Friday, June 27, 2014

Prayer and Indiana Jones

It has been pointed out that the character Indiana Jones, in the film Raiders of the Lost Ark, is completely irrelevant to the development of the plot.  To put it more simply, if Indiana Jones had not been in the film the Nazis would still have discovered the Ark and opened it and died as a result and it would have ended up in the hands of the US government.  Indiana Jones contributes nothing at all to the basic plot development.

To me this sounds like prayer.  

I’ll explain …

You decide you want something to change - anything from an end to global hunger to getting your neighbour’s cat to stop crapping in your garden - whatever it is you want.  So you get down on your knees and pray for it.  And then one of two things happens.  Either God decides that your prayer aligns with his plans for the universe, in which case he does what you ask, or he decides it doesn’t and he doesn’t.

Please could someone tell me what difference you praying made? 

If there was a problem, surely an omniscient God didn’t need you to point it out to him before he could fix it?  And he only does what he wanted to do anyway (try praying for something that God wouldn’t want – like an end to all religions – and see what happens) so why did you need to pray?


From this we see that prayer is as irrelevant as Indiana Jones.  And also a lot less fun to watch.

If I'm missing something please let me know ...

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