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Notes -
Further, when you look at the teachings of Christian spiritual teachers, the point is very often that you shoudn’t be praying for random things you want, you should be praying for God to do what he wants. The Lord’s Prayer has no place for the Chiefs winning the Super Bowl; instead it says, “thy will be done.” I would argue that any prayer that goes “God give me this thing I want,” is a bad and spiritually dangerous prayer.
Instead you should be praying for strength, or peace, or any of the mental and spiritual gifts that can help you deal with whatever’s going to happen. The point of Christianity is not material success but spiritual growth. That’s why prosperity theology is such a dangerous heresy.
Also, I believe in a vision of Christianity where suffering is itself almost a positive good, because it creates closeness to Christ the suffering servant, and I believe the world was created in order that we could suffer with him. Or, at least, so that our slate of experiences and God’s slate of experiences could be the same — God’s passability and ours is the point of the world. So I find the classical answers to the problem of evil unsatisfying, though I understand their point.
I know that sounds nuts to non-Christians, but I don’t have a high view of folk Christianity and I think it very often misses the mark.
Just so. For myself personally, though, I think I've leaned too hard in that direction in the past, verging on a sort of fatalism, to the point that I no longer prayed for people to be healed, but only for what God wanted to happen, to happen. It seems to me that this verged on a sort of cowardice, where it became more about not asking for things because I didn't believe they'd happen anyway. On the other hand, I've found the faith to pray to God for things that seemed highly improbable, have in fact received some of those highly improbable things, and am very grateful for them. To a great extent, my life is now defined by those positive answers to specific requests, which inspires great thankfulness to God for granting them.
The rational perspective would point out that this is all just confirmation bias. I've chosen to believe in God axiomatically, and I interpret all evidence I receive according to that axiom. But of course, there is no other way to reason from incomplete data; Axioms are necessary precisely because they cannot be proven, and they are necessary because it is impossible to reason without them.
Agreed that Prosperity theology is radioactive trash.
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