When praying for a person "makes" their situation worse
When praying for a person "makes" their situation worse, prayer seems to spring from how human nature does the same foolish, bad, stupid, and mad thing over and over, thinking it will be different this time. It is trying to say you believe it can be different and asking God to make sure of it. So it’s like God rolls the dice randomly and will only take direction because you have requested it! It is insane. It is pure superstition.
Christians pray for others to have good things and to be better people. The idea is that if you pray for something and have no concern for how it might help a person be holier, then the prayer insults God and will not help. Not being helped is being hurt because you need that help and are not getting it. God is so good that He never gives anything unless it is good for the soul.
Sin is supposedly the reason prayer is blocked from working. It gets in the way, and prayers to get something sinful will not work, even if you do get the result. Then we are told the result is not really a result but was going to happen anyway. For all we know, if most prayers are sinful and seem to work, then praying is a bad thing, and the sinner feels his sin is accepted by God as not being a problem. Prayer is essentially nonsense because any superstition thrives on seeming to cause things to happen. Prayer is insulting and judgmental because it accuses you of being a sinner for calling you to oppose sin and pray in that light. Even accusing you of being a potential sinner is bad.
Prayer has made Christians feel okay about promoting war or defending abortion. The constant prayers for wisdom and courage to be given to the leaders of the state are never answered, but they do lead to people supporting them even if they are corrupt. They think a divine surprise is around the corner. If there is no God, we can expect the unexpected, but even more so if there is a God who hears our prayers and inspires us to pray as if He wants us involved in helping something happen. Asking for something to happen and doing nothing more is still being involved.
People try to kill or administer euthanasia through prayer. They see no sin in asking God to take a terminally ill loved one. The believer has to admit that they may believe God is what makes prayer work, but how do they know? What if it triggers some power or unleashes a psychic force? Then that makes you a murderer.
There is an emotional relief in hoping random forces will kick in and take a sickly loved one. You feel you are causing it in the right way. What if they are now ready to pass on and be saved from further torment? You are not causing it, but that is not how it feels. You are happy that randomness just fell into the right order. So you enjoy both the feeling that you caused the luck and that you didn't.
Any time you hear of somebody having a problem, make a wish that the problem did not happen, and that as it has happened, it will be mended. This is not magical. It is you resolving to be better than the way things are. It is siding with the person even against the universe. Always think compassionate thoughts because compassion is the chief virtue. Wish people well, but do not insult them by praying for them. Wishing them well is not praying for them. Prayer is accepting the way things happen; wishing is opposing it.
Society is brainwashed into thinking prayer helps. Many are just not clear that they do not think it really does anything except trigger a placebo that some other practice could do just as well. Some think feeling others pray for you is how it helps, as it is a placebo. And they think you can pray for yourself and achieve the placebo effect. Some think that because it is taking time to calm down and think things through, and works like talking to yourself, this is the secret of its success. Others think it gets God to change things so that the help you ask for, for yourself or others, comes.
I suspect that most people who say prayer helps are, in fact, thinking of the placebo or relaxing or contemplative benefits. It is interesting that most people assume prayer helps many. Many—not all! How many? Is it even worth it? I have seen people thinking prayer helped them when it did not, but that robs you of seeing that you helped yourself and let others help. It is a risky superstition.
I think promoting prayer as a placebo and a crutch is anti-Christian. Christ tied prayer down to an acting out of an attitude of opposition to evil in oneself and society. Christ never claimed prayer made His life any easier.
Plus, it is not prayer that helps, but God—if He exists. Talk of the power of prayer is really showing prayer to be cosmetic. It is magic and has to be disguised as prayer because it is shamelessly superstitious.
And as for religious benefits, they come at a terrible price. A lot of hate-filled curses by the Church were leveled at good people and are still on the Church's books. "Let him be anathema." It is selfish to say that all that warmongering and hate is worth it just so you can pray to feel good.
Praying for someone in trouble when a God will do what a God will do may just be you trying to feel you are helping. No, it is only you trying to feel you are helping.
Prayer needs to help to be justified. If something does not help, then that is bad. It is not neutral—it is bad. It is bad in how help is needed, and nothing happens. That is a bad consequence in itself.
Not helping does not necessarily mean making the person worse in any other way apart from that. But what if prayer does more harm than just not helping? What if it makes things worse?
