The Narnia 3 Blog

$2.4 Million Wasted on "Prayer Study"

The recent release of a study examining the effect of prayer on behalf of those who are ill or recovering from serious illness is making the rounds in the online and print media. The AP Story, "Study: Praying Won't Affect Heart Patients," states in part:

The researchers who tested the power of prayer emphasized that their $2.4 million study could not address whether God exists or answers prayers made on another's behalf. The study could look only for effects from the specific prayers offered as part of the research, they said.

I imagine that lots of schools and research associations would like to hire whoever wrote the grant proposal that convinced someone to spend $2.4 million on this scientifically absurd and theologically inept "study." Whoever he or she is must really know how to write.

The study found, among other things, that "heart surgery patients showed no benefit when strangers prayed for their recovery." Also, "patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications. The researchers could only guess why."

This "study" is so misguided that it staggers the imagination. Additionally, the study clearly has faulty assumptions at a practical level, which are:

• The underlying assumption is clearly that the end result of prayer is that, physically, people should "get better."
  
• When people don't "get better" (or even get worse) then the assumption is that "prayer doesn't work."
  

In terms of a Biblical and Evangelical theology, there are several other key issues:

• The purpose of prayer is not to cause God to act, humans can never be a causative agent in relation to the activities of God.
  
• While God hears all prayers (by virtue of His omniscience and omnipresence) the only prayers that He gives attention to are those who are Christians. The only prayer of the unbeliever that God answers is the prayer of repentance and the request for salvation.
  
• Only prayers to the true and living God have any value. Since that is limited to Christians and Jews; prayers to all of the false gods of every other religion and cult in the world are utterly worthless and an exercise in abject futility (Is 41:24).
  
• While the Jews worship the true God of the Bible, as a religious system they have rejected Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, and therefore their prayers are on the same level as the unbeliever.
  
• Within Christendom, only prayers offered to God (The Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit) are valid. Prayers offered to Mary, the Apostles, the Saints, or other intermediaries, are also worthless and an affront to God.
  

The Bible teaches that Christians are to prayer according to God's will. While, in our finite understanding, we might want an individual to be healed and restored to full health, that isn't always God's will nor part of His sovereign plan. The entire issue of healing and prayer is often difficult, but one book I recommend as probably the best study in print on the subject is Richard Mayhue's The Healing Promise: Is It Always God's Will to Heal?

The apostle Paul prayed on multiple occasions for relief from physical afflictions and the answer was "my grace is sufficient for you, My power is perfected in weakness" (2 Cor 12:9), not healing. While in the New Testament era many who had disease and physical afflictions were healed by Christ and the Apostles, some were not (2 Tim 4:2). Throughout church history we see countless examples of God's choicest servants who suffered with great physical illness and infirmity throughout their lives.

This "study" was flawed at three levels: (1) the assumption that God wants everyone to be healed and that the "answer" to prayer will always be positive in that regard is unbiblical; (2) the assumption that anyone can effectively pray to any god they choose is also unbiblical; (3) the expenditure of $2.4 million to make a "scientific study" was foolish; the purposes and will of God for every individual (and the resulting inter-relations of all the effected individuals) has too many variables on a human level and an unknowable variable on the divine level for a study such as this to discern. The secrets things belong to God (Deut 29:29).

Posted by Narnia3 at April 1, 2006 10:35 PM | TrackBack