Prayer works—but not in the way so many suppose
I'm facing terminal cancer and receiving the prayers of many. Beyond the implicit problems, I've found ways to see what it means to ask God for healing.
Jeffrey Weiss recently wrote about planning his "no thanks" to cancer treatment. Here is my reply.
Mr. Weiss, perhaps you expect a clergyman to critique your appraisal of the book of Job and to encourage you that “prayer works,” as I heard from a TSA agent who recently squinted at the disparity between the pre-cancer face on my ID and the one in the flesh before her. “I’ll pray for you to be healed,” she whispered as she circled and checked things on my boarding pass.
With a terminal cancer of my own—mine’s in my marrow, as voracious as it is rare—I actually think you’re exactly right to point out how the book of Job reveals the theological problem at the heart of how we so often speak of prayer. God, as the book of Job insists, is incomprehensible. As God says to Job, everything that is did not have to be, a reminder woven into the opening line of scripture “In the beginning . . . ” We are, Job learns, contingent creatures. Our knowledge can never bridge the gap between us and our Creator. If this is true, you’re exactly right to caution against the way we speak of prayer working.
