Larni writes:
Why does god need to be petitioned by people saying prayers to heal people?
It seems odd to me that a god would only heal people when they are prayed for.
Does this mean that god only heals those who have enough people who like and pray for them?
Can't god tell when a person deserves healing?
It seems to me that there are millions of people around the world who could be healed and yet this does not happen.
Why does god need to be asked to heal people?
I’ll try to respond to this as a Christian.
The first part of my response is to say that I don’t know. I remember years ago when a very well known English evangelist
David Watson died from cance,r even though there were Christians around the world praying for him. Obviously there are no simple answers and yet as a Christian I believe that I was called to pray.
I don’t think that there is any doubt that a lot of illness is caused by something other than germs, broken bones etc. Stress and anxiety in our lives can bring on physical ailments. I have observed that prayer does appear to bring some relief from anxiety for people but obviously that could just be the dismissed as the placebo effect. Still I did read a recent secular study that showed that religious people were not as stressed as non-religious people. We can all make whatever we like of that. ( I couldn’t find that particular study but here is an earlier one.
Religion as a Stress Reliever. )
As I’m a Christian and not a materialist I believe that there is more to all of us than what we perceive naturally. I also believe that physical death is not the end of life. From that point of view we don’t actually know the ultimate outcome of our prayers. I’m not saying that the people that prayed for David Watson weren’t praying for a physical healing, but maybe a healing is part of something more than just what happens in this lifetime. Once again it is just conjecture.
Another thought on what happens when we pray for healing for others is this. Here is a quote from the Old Testament book of Micah.
Micah 6:6-8 writes:
6With what shall I come to the LORD
And bow myself before the God on high?
Shall I come to Him with burnt offerings,
With yearling calves?
7Does the LORD take delight in thousands of rams,
In ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I present my firstborn for my rebellious acts,
The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8He has told you, O man, what is good;
And
what does the LORD require of you
But to do justice, to love kindness,
And to walk humbly with your God?
What God wants of all of us, whether Christian or not, is that we treat others justly, that we treat others with kindness and mercy, that we find pleasure in observing kindness in general, and that we remain humble by eschewing the kind of pride that elevates ourselves in our own mind above others.
It seems to me that when we pray for healing for others that it not only is fulfilling what God asks of us, but that it also works towards changing our hearts so that we more naturally, by just the act of practicing compassion and humility, become more and more people who humbly love justice and kindness.
I’m not saying that these are definitive answers. As I said, I don’t know, but stil,l these are some of things that we can consider we talk about praying for healing.
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