The problem of unanswered prayer
Philip Barron shares an understanding of prayer
Prayer can take many forms but, if we pray at all, petition can be one of the most puzzling. The Bible is full of unanswered prayers. ‘O my God’, cries the Psalmist, ‘I cry in the day-time, but thou answerest not; and in the night season, and am not silent’ (Psalm 22). St Paul prays often that his ‘thorn in the flesh’ be taken away, but is compelled to make the best of it and to let it make the best of him.
One obvious reason for unanswered petitions is the ignorance of our asking. People voice to God various, and often contradictory, desires – praying vehemently on opposite sides of the same war, for example. But Harry Emerson Fosdick points out in The Meaning of Prayer, ‘instead of calling prayers unanswered, it is far truer to recognise that ‘No’ is as real an answer as ‘Yes’, and often far more kind.’
Fosdick suggests that to make praying valid, people must be ready to cooperate with God in two other ways, by thinking and by working. We may find it curious that Jesus seems to commend importunate prayer in parables such as that of the woman who pestered a judge until he cried, ‘I will avenge her, lest she wear me out by her continual coming’.
There’s the similar story of the man who roused his neighbour in the middle of the night, asking for bread until, because of his persistence, he got what he wanted. We must allow for the (deliberate) exaggeration in these parables, which are balanced by Jesus’ condemnation of those who think they will be ‘heard for their much speaking’. He thought of prayer as an unwearied seeking after spiritual good.
Sometimes, instead of saying ‘No’ or ‘Yes’ to our requests, God says ‘Wait’. Fosdick cites three reasons for denied requests: the ignorance of our asking, the use of prayer in fields where it does not belong, and the unreadiness of our own lives to receive the good we seek.
It is true that ‘your Father knows what things you need before you ask him’ but that doesn’t make prayer superfluous. ‘Prayer can’t change God’s purpose’, says Fosdick, ‘but there is one thing you can do. You can open the way for God to do what He wants to do. God cannot do for the man with the closed heart what He can do for the man with the open heart.’
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