THE ECONOMICS OF MIRACLES, AND OF PRAYER - by Chiemerie Nnamani

I believe that the evidence supporting the existence of God (or at the very least, a merciful God) and the evidence against, are equal and opposing, and I will explain. In the 15th Century, Vlad the Impaler, who was ruler of Wallachia (in present-day Romania), punished his enemies by impaling them in their tens of thousands. Now let me explain this “impalement”, lest we get lost on the impassionate language. By impalement, I mean that Vlad the Impaler stuck a sharp spear into his victims, hung them in this way in his courtyard, and the spear standing upright, with the help of gravity, pierced the insides of his victims gradually (because he usually let them in this state for several weeks), until the tip of the spear came out through the mouths or scalp of the heads of his victims. He ordered that women be impaled together with their suckling babies on the same stake. The babies fought for their lives at their mother’s breasts until they died. Then he had the women’s breasts cut off and put the babies inside headfirst; thus he had them impaled together. Vlad the Impaler did this to millions of people. How could God have suffered such a vile man to live? How could God have descended so abruptly on King Herod (turning him into maggots in Acts 12:23) for being pompous, and King Nebuchadnezzar (turning him into a wandering animal in Daniel 4:33), and yet allowed this cruel Vlad the Impaler to live out the rest of his malevolent existence? Had his victims not prayed to God? We ask this question over and over whenever a tragedy happens. Remember the Holocaust? Remember all the wars that have been fought throughout history? All the cries of mothers and their dying infants? Had they not all prayed to God? Now, how do we manage not to compromise our faith in the midst of these crying evidences?

I will refer to Matthew 5:45: “…He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” Even without obsessing over the extreme cases, even in our immediate non-warring society, the wicked seem to prosper greatly. Ambitious men with no morals control the world, and most times, the promise that turning to God is a step toward financial breakthrough or academic success is quickly contradicted even without very external evidences. We must therefore review the significance of prayer.

What if I told you that every prayer ever said is a prayer against another person’s prayer? Or that every miracle is a disadvantage unto another? This is a courageous statement, indeed! Before I am confident to continue on this treacherous line, I would want to point out a few things. The truth about prayer is that only a percent (in fact an infinitesimal percent) of prayers that have been said have been answered. Consider the amount of supplications that have been poured by the helpless of this world on the altars of God’s church all over the world, the cancerous patients who prayed and wept, and yet died of cancer; the widows, the barren who still have no issue. Consider also the reference above, about the millions of women and children who die in wars; some hacked down or shot even in the midst of a heartfelt prayer. In every gathering of believers, each among the hundreds and thousands has tens and hundreds of words of prayer, and yet, only a few of these get answered; only a few come to give testimonies. Does this mean that prayers do not work?

Look at this confusion in this way: Imagine if God answered every prayer said by every believer. Imagine if He saved millions and millions of Christians from every trouble they fell into. Why then would we attempt to become Barristers? If He saved millions from every headache, every malaria, and every cancer, why then would we become physicians? To be blunt to Faith, for every prayer God answers, someone somewhere is deprived of a miracle. Each time God saves you from a trouble, one barrister (as prayerful as you are) loses a miracle. Consider that the depth of your trouble or sickness coincides with the greatness of the miracle your case is for a lawyer or a physician. Therefore, in effect, whenever God answers your prayer, He does not answer that of another. So who are we? How selfish are we to demand that God answer each prayer we say (or even half of them)?

It is my belief that God has ordained the system of things from the beginning: created the first man, and set up a system that fosters the subsistence of life. I believe that all laws of Physics, and Biology (all of science) were ordained by him, and that He prefers these laws to abide with human interactions. This is the Economics of the natural world. Think of it as a game: the code writer programs the game, inserts all the codes, sets up its workings, and leaves everything in the hands of the enthusiastic gamer. Losing and Winning form part of the game. It is for the gamer to continue to discover new combination of keys and moves, and it is for the code writer to look at his game, and be pleased for all he has made is good (Genesis 4:31). The code writer here is God, and the first gamer is Adam. Albert Einstein said, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”

