This really clearly and helpfully articulates the way that I tend to think about prayer. It still leaves me with some questions, though---questions that become more acute when I'm literally trying to explain this to a 5-year-old: Why do we formulate our prayers as asking God to do things if that's not really what we mean? Would it be better to instead say something like, "God, please open my mind and heart to see how I can contribute to world peace?" How can this view account for objects of prayer completely outside my non-supernatural control, like prayer for the dead? (In that case, shouldn't I just be saying something like, "God, soften my heart toward this person?") It makes total sense to me that it's the act of praying itself that accomplishes the opening and softening. But is the efficacy (in that sense) lessened when I disavow the literal meaning of the words I'm praying?
Thanks for the reply. You're getting at much the same point as what I meant when I wrote, "At times, I’ve been tempted to let my prayers be as simple as Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane: “Not my will, but yours be done” (Lk. 22:42)." It's tempting, but like both of us said, it just seems clear from Scripture that we should not avoid asking for specifics.
I know my response is inadequate, but I'll give it a try. Maybe we should think of it with the analogy of how we cooperate with grace through good works. Grace is a gift from God, and it is ultimately what spurs us to do good, but still we engage in good works as a way of cooperating with God's grace. So maybe something similar is going on with prayer. Just like we don't earn our salvation with good works, we don't change God's mind when we ask for things in prayer. What we are doing is seeking to cooperate with God in God's will for us, even down to our specific daily needs and wants. It's not just that God desires X, Y, and Z for us, but God also desires that we desire X, Y, and Z, united with His desire. And we express that desire in prayer, even if we are groping to discern God's will in the process.
I kind of like that train of thought, what do you think?
Yes, I like that analogy, if I'm understanding correctly. I've recently been working through Brian Robinette's The Difference Nothing Makes, and this reminds me of how he discusses creaturely freedom: "The openness and autonomy of creation in its dynamic becoming is contrastive not with divine efficacy, but is the very gift of that efficacy. ...[contingent human] freedom remains utterly dependent upon the transcendent God who gives and immanently sustains human freedom as its empowering ground. Divine agency and human agency are not 'one,' yet neither are they 'two.'" (p. 24). Or, as James Alison puts it (excerpted by Robinette on p. 120), "God is in no sort of rivalry at all with any one of us; he is not part of the same order of being as us, which is how God can create and move us without displacing us." Is this the same sort of thing you have in mind? (I would still have trouble explaining this to my 7yo, but then she's also not asking this question.)
This really clearly and helpfully articulates the way that I tend to think about prayer. It still leaves me with some questions, though---questions that become more acute when I'm literally trying to explain this to a 5-year-old: Why do we formulate our prayers as asking God to do things if that's not really what we mean? Would it be better to instead say something like, "God, please open my mind and heart to see how I can contribute to world peace?" How can this view account for objects of prayer completely outside my non-supernatural control, like prayer for the dead? (In that case, shouldn't I just be saying something like, "God, soften my heart toward this person?") It makes total sense to me that it's the act of praying itself that accomplishes the opening and softening. But is the efficacy (in that sense) lessened when I disavow the literal meaning of the words I'm praying?
Thanks for the reply. You're getting at much the same point as what I meant when I wrote, "At times, I’ve been tempted to let my prayers be as simple as Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane: “Not my will, but yours be done” (Lk. 22:42)." It's tempting, but like both of us said, it just seems clear from Scripture that we should not avoid asking for specifics.
I know my response is inadequate, but I'll give it a try. Maybe we should think of it with the analogy of how we cooperate with grace through good works. Grace is a gift from God, and it is ultimately what spurs us to do good, but still we engage in good works as a way of cooperating with God's grace. So maybe something similar is going on with prayer. Just like we don't earn our salvation with good works, we don't change God's mind when we ask for things in prayer. What we are doing is seeking to cooperate with God in God's will for us, even down to our specific daily needs and wants. It's not just that God desires X, Y, and Z for us, but God also desires that we desire X, Y, and Z, united with His desire. And we express that desire in prayer, even if we are groping to discern God's will in the process.
I kind of like that train of thought, what do you think?
Yes, I like that analogy, if I'm understanding correctly. I've recently been working through Brian Robinette's The Difference Nothing Makes, and this reminds me of how he discusses creaturely freedom: "The openness and autonomy of creation in its dynamic becoming is contrastive not with divine efficacy, but is the very gift of that efficacy. ...[contingent human] freedom remains utterly dependent upon the transcendent God who gives and immanently sustains human freedom as its empowering ground. Divine agency and human agency are not 'one,' yet neither are they 'two.'" (p. 24). Or, as James Alison puts it (excerpted by Robinette on p. 120), "God is in no sort of rivalry at all with any one of us; he is not part of the same order of being as us, which is how God can create and move us without displacing us." Is this the same sort of thing you have in mind? (I would still have trouble explaining this to my 7yo, but then she's also not asking this question.)