Re: prayer and healing

At 08:57 PM 3/31/2006, Mervin Bitikofer wrote:

>"...As C.S. Lewis once noted, Jesus' promise as given in Mark 11
>(after withered fig tree) is that whatever we ask for in prayer, if
>we believe it, it will be done for us. No caveat that it must be
>within God's will. No conditional that is has to be something
>'good'. Just believe, and it will be done. Lewis concludes that
>new believers should certainly not be tantalized with passages like
>this before some maturity of immersion in the wider body of
>scripture. But how do you literalists deal with passages like
>this? Or at the end of Mark (I've been reading Mark lately) --
>the signs that WILL accompany those who believe: they will handle
>snakes and drink deadly poison without harm. How many sermons have
>you heard preached on that passage? I view all scripture as
>authoritative from God, but I can sure understand the eye-rolling
>delight agnostics get from passages like this and from us in our
>"bend-over-backward" antics to explain why certain passages "don't
>apply." Probably, I'll get a half dozen well polished reasons from
>some of you about why snake-handling, etc. can be dismissed as a
>cultural difference or some other thing. And I can guarantee you
>that all such explanations (some of which may be entirely correct
>IMO) will still elicit only condescending smiles from hostile
>challengers who will only see the "convenience" of our
>dismissal. Out of a two thousand year history of Christianity, has
>a mountain every been thrown into the sea? Maybe nobody in
>Christendom has ever been able to "believe" enough. Yes, I
>know, it's only metaphorical mountains that are cast aside, we tell
>ourselves. "How convenient!" my athiest friend would
>respond. (He's a literalist like some of you apparently are, and
>extremely stubborn about it.) So how do we answer people in this
>mode of thought? --merv

@ You want to attempt to "reason" with clueless emotional
basket-cases who hold polar opposite opinions, ideas and beliefs
simultaneously - denying the law of noncontradiction ????

This is the sort of "answer" such mentalities should get:

Insert Prayer for Gumball

Does the Bible Teach that Prayer Can Get You Anything? James Patrick Holding

Matthew 21:21-22 Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto
you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which
is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain,
Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And
all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.

Matthew 18:19 Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on
earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for
them of my Father which is in heaven.

1 John 5:14-15 And this is the confidence that we have in him, that,
if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we
know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the
petitions that we desired of him.

 From these verses spring all manner of issues, from a variety of
sources. Skeptic and apostate Dan Barker (Losing Faith in Faith, 108)
says, "Honest Christians know that these verses are false. It does no
good to claim that many prayers are unanswered because they are not
'according to his will.' Even prayers that are clearly in line with
the expressed 'will of God' are rarely successful." On the other end,
some within Christendom abuse these verses for the purpose of trying
to get rich.

One is constrained to ask, of course, where it is Barker has recorded
the "expressed will of God" -- he provides no examples of this. But
it is needful to closely examine these verses and dispel arguments
and abuses from both sides of the fence.
Matthew 18:19 -- First, as always, context is important, and let's
see in what context this verse is offered:

Matthew 18:15-20 Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee,
go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall
hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear
thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two
or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall
neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to
hear the church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a
publican. Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth
shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth
shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say unto you, That if two of you
shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it
shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two
or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

Barker illicitly isolates Matthew 18:19 from its context to make it
look like a general instruction on how to pray for whatever you want
in any context. This passage follows instructions for pursuing
"sheep" (members of the believing community) who go astray. Verses
15-18 are further instructions for community discipline. Verse 19 is
an amplification on verse 18, using the "Again, I say unto you" which
indicates an expansion of what has been noted previously. Thus, even
so far we see that whatever verse 19 means, it is restricted to the
context of discipline within the believing community of Christ. It is
not, as Barker imagines, or as health and wealth gospel preachers
suppose, a license to request anything. (If this is what Barker once
thought, little wonder he apostasized! But his poor study habits in
Bible school are no excuse for leaving the faith.)

So then, in this context, what is this prayer for? Verse 18 refers to
binding and loosing, a metaphor in this period to judicial authority.
The allusion is to the fact that in Jewish thought of the time, "the
halakic decisions of the community have the authority of heaven
itself." [Keener, 454] The word for "thing" (pragma) is "a term
frequently limited to judicial matters." (Blomberg commentary on
Matthew, 281; Harrington commentary on Matthew, 269). The reference
to two agreeing mirrors the situation in a Jewish court representing
the community in which two out of three witnesses agree. "where the
Shekinah abides with the court that judges justly" (Hagner commentary
on Matthew, 533) The action described (v. 17) is the disfellowship of
an unrepentant sinner from the community of believers, something
which in turn is recognized in Heaven. This is the only context for
this instruction. It does not even have tangible, earthly results; it
is an issue of status.

