Yesterday I started to read 'Answering God' by Robert Ellis. 'Towards a theology of intercession' is the helpful subtitle. The reason is that I discovered the book on my shelves, unread, and realised it looks like what I've been thinking about lately in the participraying short series of posts. I became interested in the lack of reflection on this topic in the meetings and I felt that it would be good for me to now feed the soil of reflection by seeking further input.
The book seems to promise a somewhat philosophical approach to what is involved theologically in the issue. Much of it so far echoes thoughts and perspectives I have come to over the years of reflecting piecemeal on it. -But it's only the first chapter!.
Anyway, one of the things I've been thinking about is the phrase "unanswered prayer" and I'm reminded by it's being mentioned in the book. For a long while I've felt it was a misleading or unhelpful characterisation. If it's right that God always hears our prayer and that God cares deeply for each and all, AND that God is always, in some sense, communicating with us (or striving to) then there can be no such thing as unanswered prayer. The issue is how is the prayer responded to by God.
It might be better to consider the phenomenon being gestured to in the phrase 'unanswered prayer' as something like, "unrequited prayer" (I quite like that phrase -it might be a good title for an article on the matter). I also wondered about "unfulfilled requests" or "~petitions" but that seems perhaps a bit too like the phrase I'm troubled by. I think we need a phrase that at least hints towards the possibility that God wants to invite us into conversation of some sort about our requests. The request or petition is perhaps meant to be a starting point and not merely a seeking of a short answer but an exploration of our motives and defaults, of God's character and purposes and of the way the world is and how God and we relate to the wider world and creation; singly and together.
In terms of the 'participraying' dimension of this topic, I think that it raises -or, better perhaps, underlines the matter of corporate discernment processes. If we are to respond to God's responding to our raising a matter of concern (whether a request or something more tentative), then we need to be able to question our own motives and assumptions. Doing that corporately raises some delicate questions about developing a group who have the emotional intelligence (or maybe simply the kind regard that characterises neighbour-love) enough to understand how to challenge, or to raise a question that could be quite 'personal' in the sense that it may touch on deeply held convictions and or emotionally-laden matters and beliefs. It also invokes the need on the part of those challenged to respond well to such challenges. These are matters of individual and group formation.
I can imagine scenarios where this might mean someone's concern or initial request is met within the group with something like, "I understand that this matters to you deeply, I feel something of your anxiety /anger" (Maybe others might chime in affirmatively here). "Could we sit with that for a bit? Would you unpack it a bit to help us to grasp what drives your concern emotionally?"
And in such a scenario, we shouldn't necessarily be assuming that the emotional response is awry of of God's concerns. The point is to understand whether God is in it to affirm, challenge or a bit of both? And, of course, this kind of dynamic could apply also to someone feeling that they have a sense of what God might be communicating about the topic.
I think that this can be tricky: often there is a church culture which discourages us from pressing the questions that should be offered. Maybe from fear that it would cause affront (and that alerts us to the need, when we offer such insights, to offer them tentatively, inviting 'testing' and finding an inner posture of curiosity rather than being too certain at that point. That in turn would mean learning how to speak about our own inner experience to some extent. Learning how each of us processes possible insights from God, promptings of the Spirit and how we each pass up things that we suspect might merely be our own stuff. It would mean us becoming comfortable with discussing our theology and learning together about how to think about Providence. It would involve bearing with one another as we learn to process all of this. It would involve trust and some intimacy.
I guess we should also acknowledge that because God dwells with people and in situations, we also have to note that these processes may also 'carry' God (this is an image related to that phrase in the psalm about God being enthroned of the praises of his people). This questioning, exploring, self-examination, opening up to mutual scrutiny, mutual vulnerability is participating in God in prayer. It is part of prayer. It is Jacob wresting with the unnamed man at the Jabbok. It is Abraham dialoguing with God at God's instigation at Mamre.
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