It is hard to believe in this notion of miracle, without making adjustments to our idea of God, and of our faith. But this should not be the case. It is, only where we are unconfident about the nature of our relationship with God. Christianity is not necessarily a give-and-take relationship. Our religion is our ascension towards the nature of God, our continuous departure from the acts of the flesh. This is what righteousness is, what right standing with God means. And we achieve this through prayer, and through worship. We fortify ourselves, not Him! Whether we derive something material in return is principally irrelevant. It is for our own sakes that we are saved. Our salvation does not add or subtract anything from Him. I will quote E.W. Kenyon, “…Here is the secret of faith — faith that conquers, faith that moves mountains. Here is the secret of the Spirit’s guiding us into all reality. The heart craves intimacy with the Lord Jesus and with the Father. This craving can now be satisfied…” Now, would the craving of your heart be fully satisfied by a simple intimacy with God, in prayer, without more? If you knew for sure that your next prayer would not be answered, would you still seek intimacy with God and go on with that prayer? If you came to realize that the words you speak to the father in your quietness will come to no effect, would you still seek intimacy with Him? These are questions that permeate the roots of our faith, not to undermine it, but to build it on a more solid ground, a ground upon which we are capable of giving, of believing without expecting.

Albert Einstein:

“The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth(or miracle) nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth (or miracle) or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action. (The brackets: (or miracle) are inserted by author)”

The divine task is complete when we understand that worship is simply a genuine desire for familiarity with the nature of God. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego said one of the most touching lines, in the Bible, Daniel 3:17,18: “If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it…But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods…” Give-and-Take is in the nature of man, but Holiness takes us away from this human nature. We are born with the sin of Adam, with our most basic instincts (of greed, of selfishness, of hate) dominant. We are born oriented toward acts of the flesh. The more we are submersed in prayer, in the presence of the Father, the more we set off a mechanism of constant purification from the nature of Adam.

E.W. Kenyon:

John 10:10: “I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.” What is Life? Life is the Nature of God. You may have the Father’s Nature abundantly. “I am the way, the reality, and the life.” He was unveiling His heart to us, showing what He can be to us in our daily life… In Christ we have received Eternal Life, the Nature of our Father.

In Christ, we have received the Bread of Life, and not necessarily the material bread; the water of life, that though our bodies may thirst sometimes, our spirits may live eternally never to thirst. Did Christ not do miracles to arrest the attention of us, feeble souls; men of material inclination, who could not believe a thing without seeing? Did He not go on afterward to de-emphasize His own miracles? John 6:27: “Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you”

It has been said that the more uncertain and helpless we feel, the more we gravitate towards prayer. But what then is faith? Believing without seeing; Assurance without Proof. Is it not easier to even believe without seeing than to believe something when it has no effect? I mean, we could rightly believe something without seeing if we only we could feel its impact? What if that thing had no effect whatsoever in our lives, would we still believe? Life after an unanswered prayer must not be a life of doubt but of thanksgiving. 1 Thessalonians 4:11: Give Thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Our approach to what we do not know, what we cannot fully understand, is not to doubt, is not to puncture holes; we are by this, descending in our own folly. Disbelief, in itself, is a fruit of man’s own arrogance that he is capable of knowing all (the impetus of this assertion!). We cannot use what we can see to prove what we cannot see. The Bible says (Hebrews 11:3) that all that is visible was made out of the invisible, and not the other way around. It would be simply erroneous to suggest that what is visible can be used to prove all that is invisible; the invisible being a limitless abundance.

We believe, not because of answered prayers (Even without prayer, miracles still happen. Miracles do happen even for the wicked!). We believe, because the wonders and extent of this infinite universe fills our hearts with humility. And we recognize that man, with his limitations, cannot know all; that the being of God exists in a realm beyond human reason. We believe in this way, rooted on this solid bedrock that is not amenable to human doubt. We believe, so let us seek out a quiet place to pray, to renew our familiarity with the Father. And let us pray of thanksgiving, and forgiveness, recognizing that the only semblance of a prayer of want (Give us this day, our daily bread) in Our Lord’s Prayer is reflected, only in that very short sentence.