{"id":6329,"date":"2011-09-08T19:31:26","date_gmt":"2011-09-08T19:31:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=6329"},"modified":"2011-09-08T19:31:26","modified_gmt":"2011-09-08T19:31:26","slug":"prayer-doesnt-bring-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/prayer-doesnt-bring-rain\/","title":{"rendered":"Prayer doesn’t bring rain"},"content":{"rendered":"

If any believers want to hazard a guess as to why God decided to ignore <\/a>Texans\u2019 official three-day prayer session for rain<\/a>, it would be illuminating.\u00a0 Perhaps prayers are sent without any serious expectation that they will be answered (and why is that?), so that when they are not answered, the believer feels no great disappointment and no need to explain the lack of response.\u00a0 Nevertheless, we are told all the time that God does answer prayers.\u00a0 Indeed, Governor Rick Perry and his followers would not have appealed to God if they weren\u2019t confident that God, in his concern for human suffering, listens to and responds to such petitions.\u00a0 So why not these?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

One would have thought that the Texans presented a worthy petition for relief, since the failure to end the drought has resulted in the loss of life and massive loss of livelihood and property.\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps the number of prayers sent God\u2019s way didn\u2019t reach a quorum. \u00a0 Or were not heartfelt enough. \u00a0 Or maybe Texans don\u2019t in fact deserve to be relieved of draught.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Catholic theologians up to the Pope himself stress that God is Reason and compatible with reason.\u00a0 Presumably, therefore, the causes and meaning of his behavior are accessible to human understanding and not shrouded in capriciousness and mystery.\u00a0\u00a0 Still, it\u2019s hard to come up with a reason why he couldn\u2019t have sent some rain in response to the Texans\u2019 request, since he does so many good things for us everyday in response to prayer, theologians like Michael Novak assure us.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The possible suggestion that God has in fact answered the Texans’ prayers, but we can’t hope to understand how, would be a bit hard to accept here as elsewhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Governor Perry seems to have given up on the divine angle for now, however, and is asking for aid from a more reliable source: the federal government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If any believers want to hazard a guess as to why God decided to ignore Texans\u2019 official three-day prayer session for rain, it would be illuminating.\u00a0 Perhaps prayers are sent without any serious expectation that they will be answered (and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[839,182],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6329"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6329"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6333,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6329\/revisions\/6333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}