Alan Johnston and prayer

Alan Johnston, BBC correspondent in Gaza who was held as a hostage was interviewed on radio 5 live the other day. Simon Mayo asked him if he prayed at all during his ordeal, he replied that it didn't seem right to do so because he had never prayed before. It wasn't just that he didn't want to be a hypocrite - he had already witnessed so much suffering of innocent people that he had come to the firm conclusion that God does not control our individual lives in the way that religious belief suggests.

This sums up succinctly a major reaction to the claims of Christianity - we are told to accept the will of God, but also to pray for God to act in our lives in particular ways and this is hard for people to buy. I'd like to think that this is a creative tension in a truth that we can't understand fully, it's hard to think that God responds to our prayer in the way described so often in the Bible, yet we are told to pray not just with acquiesence and confession but with petitions. So how can we hold these two seemingly contradictory ideas together?

If God answered prayers in any way that was so regular and reliable as to be observable the meaning of faith would be destroyed - it would be simple self-interest to pray in order to get what you want.

Not only would it be illogical, then for God to answer every prayer, it is also pretty clear that it just doesn't happen. It could be answered that maybe God only answers prayers that are worthy and pure - but even then most of us would agree that there is plenty of evidence that this doesn't happen either.

Yet we are told to pray to God and to make requests of Him, what can be the purpose or benefit of this? Doesn't it just lead to disappointment and loss of faith when our prayers aren't answered?

For me the answer goes back to Augustine. He claimed that it is our will that is fallen, and that it is our will which needs divine assistance. When we pray we are training our will, trying to bring our will into harmony with the divine will. If we pray properly then we don't just ask God for things - Christian prayer should include ALL of the following:

We acknowledge the true nature of the relationship between ourselves and the God that we are praying to - one in which we can make no demands or claims.
Indeed if we really grasp the differences between ourselves and God we are moved to profess awe and adoration of His being and creation.
This should lead to an awareness of our own shortcomings and we should confess these freely.

It is only at this point that we are invited/ordered to make our prayers of intercession (things that we want God to do). Hopefully our prayers of adoration, thanksgiving and confession will have filtered out any requests for things that are stupid or egotistical. Ideally we will now be praying for things that we are told ARE the will of God - such as an end to war or justice and reconciliation around the world. We know what would make earth more like heaven and we should pray for it to happen.Hopefuly we are sufficiently humble that our requests focus on the needs of others - and we are told that they should even include our enemies. And in amongst all this we are told that we may pray, too, for ourselves.

Implicit in our 'wish prayers' is the full understanding that we have no right to expect our prayer to be answered in the way we want and yet we are permitted - even encouraged to make this request. By making this prayer we will be enriched in ways that we can't fully understand: our wishes will be purified and grounded. Our thoughts and desires will be uplifted and put in their proper place. The desires, wants and needs that prayer deals with are there whether we pray or not. Prayer teaches us to deal with them, prayerfully.