Fallacies About Prayer
A Discussion On Why People Are Not Healed When Prayed Over
I want to explore the topic, “Why They Were Not Healed: Fallacies About Prayer.”
I argue that many people experience deep angst over unanswered prayers for healing because they believe common fallacies about prayer for healing.
Fallacies About Prayer: Healing is Guaranteed
“The effective prayer of a righteous person accomplishes much 1.”
People make absolutes of scripture. For example, James suggests that if the person you prayed for does not receive healing, you must have left something essential out of your prayer. “The effective prayer of a righteous person accomplishes much.” They say that one’s prayer must have contained doubt, since earlier in the same letter he talked about doubt. This clearly ignores the passage. “Effective” and “accomplishes much”, even in the Greek, except in the case of forgiveness of sin, are not guarantees of healing.
Fallacies About Prayer: Everybody Who is Prayed For Will Be Healed.
Many years ago, I was on a hospital visit with a friend. Suddenly, behind me, I heard my friend erupt into prayer for the healing of an old lady who was dying. The prayer failed to bring healing and instead caused significant embarrassment, highlighting that God does not heal everyone. If this were so, the world would be full of resurrected people.
When we read stories of Jesus and the apostles healing people, we often forget that they performed those healings for a reason. They were necessary to show the authority that they carried. The healers carried God’s authority and should therefore deserve a hearing. We often forget that the apostle Paul was responsible for many healings. Even raising one person from the dead. Yet he could not heal himself. God made it clear that it was not His design in that case.
Fallacies About Prayer: They were not healed because of their lack of faith.
Doubt weakens faith, while a person prays and another person receives prayer, as James 1:6–7 teaches, and I explore this theme on my Judo blog
Fallacies About Prayer: I must lack faith because they were not healed.
In Matthew 17 (and Mark 9), the disciples failed to cast out a demon from a boy. Traditionally, commentators latch onto Jesus saying:
“O unbelieving and perverse generation! ⌊How long⌋ will I be with you? ⌊How long⌋ must I put up with you?”2
They therefore conclude the failure is a lack of faith. The logic then goes that Jesus is saying that the solution is to pray more or at least more sincerely, and to put more effort into that prayer by fasting. Jesus explained that even faith as small as a mustard seed could move mountains, highlighting that their reliance had shifted away from Him.
Except what if that was not what Jesus was saying?
What Was Jesus Really Saying
Jesus is quoting, or should I say paraphrasing, from Deut. 32:5 & 20, which say:
5 They have behaved corruptly toward him;
they are not his children; this is their flaw,
a generation crooked and perverse.3
&
20 So he said, ‘I will hide my face from them;
I will see what will be their end,
for they are a generation of perversity,
⌊children in whom there is no faithfulness⌋.4
Jesus grows angry because the disciples use their authority to cast out the demon, but fail to acknowledge that he gave them that authority. Presumably, they had become arrogant (“perverse”).
This explains the apparent contradiction in verse 20, where Jesus says they were of little faith, yet all they needed was the tiniest of faith.
Like Peter walking on the water in Matt. 14:22-33 when he took his eyes off Jesus and began to sink. Distracted by the chaos (the domain of destruction and dispare the place of dragons – explaining why someone who could swim went into a panic and called for help).
Hence, here, little faith means faithless or faith in the wrong thing.
This also explains verse 21, whether it appears in your Bible or not. Jesus, or the commentator, if Jesus did not speak those words, tells us to direct our faith to the Lord rather than to ourselves. When we trust in our own strength, we fail. That is why we pray and fast.
Praying for people to heal carries significant implications. Instead of asking why they did not heal when we prayed, we should ask whether we prayed for the right thing.
Fallacies About Prayer: I prayed, “In Jesus Name” Scripture says if we ask anything, it will be given (Jn. 14:13-17).
Whenever scripture says “Will”, it is not always a guarantee. The guarantee of “will” statements in proverbs, but most people would view most of them as speaking generally. Some things, like the guarantee of the giving of the Holy Spirit, never fail to happen.
Most everything else is generally speaking. To claim anything else is to try to dictate to God, and even supernatural beings have had very bad results from doing that.
Sometimes people say, “They must have sin in their lives, and that is why they were not healed. Try telling that to Paul with the thorn in his side (2 Cor. 12:7-9). Certainly, there were occasions in scripture where sin was a factor, but it is not a necessary conclusion. Saying things like this may mean you have to examine the log in your own eye.
We need to temper our expectations of the Gift of healing because Jesus could enter an entire town and heal only a few people.
They lack faith: This may be true, but there may be other reasons, including just because it is God’s will (Job). Again, we must be very careful to avoid dictating to God.
Many Other Things To Consider
This is a big topic, and there are many more things that I would like to consider, but I think that I will do for now, and I’ll discuss more in future blog posts.
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- W. Hall Harris III et al., eds. The Lexham English Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012), Jas 5:16.
- dito Mt 17:17
- dito Dt 32:5.
- doto Dt. 32:20.
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