Questions: Shouldn’t prayer be useless? Imagine you are a young teenager and your mom is sick in the hospital with cancer and almost about to die. You pray to god that she be healed and make a full recovery, but this is pointless for two reasons that go very well together. 1) God is all-knowing and has a perfect plan for you and he is never-changing (Number 23:19). God, being all-knowing, has already decided, long before the earth was even made, whether he was going to let your mom live or die on that day. His perfect plan could include something like you finding the cure for cancer because of your mom’s death. So when you ask god to heal your mother he will obviously say no because he has bigger things in store for you, whether you know it or not. So why even bother asking him if you know what he is doing is the best choice? I think god is capable of making the better choice than you. Also even if god wasn’t all-knowing Numbers 23:19 clearly states that god never changes his mind. Leaving prayer absolutely pointless.
That is an excellent question and I really had to think about it for a while.
First, I must contend with your application of the scripture in Number 23:19. I am not a theologian, but it would seem to me that God is speaking within the context of this instance. In earlier verses he very specifically blesses Israel instead of cursing them. It is only a short time later Balaam again wants to curse Israel. Nothing has changed but the location Balaam. So in this case, God does not change his mind. Within this context, it also appears to me that the statement “is not man that he should change his mind” may refer to the whimsical changing of mind for no apparent reason. Nothing had changed in that story to provoke God to change his mind.
I believe there are many scriptures which tell us God does change his mind. In Genesis chapters 6-9 Moses certainly appears to change God’s mind about destroying Israel. In Matthew 15: 22-28 Jesus appears to change his mind about healing the gentile woman’s daughter. Scripture says God changed his mind about destroying Nineveh when they repented.
So I think I am concluding that God’s character never changes, but he can alter his responses to us based on our change of heart, prayer, and actions.
The other item you mention is God’s perfect will for your life. I know that is a widely taught belief, but I am not sure it is scriptural. God wants us to love him and be humble and kind and all those other character type things, but I am not sure he is concerned about whether I buy a Ford or a Honda for my next car. I think God’s will for our lives is more what I would call “foundational”.
Now, you are 100% correct and I agree that he is all-knowing, which means he does know the final outcome of the situation you relate. So he does know ahead of time if the teenager will pray or not. But the point of the entire instance may not be in the sickness of the mother, but in the call to prayer of the teenager. I once heard the phrase “The purpose of prayer is not to get what we want, but to learn to want what God wants.” So perhaps God is calling the teenager to prayer so the teenager will be changed.
Now I also asked myself, “But if God knows whether the teen will pray, what is the point?” The point is that God is just. He act with justice. If that teen were to someday end up in hell because he rejected God, he cannot say that God did not call him into a personal relationship with him. And if the teen does respond to the call to prayer and is changed in his heart, no one else will be able to say God chose him for no reason, because the teen did choose to respond.
The concept of God’s justice is so often overlooked, but it is the reason for so many of God’s actions. We must remember that in the end, no one in heaven or hell will be able to claim God wasn’t “just”, so God must go through many actions, even though he knows the outcome ahead of time.
If god can change his mind, that makes him not omnipotent. When god changes his mind about how his creation was good in Genesis 6-9, he is showing he had no idea what the outcome of creation would be. So if god can truly change his mind and decisions he is not all knowing.
Instead of making us go through this life battling with the idea of god and trying to decide whether prayer works and if god exists, why doesn’t god just send me to hell and you to heaven and instill the realization of the choices we would have made? Sure, if he sent me to hell now and said you would have lived for 60 more years and would have never accepted me I may try to argue with him and say I would have. But god can do anything! He could simply show me a video of my entire life, make my brain work in a different way to where I know he is telling the truth, anything! Why must he torture us with this pointless life? The only reason I can think is he enjoys watching our pathetic little selves march around our entire lives trying to figure out how everything works with our insignificant little brains. You could use the simple answer “he doesn’t want to worship him as mindless zombies”, but the problem with that is we wouldn’t really be mindless zombies. We would be exactly the same way we are now, but we wouldn’t have to live the pointless concept of “life”. He would never need to literally call on the boy just to see if he would answer, because he already knows the answer. I hope this is making sense.
You make a lot of sense and I enjoy the way your thoughts just run onto the page. It is refreshingly transparent!
I don’t think that omnipotence or omnisense means God can’t change his mind, though I can’t pretend to truly know or understand. I don’t understand when my wife change her mind half the time, so I can’t expect to understand God (my chances with God are probably better!).
I tend to always relate to God as a father so my view is jaded by my experience of my father, and now my experience as a father.
I believe God made us to truly interact with us. Now I can’t imagine how I could truly interact with someone, and never change my mind. Sometimes with my own kids I start down a decision path. From experience, I may sometimes know how the decisions etc. are going to ultimately end, but I can’t, or won’t, force my child to make different decisions. As they choose this or that, I may change my course of action, but that doesn’t change my knowledge of how it will end. Just knowing, doesn’t keep someone from changing their mind.
Your idea that God could in effect put life on fast-forward and just show you a film really doesn’t work for me. People would never accept what we see on a video as justification. We would have to live it. I know my parents often would warn me about things (drinking too much, staying out too late etc. etc.) but until I experienced it myself, I didn’t really believe or learn it. And as a parent I’ve tried to warn my kids about stuff but at least half the time, they have to learn the hard way. No, if our life is going to determine eternity, and God wants us to know in the end that we were treated justly, I think we have to make all our own decisions, for real in real-time.
I also don’t think God enjoys seeing us struggle with pathetic lives. Being a parent helps here. Imagine I knew ahead of time that if I had 2 children the first would end up in hell, but the second would be with me in heaven (of course I hope this is not reality, it is only for the sake of discussion). Now I have to decide. Do I keep 1 out of hell by not having any children? But that keeps the second out of paradise. I love all my children immensely and this creates a serious problem. I doubt any parent could easily make that decision. Knowing I created a being that would have to suffer would greive me terribly. But knowing I created a being that rejoiced in heaven forever would be great.
I admire the courage God shows by being willing to suffer with the anguish of his own creation. I see him as a father and when we struggle on earth, he is grieved. If he is like me and the other parents I know, we hurt far worse with the struggles of our children than with our own struggles. I really think in creating us God knew he would suffer, and rejoice, with us. That’s what parent do.