Q&A: What Is the Logic of Prayer?
What Is the Logic of Prayer?
Question
Quite often, a person’s prayer comes in response to suffering he is experiencing, or in order to prevent future suffering. My question is: what is the logic behind prayers of this kind? After all, the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world in such a way that human beings would undergo all sorts of experiences, and suffering is one of them. If someone prays that the Holy One, blessed be He, save him from his suffering, he is in effect asking Him to do something against His original will—that human beings should, among other things, also experience suffering. In other words, I assume that the Holy One, blessed be He, had some reason for creating the world with all sorts of evils and afflictions, Heaven forbid, meaning that this too is part of His will. If so, what is the logic of asking the Holy One, blessed be He, to do something against His will?
Answer
Hello Oren.
Some would tell you that He created suffering so that we would pray (“the Holy One, blessed be He, longs for the prayers of the righteous”), and therefore there is no problem praying and removing the suffering. Alternatively, once we have prayed, we no longer deserve the suffering.
But none of this is necessary in my view. I do not think He intervenes in the world nowadays, and therefore in my opinion there really is no point in praying about this (except perhaps in extreme cases where maybe He does intervene. But it’s not worth building on that). At the same time, from that same perspective it is also not correct to say that He wants us to suffer. It is a side effect of the laws of nature.
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Questioner (another one):
Hello Rabbi, I saw that in the answer the Rabbi wrote that he does not believe in major intervention by the Holy One, blessed be He, in the world, and I wanted to ask why the Rabbi thinks that. And doesn’t that contradict the principle that everything God does is for the good, which clearly assumes that everything that happens in the world is a derivative of the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, along with many other sources in the Talmud that testify that God directs every single thing in our world…
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Rabbi:
Sources in the Talmud are one thing, since the Talmud has no authority in matters of belief and theology, only in Jewish law. Matters of belief generally deal with factual claims and not norms, and the Sages, being human, could err in their understanding of reality. But the Torah itself does speak this way (“And I will give your rains in their season,” etc.). I have written on my site more than once that apparently this mode of divine governance has changed, and just as miracles and prophecy disappeared, perhaps the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the world also disappeared. He is disconnecting from us. See here:
Discussion on Answer
They would probably tell you that the need to say it is for our sake. Prayer works on us, and that is how we become worthy of help. Some see prayer as a kind of spiritual mechanism that activates the channels of divine abundance (Nefesh HaChaim).
Following up on this question: according to those who hold that prayer is effective, why does it matter to the Holy One, blessed be He, whether we verbalize the desires of our hearts, if in any case He knows what they are before we express them? And even if we say that matters of the heart are not considered matters unless spoken, what is the point of repeating the same request three times a day every day (say, “heal us,” or “graciously grant us knowledge”)? Logically, it seems to me that it should be enough to ask for something like that once in a lifetime, and from then on just hope for the best.