(Side note: Whether this was an irreversible procedure -- whether the
apostasy was permanent -- is a topic reserved for our discussion on
<http://www.tektonics.org/tulip/pers.html>perseverance of the saints.
However, Keener notes that "Jewish excommunication even in its
long-term form was normally reversible if repentance took place".)

Matthew 21:21-22 (also Matthew 7:7-8, John 14:13-14) -- This one
might seem to skeptics to be more difficult to defend. "There's no
context here to fall back on!" they may say. Isn't there? Here are
some considerations. How realistic is it to think that this is a
license to overturn topographical features? This is certainly an
example of <http://www.tektonics.org/gk/hyperbole.html>hyperbole,
indeed, of the same sort used in
<http://www.tektonics.org/gk/jesussayshate.html>Luke 14:26. The
phrase "moving mountains" was "a Jewish metaphor for accomplishing
what was difficult or virtually impossible" and "points to the
hyperbole of what is being said" (Hagner, 605) Later rabbis would ask
for signs validating their views consisting of objects being
uprooted. "Yeah, but --" the skeptic says, "-- this still means,
then, that if you have faith, whatever you want will be done, maybe
not mountain-moving, but surely big stuff!" Health and wealthers will
say, "If that thing you wanted didn't get done, you didn't have
enough faith." In previous contexts I explained this by noting that
the person with faith does not ask for that which God would not or
does not will; prayer is a two-way street, not a request hotline for
all that we want. This is not just a brush-off or a simplistic
solution, but is grounded in the realities and thought of the time of
the Bible. In Jewish thought, God was sovereign. Nothing happened
that God did not permit or cause. "Early Jewish teaching did
celebrate God's kindness in answering prayer, but rarely promises
such universal answers to prayer to all of God's people as the
language suggests." [Keener, 245] Only a small number of sages were
considered pious enough to ask for and receive whatever they wanted
-- and that piety was their key indicates that they weren't going
around asking for just anything they wanted (like Hanina ben Dosa,
and Honi the Circle-Drawer), but only what they supposed to be in the
will of God. "Such a call to believing prayer supposes a heart of
piety submitted to God's will..."

Finally, let us note that limitations are clearly set by the context.
The Lord's Prayer instructs us to pray for daily needs (Matt. 6:11)
-- it does not say, "Give us this day a Rolls Royce." Earthly
children ask for bread or fish (7:9-10) which are "basic staples in
the Palestinian diet" that were provided to children on a regular
basis. We can ask for "good things" (7:11), a term which sometimes
referred to prosperity generally, but also "referred to agricultural
produce that the righteous would share with with others (Test. Iss.
3:7-8)." (For more on "faith", see
<http://www.tektonics.org/whatis/whatfaith.html>here.)

This leads to 1 John 5:14-15, which was written to Gentile readers,
and thus it is appropriate that John added the qualifying phrase,
"according to his will" -- such a qualifier would have been
unnecessary for Jesus' Jewish audience. It would go without saying
that that mountain (even a literal one) would go nowhere without
God's approval implied. Indeed, the rabbinic use of the same verbiage
which we have noted confirms this. Matthew does indicate this
limitation when he notes that the context is what is asked for in
prayer -- thus limiting requests to what is within the will of God.

Now let's look at other verses sometimes cited to "prove" the
inefficacy of prayer:
Luke 22:31-3 "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But
I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when
you have turned back, strengthen your brothers."

Since Peter's faith did "fail", the critics say, prayer must be
worthless. Our arguments above suggest that the complaint is
misguided: If it was not in God's will to prop up Peter's faith, so
be it; and one can hardly complain that things didn't turn out for
the better. Peter's experience of failure undoubtedly was an
experience that honed him into the powerhouse that he became. Even
so, this prayer did not fail -- the word "fail" (ekleipo), used only
three times, twice in Luke and in Hebrews once, refers to a quite
permanent condition (Luke 16:9 And I say unto you, Make to yourselves
friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they
may receive you into everlasting habitations.; Hebrews 1:12 And as a
vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou
art the same, and thy years shall not fail.) Peter's courage left
him, but he never actually stopped believing in Jesus -- indeed, the
passage assumes he will have a failure of some kind, and then turn
around ("converted" -- the word is used to mean turning around).

So we are left with this: Skeptics like Barker can only vaguely claim
that something "clearly in line" with God's will wasn't granted.
Barker has no roll of God's will that I know of; indeed, how could he
know the will of a being he does not believe in? Health and wealth
advocates may qualify by claiming it is God's will that we be rich --
an issue that must be addressed and defeated on other hermeneutical
grounds. The bottom line: These passages are not magical mantras, and
should not be used as such.

Sources
Keener, commentary on Matthew, 454ff.
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/prayfor.html
Received on Sat Apr 1 11:46:19 2006