Back Off, Oswald!
You have to read Oswald Chambers through the balloon-sized lens of hyperbole, but occasionally I think that even overstatement can cross the line. If it's intended as overstatement:Prayer is not a question of altering things externally, but of working wonders in a man's disposition.
What? I came across this quote without the benefit of context, so I don't know if Chambers qualifies it in any way. Without amendment, it would fit right into various sectors of the Open Theism (the future is out of God's hands) and Process Theology (God changes along with the world) camps. If prayer doesn't change the external world, then Jesus was very deluded. Back off, Oswald Chambers!
Friday, October 27, 2006
Changing the World...One Disposition at a Time
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4 comments:
Even taken in context I'm not sure what to do with it.
It is not so true that "prayer changes things" as that prayer changes me and I change things.
Acts 12:5 anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Ariel, I am not so sure that it fits so nicely into open theism, as you state. Nor is the simple statement "the future is out of God's hands" sum up open theism. It is not that the future is out of God's hands, as if God is limited in God's power, but rather that it does not necessarily exist within our realm. For in open theism, the ultimate act of love given by God is freedom. Thus in order to guard this freedom, God chooses not to know what our future actions may be. God also is affected by the prayers that we utter, rather than simply being a sticky wall upon which we can put our prayers and wonder whether anything changes. God takes to heart, so to speak, the deepest desires of who we are, and possibly even acts upon them.
Biblical prayer: "Give us our daily bread."
Hmm. Are we praying for a change in the bread's disposition? Naw, we're asking God to intervene in the near future and make sure that we have enough to eat. God changes people through prayer, but he doesn't shy away from redistributing inanimate objects as well.
the simple statement "the future is out of God's hands" [doesn't] sum up open theism
Dustin, I'm aware that I didn't do justice to Open Theism with the above. To be honest, I'm not really interested in doing justice to it...because it's wrong. ;) (I say it with a smile, but seriously.)
The Bible debunks the Open Theist perspective without needing a lot of assistance from me, although there are good books on the topic, such as Beyond the Bounds. I'd point out that God doesn't need to suspend his all-knowing omnipotence in any way in order to make himself sympathetic.
Was God surprised when Christ died on the cross? (No.) Was the cross nevertheless an act of love and mercy, and an answer to centuries of prayer? (Yes.)
I'm willing to keep talking about this, however...
When I read the whole quote, I felt Chambers wasn't so much implying that God doesn't change things, as he was saying that the biggest changes are in the way we respond to our circumstances. That prayer is really a way for us to connect with God so that when life gets tough we have a new way of viewing it and reacting to it. I don't think it is an either/or proposition: either it is God or it is us. It seems to me that both can be occuring simultaneously. And, in fact, maybe God creates change in a situation by changing our hearts so we can choose to act differently.
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