Jesus on Prayer II

From previous post….In contrasting God with the unjust judge, Jesus says “And will not God give justice to his elect who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily.”….So why does Jesus declare a promise that is contrary to our actual experience and the experience of people in Scripture?

Jesus is presenting the struggle at the heart of prayer. We would expect God to not delay over answering the prayers of those who cry to him day and night, yet there is often a delay in having such prayers answered. We struggle to reconcile the expectations created by faith in a good, loving and all powerful God with the reality of the experience of unanswered prayers, especially in situations of prolonged suffering.

Our attempts at reconciliation usually take one of two paths. One path works on the experience side and tries to get people to see the unanswered prayer as a loving God at work in ways that are not readily apparent. Generally, there is an attempt to present explanations of what God might be accomplishing along with some testimonies of how this has worked for others in their lives. This certainly has appeal in theory, but in practice, in the midst of really difficult circumstances, it falls short. There always seems to be some element of denying or diminishing the suffering that the person is going through, and this will not be well received by a person who is suffering. And in the midst of deep suffering, it is very difficult (impossible?) to see the suffering as accomplishing something that is good and evidence of a loving God. These are situations that any person who cared for us at all, and had the power to answer our prayer, would answer it immediately and fully.

Another approach works on the other side of the clash and concludes that a God who is good and loving must not be in control of our lives in the way that we have been taught. I have been checking out Process Theology and it reacts against the picture of an all powerful God who is ultimately responsible for the evil and suffering in the world. The resolution to the clash of expectation and experience is that God is not omnipotent. So in this approach, there is always some element of denying or diminishing the sovereignty of God.

I submit that all of our efforts at reconciling the expectation of prayer with the experience of prayer run along these two paths and ultimately fail to offer a satisfactory reconciliation. So if we look to Jesus, what reconciliation does He offer? If you look at the teachings that Yancey highlighted (see previous post) about receiving whatever you ask for in prayer and statements about God granting justice speedily, you would put Jesus in the denying experience camp. But Jesus teaches about prayer with strange stories and analogies in Mathew 6, Luke 11 and Luke 18 (widow and unjust judge). In the next post I want to look at how strange these stories and analogies are in the picture that they present about the actual experience of prayer. And my main point is that Jesus does present the clash between expectation and experience in prayer, but He does not make any attempt to reconcile that clash for us. Instead He commands us to pray and not lose heart. More next time on Luke 11 and 18, meditating on the stories Jesus chooses to tell and the analogies He chooses to use.