I had a really good question come my way the other day. In response to the recent case of three girls being held captive for roughly 10 years and being repeatedly abused by a Cleveland man they asked, “how can God answer some prayers and not answer others? Specifically, how could God have answered others prayers and not these girls? It is not uncommon for us to respond this way in the face of such evil. There are any number of horrific events happening all too frequently that could solicit the same question. We try to make sense out of what is going on in the world around us. Often when we do we are frustrated by how things don’t fit into our understanding of God.
Well there’s quite a lot that can be said here. First on a simplistic level do we know anyone prayed in this case (or more specifically prayed to the true God)? More importantly however are our ideas regarding God and prayer. This question, one most of us often ask, reveals that we view God as something that exists to give us what we want. For example, I pray and God gives it to me. When He doesn’t give it to me there must be some ‘reason’ He didn’t. For example, I didn’t have enough faith or I did something wrong etc. The most common thing is to rationalize the whole thing by coming up with the saying “God doesn’t give us what we want but what we need”. The problem here is we think only in terms of ‘things’ we need to survive. What exactly is it that we need? Well that’s actually quite simple. God is what we need. Throughout history righteous people have suffered and God did not intercede. The Apostle Paul even said that he rejoices in his sufferings. Instead of God giving us what we need think about it as God IS what we need – not just here and now but for all eternity.
Now that’s kind of a round about way to address the original question but we need to change our view regarding how we relate to God. He does not exist to give us things (even freedom from suffering) His desire is to ultimately make us all like Jesus Christ. Answering our prayers does not lead to giving us what we ask but to making us like Christ because ultimately that is the only thing that will really make us happy.
The final point I would like to share is that we live in a corrupt world. One of the great ironies is that the root of this corruption is actually found in the greatness of how God created us. He created us with free will. This free will is what enables us to do great things including acts of kindness,compassion and selflessness. But it is this very same free will that enables us to do terrible things, self-centered things. God does not always interfere with the events of life because to always do so would require the removal of our free will. Without the free will we could never enjoy Him, enjoy life or be like Him.
God does not merely give us what we need. He is what we need.