Source
r/Christianity•
implausibleusername

Why pray for other people?

Motivated by this link here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/bs7ed/my_sister_prayer_request/

I didn't think this was an appropriate discussion to be having in that thread.

Most Christians I know say that prayer is about changing the person who prays, and not about expecting god to do something, like the classic prayer:

Lord, give me the strength to change what I can,

give me the strength to resist what I cannot change

and give me the wisdom to understand the difference between the two.

In some sense praying for other people can be helpful, in that it reminds you to be mindful of their needs in this difficult time, but I do not understand the point in praying for someone you will never interact with.

Answers from a Christian perspective would be welcome.

Posted Apr 17, 2010, 12:05 PM UTC

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Rostin•

I do not understand the point in praying for someone you will never interact with.

Even if it's true that prayer only changes us, I don't think that follows. We might not ever have the opportunity to help that person ourselves, but praying for him probably puts us in a frame of mind better to serve God and other people around us. Just for example.

Anyway, unlike most of the Christians you know, I pray expecting God to do something. :) I don't claim to understand how it works. But it could sit nicely in a framework of compatibilist free-will. (edit: or open theism, although I am not an open theist.) That is, our prayers might be a means that God has ordained to accomplish his sovereign will.

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implausibleusernameOP•

Even if it's true that prayer only changes us, I don't think that follows. We might not ever have the opportunity to help that person ourselves, but praying for him probably puts us in a frame of mind better to serve God and other people around us. Just for example.

Ok, I'm not saying it's bad, but in this case wouldn't you better thinking of God and people you can actually help.

That is, our prayers might be a means that God has ordained to accomplish his sovereign will.

You mean like a relay? God wants to do X, so you pray for X and then he can do X. It seems a bit baroque.

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Rostin•

You mean like a relay? God wants to do X, so you pray for X and then he can do X. It seems a bit baroque.

God is often portrayed as accomplishing things through the actions of people. See, for example, Gen 50:19-20 and Acts 4:27-28. I don't know why prayer should be any different.

That doesn't directly answer your objection, but it does suggest that God doesn't seem quite as bothered about it as you do, at least in principle. ;)

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rainer511Christian Universalist•

Assume you know an all powerful being.

Assume you know someone in need.

Why wouldn't you ask?

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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X019Christian (Chi Rho)•

you're just asking why God allows evil to exist. define evil for me please.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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X019Christian (Chi Rho)•

I wanted your definition. So assume God grants your prayer, God takes away all cancer. Then we get used to that. Then we start complaining because God allows some other bad thing to happen, then it's just a loop until we're down to mindless robots.

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implausibleusernameOP•

Because:

  1. He already knows.
  2. He's unlikely to change his mind.
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X019Christian (Chi Rho)•

this depends on what you're thoughts on God are. If you believe that God is omniscient in a sense that God knows everything that has happened, and will ever happen. Then prayer is completely useless. Along these lines, free will would be futile since God knows everything we're going to do, it makes us seem like robots.

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implausibleusernameOP•

Well it's enough for God to know everything that has happened for prayer not to affect him.

You can still have free will, even if you can't change God's mind.

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X019Christian (Chi Rho)•

but if God knows things will happen, there isn't anything we can do. If we do something counter to what God knows, then He wouldn't be omniscient.

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X019Christian (Chi Rho)•

but if God knows things will happen, there isn't anything we can do. If we do something counter to what God knows, then He wouldn't be omniscient.

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astute•

As an Orthodox Christian, prayer is not just considered to be for your own edification. It is held to be directly influential in the lives of others, and yes, it is expecting God to do something. As for praying for someone you'll never interact with, that doesn't mean God doesn't know them and take the prayer into account regardless.

For instance, my parish has a prayer list of a bunch of random people that our parishioners give to the priest. He reads them during one of the many litanies ("Lord, have mercy", i.e. the Kyrie in the Catholic Mass), and the list is disseminated to everyone. The logic being, God does listen to prayers, even if the end result is "merely" some sort of guidance or strength.

Another example from Orthodoxy, and one thing which is unique to our faith AFAIK, is that we pray extensively for the dead. This, in particular, is thought to directly influence their fate in the afterlife. Even if a person had their own severe demons, if they made such an impact on people that they pray for them and remember them long after their passing, that makes a difference to God.

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implausibleusernameOP•

Another example from Orthodoxy, and one thing which is unique to our faith AFAIK, is that we pray extensively for the dead. This, in particular, is thought to directly influence their fate in the afterlife. Even if a person had their own severe demons, if they made such an impact on people that they pray for them and remember them long after their passing, that makes a difference to God.

It's not unique to the Orthodox, the Catholic church was notorious for doing this in exchange for large amounts of inheritance in the middle ages.

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astute•

except we don't sell it.

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cthulhufhtagnRoman Catholic•

We pray for other people primarily because God is shown in the Bible several times providing mercy at the request of prayer. By this we know that by praying, we/others may receive mercy that would not have ordinarily been given. Why he does this is a deeper mystery.

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ike368•

You pretty much covered it. You're doing something with good intentions. That tiny bit of goodness bleeds out into your life and the world somehow.

There may not be a very good point, I mean there are a ton of more useful things you could do, but there is a small point. That's karma.

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