WHEN YOU ASK FOR A FAVOUR IN PRAYER YOU MEAN YOU ARE ASKING FOR HIDDEN SECRET "SNEAKY" MIRACLES
If you are praying for more money or for to be a better person are you hoping
for or asking for - there is a difference - for a secret miracle? Why a
secret one??
If God does secret miracles a problem with trust appears. Suppose you put an
apple into Johnny's lunchbox and send him off to school. He prays during class
that when lunch time comes that you will have put a peach in his lunchbox for he
doesn't like apples. Then God swaps the apple with a peach for Johnny will never
ask you anyway what you put in and he won't say about the peach. So nobody will
ever know.
Is Johnny asking God to change what is in his lunchbox the moment he prays?
Is Johnny asking God to take his present prayer into account to change the past?
Is he asking God to manipulate me to put in a peach not an apple?
Either way Johnny is asking for reality to be rigged up to suit his
insignificant whim. Prayer suggests that God approves of one's manipulative
urges. If God is like that then God cannot be trusted.
If I mark somebody's exam paper, they will never know if God altered the work
after they did it. You might say one should trust that God would not do a thing
like that. But we are asked to trust God no matter how bad life gets for us. So
he hurts and lets bad things happen presumably for a good purpose. We are asked
to become victims if God needs that for the greater good of others. So to say
you should trust that God has not altered the marks is no better than saying
that you should dictate to God what he can and cannot do. If you trust God, you
will trust that he may have changed the work and that he knew what he was doing
and had to do it for a good reason and not because he wanted to. So you can't
really be sure of anything should you believe in miracles.
But if you trust your friend and confide in her or him, do you really trust him
or her if you expect her or him to repeat what you told for a "greater" reason?
No way! Christians are boasting of trusting in God when they do not!
So what do we learn about prayer and secret miracles?
If you think prayer does not work but want to think it does you will ask for secret unnoticed miracles.
If you want a bike and you get nothing you will reason that the prayer did something else for you. That presupposes secret miracles.
If you want God to do magic but discreetly why are you asking him not to just make the bike for you from nothing? Magic is magic. You are secretly embarrassed.
If God is doing secret miracles then he is manipulating others for what
happens in your life affects others. The bike needs people to get it to
you and to make the bike in the first place. You are asking him to be
manipulative. You are the one launching the manipulating.
Prayer does not work and the reasoning behind it is wrong. And damn well the
Church knows it for it spends more time pondering prayer than anything else!
The WEB
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12608c.htm
Catholic Encyclopaedia. This discusses Quietism.
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