This article describes the results of various studies that claim prayer doesn’t help heart surgery patients through the procedure and recovery period. In some cases, the study claims it increases complications during recovery because of heightened expectations.
Although I can’t argue with the results, I find a couple glaring issues from these studies:
1. The patients’ actual belief in God.
We aren’t told whether these people are believers in a certain faith or atheists. For prayer to work, I believe that someone being prayed for has to also have faith in God that he/she will be healed. Without this, I think other people’s prayer would not be as effective.
2. The people praying for the patient don’t know him/her.
Somehow I think that this is also a major hindrance from the prayer working. Yes, people pray all the time for others they don’t know, but in this particular case, combined with fact no 1 above, I think is what makes these studies less effective. It’s hard to really focus prayer for someone you don’t know and never met.
3. Conviction.
We don’t know if these groups that are doing the prayers actually have a conviction from God to do it. Without such a conviction, the prayers can be just empty shells of words which have no power at all. There are tons of intercessors around the world who pray for people / causes they haven’t touched personally, and yet because of God’s conviction, they pray with purpose and that’s where the power lies.
What I would like to see is some studies where these 3 issues are addressed. Find patients who are actual believers in God, find people who know the patient and are convicted to pray for him/her and see what happens.
Tags: Prayer
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