Is Answered Prayer Evidence for the Existence of God?

Every day, millions of Christians pray to the God of the Bible, believing that he hears and answers their prayers. Today, I heard an Evangelical man say that he KNOWS God answers his prayers. How does he know this? Well, his story went something like this. He was having a lot of trouble in his life. Feeling helpless and hopeless, the man cried out to God. You know what happened next? Various people came to him offering their help. See! God answered his prayer! Really? Are there any other explanations for his alleged deliverance? How could he possibly know God answered his prayers? Did God send him a return receipt, “proving” that God heard his prayer? The man never says. In his mind, good things happening to him are evidence for the existence of God, even though the “good” done to and for him were solely performed by mere mortals.

This bad thinking is common among Evangelical Christians. Instead of seeing the hands of their fellow humans, they see the hand of God. They “see” God because they “see” God everywhere. God is the sum of all our experiences, according to Evangelicals. We MUST pray to God because he controls our lives. He has in his hands the keys of life and death. Or so it goes, anyway.

Christians have far more misses — unanswered prayers — than they do hits — answered prayers. However, they don’t pay attention to the misses. They might pray one hundred prayers that go unanswered, but let them pray a prayer that God allegedly answered, and there ya have it — God is real!! Never mind the fact that this God ignores them ninety-nine percent of the time. In any other setting but Christianity, a person would be fired if they only correctly performed their work one percent of the time.

Matthew 7:7-11 (NSRV), Jesus said:

Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for bread, would give a stone? Or if the child asked for a fish, would give a snake? If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

According to Jesus:

• Ask (pray) and it will be given to you
• Search and you will find
• Knock and the door will be opened for you
• Everyone who asks receives
• Everyone who searches finds
• Everyone who knocks will find doors opened to him
• God will give good things to everyone who asks (prays) him

Dear Christian, I ask you, is this how your prayer life works? I suspect not. Most Christians futilely spend their lives praying unanswered prayers, searching and not finding, and knocking on doors that never open.

In Luke 17:5 (NRSV), Jesus said:

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

In Matthew 17:19-20 (NRSV), we have the disciples asking Jesus why they couldn’t cast a demon out of a person:

Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.

Jesus told his disciples that if they had faith the size of a mustard seed that they could say to a mountain, “move from here to there,” and it would happen. According to Jesus, nothing is impossible for his followers. Such a minute faith, yet mighty works are done! Or so the thinking goes, anyway. I’ve yet to see a Christian move a mountain. How about you? It seems, at least to me, that God doesn’t do what he promises. Most Christian prayers are attributable to human intervention, and not God. The few that are not or are unexplainable aren’t enough to justify the existence of a prayer-answering deity.

Yesterday, floods ravaged Texas, leading to scores of injuries and deaths. Numerous children at a Christian youth camp were killed. Where was God? Surely Christians prayed for the safety and deliverance of these children, yet God ignored them. What does this tell us about prayer and God?

Dear Christian, I ask you, when was the last time you prayed for a tree to be uprooted and cast into the sea, and it happened? When was the last time God supernaturally answered your prayer? Not the superficial minutia of life. I’m talking about petitions that require a supernatural explanation

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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