"Tight lines" is a blessing fishermen offer each other, a wish for lines taut with the weight of good fish. May God grant that the lines written here be taut with His blessings.
Wednesday, 23 September 2009 | |||
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Effective Prayer | |||
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In 2006 the results of a 10-year study, funded to the tune
of 2.4 million dollars by the Templeton Foundation, were released. The
results: prayer made no difference. See a New York Times report. In the Templeton study, more than 1,800 patients undergoing coronary bypass surgery were divided into 3 groups, one of which was not prayed for, one of which was prayed for but not told about the prayer, and one group was prayed for and patients in the group were told they were being prayed for. Those prayed for did no better medically. There was even a small but significant difference in that the third group actually did somewhat worse in recovery than the group not being prayed for. One explanation is that the third group had heightened anxiety because of expectations created by knowing they were being prayed for. I have a bit of a scientific bent and I confess a little disappointment that the power of prayer was not stunningly apparent in such a study. Many years ago I had a physician friend who was a Christian and who was very hopeful and excited about what such an experiment might demonstrate. But the ways of God don't yield so easily to statistical analysis. There are all sorts of questions Christians might want to raise about the Templeton study and others like it. The prayer in the study was done by strangers in order to maintain good double-blind research standards. There was no way to control or even know how much patients in all the groups, including the first, were being prayed for by friends, family and their own church communities. The patients experienced no personal contact from or sense of community with those doing the praying. All in all, the prayers studied in the 2006 research were very unlike the image of prayer we receive in our text for this week, James 5:13-20. There we see the elders of a local church gathering around a sick person, anointing the person with oil in the Lord's name, and praying over the person. It's not the sort of thing that makes for a good, clean, controlled scientific experiment. In verses 15 and 16 of the text there is also a troubling connection between sickness and sin. Yet that connection should also reassure us as Christians that faith and prayer address deeper and larger concerns than can be addressed by experimental statistics regarding prayer's effectiveness. There is a concern for healing of both body and soul and an understanding that we are not merely physical, biological creatures. The connection of sickness with sin is not absolute by any means. Verse 15 says, "If they have sinned, they will be forgiven." It is not assumed that the sick person has sinned, it is simply recognized that prayers for healing must address our whole condition, both physical and spiritual. After all, God's purpose for us is not to heal all our illnesses if we will only believe enough. God's purpose is to redeem us heart, mind, body and soul and transform us into beings that will live in and en joy His presence forever. That goes way beyond offering us an easy passage through the complications of bypass surgery. I think, then, that we can understand the transition to the end of the passage in verses 19 and 20 which talk about bringing back someone who has wandered away from the truth of the faith. That's the larger spiritual arena in which prayers for healing operate. God wants to forgive our sins and bring us back to Himself much more than he wants to heal our arthritis, cancer and heart disease. Those healings, when they come, are only meant to lead us to Him. | |||
Tuesday, 15 September 2009 | |||
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Gentle Wisdom | |||
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I just got back from a conference at Notre Dame that brought
together philosophers and Bible scholars to talk about how to respond to
the issue of God's violence in the Old Testament. This conference was a
wonderfully congenial discussion of a hard subject, even though some of
the speakers were outspoken, critical atheists. Yet the setting and the topic reminded me of another conference at Notre Dame many years ago when I heard a Christian philosopher and a Bible scholar enter into a heated exchange. In a room full of supposedly wise people, almost all Christians at that event, it was surprising just how much sarcasm, venom and simple hatred could be expressed in just a few words. For a moment it seemed so vicious that a fist fight might actually break out. As we look backward at last week's text (which Mike Fargo shared wonderfully with our congregation), warning about the dangers of an uncontrolled tongue, we go on in James 3:13 - 4:3 to hear him calling for a "gentleness born of wisdom" ["gentleness" is a better translation than the NIV/TNIV's "humility"]. Wisdom is deeper and fuller than mere academic accomplishment and learning, as the two combatants at that long ago conference demonstrated. True wisdom should issue in a gentle demeanor, rather than in an arrogant combativeness. I'd like to think that the scholars in the room this past weekend had learned some lessons about gentleness in the intervening years. Such wisdom has certainly come late to me and I would echo what I heard an old friend say as we were talking about this text a couple weeks ago, "One of my regrets is that if I could do some things over, I would be more gentle." As we learned at the conference, it's certainly difficult to reconcile some of God's war and violence as it appears in the Old Testament with the gentle loving-kindness we also find Him displaying in both the Old and New Testaments. But the person of Jesus Christ certainly shows us that the ultimate truth about God rests much more on the side of gentleness than with violence. May He grant us grace that the same might be said about you and me. | |||
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Profile |
I am the pastor of Valley Covenant Church in Eugene, Oregon. I love to flyfish and hike along the beautiful rivers in our area. I welcome your comments as I share sermon work in progress and occasional other thoughts.
Thank you for visiting this blog. I invite you also to visit my web page.
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