The Letter of James in the Bible says that if you do not get what you ask from God, it is because you are only concerned about what you want. So does God ignore you as if you never asked, or does He do the opposite of what you asked? Both are equally chancy. God, strictly speaking, does not ignore in the sense of choosing not to know. He does know what you have asked and refuses to act.
Prayer assumes the legitimacy of victim-blaming. If you pray and disaster seems to be the only outcome, then you are blamed. You are judged by others. So that alone is enough to say that prayer is never worth it.
Why does nobody say prayer works in reverse—i.e., that it does the opposite of what you ask for? Even those who would swear it does evil instead of good will not say. The evidence of those who say that happens is as good as the evidence of those who say it gives you what you ask! You have no right to say it works the way you ask unless you check the stories of those who say it does not and does the opposite. Prayer is just trying to feel good about somebody else's trouble as if you are doing something. That is proven by the total lack of concern for being sure it has done something good.
Praying to get something done by God is always about seeking short-term results, for there is always something else, and sometimes something worse, to pray about next week. You pray for the cancer victim to get better. She then has a good week. But then, the week after, she will be at death's door. See what is happening here? Very sick people usually have better times and worse times anyway. Believers do not really believe when they never ask for the person to feel better permanently. They ask for something safe and temporary, or possibly temporary. And when the good thing turns to bad and to a crippling disappointment for the sick person, they do not see their own arrogant foolishness and start praying for something else. But they still take credit for any temporary improvement! The sick person does not need people coming along to use their illness to engage in a superstitious and arrogant practice. Imagining that a prayer helps others makes you feel safe because you will use the situation to get "evidence" and the feeling that it is powerful and helps, so if it helps Jane, it can help you. That is why people like to pray—it is about them seeking self-assurance. If praying for Jane did nothing at all for her, people would still feel comforted by praying for her because it is not really about her.
If prayer does not help, then it can make the situation a vulnerable person is in worse or keep them in it at best. If you believe in the power of prayer, you have to believe that it might have power in a negative way you do not intend. If you think any good that happens to a person after praying for them is because of the prayer, you have the moral duty to think the bad that happens is because of the prayer, for ultimately prayer is about asking God to use evil for His purposes. And we know every cloud has a silver lining, but every silver lining has a cloud and risks future clouds. Who are we to virtually attempt to hurt others by praying? That is not nice in the sense that God is not us. It is okay for His plan, but not for us. If a tyrant knows things nobody else knows and that makes the evil he does inevitable and unavoidable and understandable, that does not mean you have the right to support him. You are not him.
The way prayer and the divine plan are intertwined, so that prayer is in effect an expression of agreement with God's scary but good and necessary plan, is itself immoral. Thus, it makes more sense to ascribe the evil that happens to a person you pray for than the good to prayer.
If God always answers prayer in His own way and it can be different from what we ask, then the words do not matter. You can ask Him to kill your husband—He might need to do it.
God does not need to be told what you need. So how do you get what you ask for in prayer? If prayer works, then does God rig all things to fit your prayers beforehand? It has to be that way. So He rigs things and then inspires you on what to pray for. That is not prayer working! It is so contrived it is bizarre, and when people suffer though being prayed for, it is disgusting. It is another example of prayer being an invocation of the irrational, and the irrational is dangerous. You cannot expect truly good results from prayer.
What are we to think of people who know that their version of faith in God led to many deaths and wars, yet pray for those who suffer terribly? They should know better. They think God revealed their religion and dare to ask Him to help! That makes no sense. It is about them being hypocrites.
Prayer is saying there may be an all-good and all-perfect being who keeps all things in existence. If that is true, then what matters is not that a baby dies, but doing His will to help the baby. So it is about Him, not the baby. Look at the may—God may exist. Should you really think you have the right to tell yourself that God has helped when there is no God there to help? That is as bad as believing in a non-existing nurse who will cure you. It is bad for the same reason.
In conclusion, the act of praying for others often carries an implicit belief that it will change things for the better, but this belief can quickly blur the lines between genuine care and self-serving desire. If prayer isn't truly helping or addressing the core needs of the person, it becomes a form of superstition, a dangerous illusion that distracts from real solutions. It is important to question not only the effectiveness of prayer but the motivations behind it, as it can sometimes inadvertently cause more harm, whether by offering false comfort or encouraging a mindset that relies on divine intervention rather than personal action. Ultimately, the focus should shift from prayer as a means of control or assurance to the reality of helping others in practical, tangible ways that truly address their needs.
