Pub Theology 5/13/25 -- That's the wrong question
Way back in January 1959, C.S. Lewis published an article in The Atlantic Monthly in which the author and Christian apologist explores the question of the efficacy of prayer. In short, Does prayer work? But Lewis, ever one to make us want to think, says that's the wrong question, as understandable a question as it might be.
"For up till now we have been tackling the whole question in the wrong way and on the wrong level. The very question “Does prayer work?” puts us in the wrong frame of mind from the outset. “Work”: as if it were magic, or a machine — something that functions automatically." This isn't to say that petitionary prayer, i.e. asking God for things, is never appropriate, Lewis says. Only that's a small part of what it means to pray.
So what does it mean our prayers don't get answered? For Lewis, that's not the right question. One reason for that has to do with being created with free will by an omnipotent God, who could do whatever we ask if God wanted to. But that's not the point: "For He seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye. He allows us to neglect what He would have us do, or to fail. Perhaps we do not fully realize the problem, so to call it, of enabling finite free wills to coexist with Omnipotence. It seems to involve at every moment almost a sort of divine abdication. We are not mere recipients or spectators. We are either privileged to share in the game or compelled to collaborate in the work."
If the question Does prayer work is the wrong question, then what's the right one? If your prayers are answered, does that mean you are special in God's eyes? And if they're not, does that mean God has forsaken you?
We'll talk all about it in our conversation tomorrow evening, Tuesday May 13. Join us for the discussion starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.
