In the middle of this series on prayer, I thought I would lighten things up a bit by posting a funny video.
I love this video, because if you don’t listen to the words, it sounds like a nice, happy-go-lucky, song about praying for other people.
Well, he is praying, but not for anything good. So the next time someone says, “I’ll pray for you” it might be good to stop and think about what they will be praying for.
I wish he wouldn’t have used a Voodoo website for the video, since I think that many of us Christians pray bad things on people we don’t like without resorting to Voodoo, but whatever…. Enjoy the video!
This reminds me of watching Pat Robertson on the 700 club praying for a supreme court justice or the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, to die. If prayer works, then praying for something bad to happen to someone will cause something bad to happen to them, if it is God’s will. There is no evidence for good prayers, bad prayers, or neutral prayers work – only anecdotal stories after the fact by biased observers. Actually, studies done in hospitals show people do less well when others pray for them. Weird, huh? Almost like God didn’t care, or didn’t exist.
“Actually, studies done in hospitals show people do less well when others pray for them.”
I think this is may be a misunderstanding. One study (and probably the most comprehensive one) did show what you said, but many other studies have shown that prayer was helpful The whole thing is inconclusive. You can read a summary of the results of 24 studies in Can prayer assist healing?.
Yeah, I’ve heard it both ways too.
I have also heard that we have about the same “answer to prayer” rate that any other religion does – about 50%. Which, curiously, is the same for people who don’t pray at all, but only hope for certain outcomes.
I am not saying we should not pray, but maybe we should rethink all prayer in general, and begin to look at it from another perspective.
LOL!!! (at the video)
Harold, there have also been studies done that show prayer to be very effective. So…I think, as with most studies, the findings are somewhat biased in favor of the researchers predisposition. It is the nature of the beast…how things are worded to the patients, how those praying are instructed to pray, what those praying actually believe about their prayers and prayer in general. We can both toss studies on the table in attempts to bolster our ‘position’ and where would that leave us? The same place we are now, I suspect…
You seem (in this and previous comments) to be trying to turn the discussion into a debate on the existence of God. As this is not what this blog is about, I wonder why….
Yeah, it’s funny. I cannot help but laugh at the video. The guy seems to happy to be praying such mean things.
I think I have done that though….