bee, which is a Christian parody site. Fake news!
How seriously should Christians take these studies on prayer? Should we brag about the ones that confirm our beliefs, and ignore the rest? Or should we just wave a white flag and admit that prayer is basically just a coping mechanism that might make us better people, but doesn’t really change any outcomes?
Neither! The truth is that any scientific study that claims to measure the power of prayer is about as reliable as the Babylon Bee. I’m pro-science, but when it comes to evaluating prayer, the scientific method comes up short. There are simply too many variables to make reliable experimentation feasible.
First of all, who are these people that are being asked to pray? Are they a random selection of folks who agree to recite the same prayer every day for six months in exchange for a Firehouse Subs gift card? Or do they actually believe in God? Have they surrendered their lives to Jesus? Have they recognized their sin and repented from it?
That matters because, according to both the Old and New Testaments, the state of your soul impacts the power of your prayers. For instance, in 2 Chronicles 7:14, God proposed an “If/Then” scenario to the people of Israel, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
And Jesus said something similar in John 15:7: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”
Both of these passages suggest that the state of your heart impacts the power of your prayers. Sometimes we get confused I think because Christians talk all the time about God’s love being universal and unconditional, and it is. The love of God is unconditional, but the power of prayer is not. It is conditional and it is based upon the depth of trust and intimacy you have with God. And if you’re asking, “So if I just get closer to Jesus, he’ll give me everything I want?” you’re missing the most important part of the equation. As you get closer to Jesus, he won’t just give you everything on your list. He’ll give you a whole new list!
Not only is it important to know who is doing the praying in those studies, but I want to know how scientists can be sure that the patients in the control group – who weren’t being prayed for – didn’t have a bunch of faithful people praying for them outside the realm of their experiment. Did they contact all their family and friends and churches and tell them not to pray any prayers for this person for six months? I doubt it.
Or perhaps they sent a cease and desist order to the Holy Spirit? After all, the Apostle Paul wrote explicitly about the Spirit’s role in our prayers: “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.” (Romans 8:26-27)
Unless a researcher performing a study on prayer manages to shut off all other prayers being prayed for the patients in questions and to shut down the Holy Spirit while they’re at it, there’s simply no way they maintained an airtight control group. These are just two of the many reasons why I think supposed studies on prayer are junk science.
But maybe the most important thing to say about these studies is that they reflect a fundamental misunderstanding about prayer’s purpose. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, he began his model prayer this way: Our Father. This is a reminder that the primary purpose of prayer isn’t getting what you want from God; it’s intimacy with your Father in Heaven who loves you.
