Does God Intervene in our Lives?

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My friend Bob, a retired lawyer, is a lifelong Christian and regular church-goer. But like me, he considers himself a skeptic. That may be why he’s a regular reader of this blog, one of whose principle aims is to assert that skepticism and faith are not mutually exclusive.

We meet regularly over coffee and discuss mostly religion and politics, society’s two most taboo subjects. We’ve often discussed the subject of God’s intervention in our lives: Does he/she or doesn’t he/she?

We agree that God doesn’t do so often, if at all. Bob leans firmly toward the “not at all,” saying he’d like to believe otherwise but his interpretation of history and the facts prevents him from doing so. He believes God hasn’t intervened in human history since the death of Jesus. I believe that God has intervened and, on occasion, still does.

God-With-Us
The whole premise of Christianity, after all, is that God definitively intervened in the person of Jesus – whose other name, “Emmanuel,” means “God-With-Us.” According to the New Testament and subsequent history - starting with the Acts of the Apostles - a “cloud of witnesses” have asserted that he/she is still with us. And prayer, in which we often ask God to intervene, is a staple of Christianity as it is with most religious faiths.

For many of us, however, prayers of petition, unlike prayers of adoration, thanksgiving and contrition, raise hard questions. Personally, I think many such prayers – and these include many that Catholics regularly hear in the “Prayers of the Faithful” at Mass – are misdirected.

Take prayers in which we ask God to take care of the poor. Doesn’t God expect us to do that? Or prayers seeking peace. Doesn’t he want us to be his/her instruments of peace? Wouldn’t it be better to ask God to help us be who we should be and do what we should do?

So how do you know if God has heard your prayers? Let’s say you pray fervently for something you want, or want to happen, and you don’t get it. Does that mean God didn’t hear your prayer? Or you pray fervently for something you want, or want to happen, and you get it. Does that mean God did hear you?

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Granted, it’s hard to tell the difference between a “no” and a “no reply,” but in both instances above, I would say “not necessarily.”

In my relationship with God, I like the analogy of parent-child. When I was a kid, I remember asking my parents for a pony. I had no idea about the implications of such a request. We lived in a city in a two-story frame house with small front and back yards. There was no way we could keep a pony there, and if not there, where? And none of my family knew the first thing about caring for horses.

I don’t recall how my parents’ “no” to the pony was framed, but however it was, it didn’t greatly affect me. I went on with the important things, like playing.

Some say God’s intervention makes him/her arbitrary. Doesn’t a mother sometimes accede to a request by one child and not another, depending on the circumstances? Does that make her arbitrary?

God's Ways Are Not Our Ways
I picture my relationship with God along those lines. If I pray fervently for a friend’s recovery, for instance, and it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t mean God hasn’t heard my prayer. It means that, as the prophet Isaiah says, “God’s ways are not our ways.” His/her reasons are simply beyond my grasp. I’m convinced, however, that some of my prayers of petition have been answered with a “yes.”

Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them to pray and he responded with what we call “the Lord’s prayer,” a model of how Christians should pray. And in what is perhaps the most direct instruction on the topic, St. Paul urges readers in his first letter to the Thessalonians to “pray constantly, giving thanks in all circumstances.”

God gives us freedom to accept or reject his invitation of mutual love and I believe his/her frequent and continual intervention in our lives would jeopardize that freedom. Still, God’s intervention is evident in the Bible and in the lives of many throughout the ages. There’s no reason to believe it doesn’t happen in our age as well.