Hard Questions, Real Answers – Unanswered Prayers by William Lane Craig

A friend gave me an excerpt of a book by William Lane Craig titled Hard Questions, Real Answers featuring the portion about unanswered prayers. Craig addresses the difficulty with the various verses of the gospel of John which features Jesus as giving a promise to answer any prayers without any conditions attached. For example, Jesus says “And I will do whatever you ask in my name” (John 14:13a), “Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name” (15:16b), “My Father will give you whatever you ask in my name” (16:23b). The problem with this promise is that sometimes God does not answer our prayers.

Craig actually acknowledges that prayers can be unanswered. This is quite a somber contrast to the views from well-meaning Christians I know who would say that God do answer prayers all the time, except that the answer can be no or wait sometimes. Craig then argues that Jesus’ promise has to be qualified based on readings in other passages of the bible. He substantiates such an interpretation of Jesus’ promise on the grounds that there are precedents for qualifying other teachings of Jesus in light of different Scriptures. Craig gave the example of Jesus’ teachings on divorce. In Mark 10:11, Jesus makes the blanket statement, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another women commits adultery against her.”, which has the connotation that no exception is allowed. But in Matthew 19:9 Jesus says, “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.”, this time the statement being qualified.

Being a law student, I can tell you that this is certainly an unconventional way of interpreting a text such that other statements can cause the interpretation of an original text to derogate so much from its literal interpretation. The furthest that a law professional would usually wish to go is to allow for purposive interpretation, such that the intent of original framers of the text would guide the interpreter to picking the most appropriate interpretation out of the set of possible interpretations from a given text. I believe if this were law that was being inquired into, academicians would be quick to critic the words of Jesus in the books of John as not consistent with the other passages of the bible. And I am not satisfied with an interpretation that contradicts its literal interpretation. This is quite different from a case where other passages are simply adding further details to an original passage.

I am not sure whether the solution provided by William Lane Craig is necessary. I think that the promise made by Jesus is to be contextualized. Jesus was addressing his disciples who were worried about Jesus leaving. The promise to answer prayers without qualification should be thus seen as being specific to the disciples.

Continuing, Craig identified the reasons for prayers not being answered – 1)Sins in our lives (Ps 66:18, 1 Pet 3:7), 2)Wrong Motives (James 4:3), 3) Lack of faith (Mark 11:24), 4) Lack of earnestness (eg: Hannah’s praying for a son, Jesus’ prayers through night to God), 5) Lack of Perseverance (Luke 11:5-8, Luke 18:1-8). Craig acknowledges that there are cases where all these conditions are absent but prayers are not answered, and thus he adds that the prayer must be within God’s will.

Craig says, “And when you reflect on it, it would be a recipe for disaster for God to simply give us whatever we ask. For we would always pray to be delivered from any suffering or trial, and yet we know from Scripture that suffering builds character and trials perfect our faith. If God gave us whatever we asked, we would be immature, spoiled children, not men and women of God.”

I suppose the greatest difficulty is to meet all the qualifications required for one’s prayers to be answered. In my opinion, the criterias identified above are quite harsh, and even idiosyncratic. For example, can one truly overcome all sins in his or her life? And if one is lacking in the belief that God will answer one’s prayers, how can one choose to believe. Why should God require a person to believe that he(God) will grant the prayer request before he does so? After all, God has his own sovereign will and should not be limited by the lack of belief by a person’, isn’t it? I suppose another difficulty is to know the reason behind why one’s prayer is unanswered. The conclusion that one can make is either God has said no, or one of such reasons provided by Craig above. And in this day and age where people do not hear God directly, we usually cannot decipher the response given by God.

But I think an appropriate approach that one could take to his or her prayer life is to try to fulfill all the described requirements for one’s prayers to be answered. It is difficult, it is idiosyncratic, and ultimately whether one’s prayers is answered is arbitrary on God’s will, but it is worth the shot to try out all one can to get one’s prayers answered. Perhaps God might have a reason for all these criterias and standards.