Atheists annoy me. And so they inspire me. Several years ago, I ran into a website called "God is Imaginary". It was created by a guy named Marshall Brain. On his website, he has 50 "proofs" that God is imaginary.

His "proofs" aren't really proofs, they are more like complaints. And, of course, they come from not really understanding what God is doing in this world. His first complaint is that God does not answer prayer. You may be wondering about prayer too, since Jesus said many times how you can pray for anything and get it. Maybe you've even tried this. For instance, maybe you prayed for someone to be healed, but they died instead. Or, maybe you prayed to get a certain job and you didn't get it. Ordinary Christians have many ordinary answers as to why God does not answer a prayer. I think many of the explanations I've seen from ordinary Christians are not very good. But I am not an ordinary Christian since I come from the modern, rational, scientific culture. I think differently. So I am going to give you my unconventional answer.

The key to understanding why prayers do not get answered immediately, AND MAYBE NOT AT ALL, is to realize that God knows an awful lot. He knows the future. He hears your prayers now but He also hears your prayers in the future, prayers that you have not even made yet. That's hard to appreciate since we only know what is happening NOW and we think NOW is all there is. But God sees the future and not just NOW. I think God even looks at what we just hope for here on Earth. Even if we do not specifically pray to God and say I want this and that, I think God still takes those hopes into account. And God knows how you will feel about things in the future. He knows what you will like (did like) about your life on Earth and what you will not like (did not like) about your life on Earth. Now - this is important - when God made this world, He took everyone's hopes and prayers into account. All the hope and prayers and feelings and thoughts you will have during your entire lifetime were taken into account when He made this world.

Now I'll give you some of the kinds of problems that God had to think about when He created this world. For instance, suppose you have been looking for a job and you find something that you think is so wonderful that you start praying for God to let you have that job. Oh, and meanwhile, you have also been praying for a wife (or a husband). How do YOU know that this job will actually BE so wonderful for you? You're just guessing. There could be another job you overlooked or don't even know about yet, where the job is not only wonderful, you will find that wife (or husband) that you've been praying for? Then, suppose there is a third job out there that you start praying for but that job will not be any fun, but God knows that if you suffer through that job, you will end up being a better person in the end. Which prayer should God answer? Well, God had to make these kinds of decisions when He made this world. And then it is obvious that some prayer requests will go unanswered.

Now Marshall Brain has a big example of how prayer fails. He says what would happen if millions of Christians all had faith and prayed for an end to all cancers? OK, cancer is not fun. Everyone who has it wants it to go away. I explained a couple of weeks ago about how important it is for God to interrupt our ordinary lives with diseases and disasters. You know, people get caught up in all sorts of activities here on Earth. A job, a hobby, children, sports, television and many other things. And because of all that activity they don't bother to think about God and life and death and good and evil. Cancer forces people to stop and reappraise their lives and their priorities. And some of them realize that they need God. And develop a relationship with Him. And they find that relationship more rewarding than money, children or a career. And then they make it to heaven. And in heaven, God says, "You know, you never would have made it here if I didn't give you cancer." Should God have honored that prayer to end all cancer even though the net result is that some people don't make it to heaven? So, you know, God realizes that if a little suffering now will get you into heaven later, it is better to go through the suffering now. When you get to Heaven, you will know that too.

Here is a real case where God did not answer prayer but things worked out well in the end. Joyce Meyer is an important Christian teacher. She specializes in helping people live a happy life here on Earth. The title of her TV program is Enjoying Everyday Life. Joyce was sexually abused by her father while she was growing up. That wasn't pleasant THEN. She prayed for it to stop. But God let it go on and on. As a person, she actually became quite a mess. She had pretty much every sort of behavioral problem a person could have. She was selfish. She was getting angry all the time and fighting with her husband and yelling at her children. But Joyce had this to say in one of her TV shows:

So these days, Joyce's story helps other people overcome all those problems that they have. If God answered Joyce's earlier prayers to end the abuse, she would not be happy now that she is helping millions of people.

Now for a silly example. Suppose you think that you would be happy if you had millions of dollars in gold. So you pray for millions of dollars in gold. First, of course, God knows you would waste that money on meaningless things like wild parties. The key to happiness is a good relationship with God, not money. Second, off in the future, there you are in heaven, and God sees that you're happy that God did not give you millions of dollars in gold while you were on Earth. He sees you finally realized that asking for all that gold was a bad idea. So God does the best thing. He ignores your prayer for gold. The fact that in the future you are happy that you did not get the gold cancels out that prayer you made for gold years ago on Earth.

Then what would happen if every time a Christian prayed for gold, God gave it to them? People would be kidnapping Christians so they could have the Christian pray for and get millions of dollars in gold! It wouldn't take long before there was so much gold in the world that it was worthless! God realizes that if a really stable society is going to happen here on Earth, He can't go around giving millions of dollars worth of gold to everyone. And everyone who makes it to heaven will look at their lives and God's whole plan for life on Earth and know that giving everyone millions of dollars in gold would have been a bad idea. Or just think, maybe you're not interested in gold, maybe you'd just like an ice cream cone right now. What would happen to the world if every time you asked God for an ice cream cone, God gave you one?

So there are all sorts of things we pray for and hope for NOW that really are not the best things for us. When it comes to answering a prayer request, God must look at how things are in the future, not just at what we are asking for now. All your hopes and prayers throughout your entire life time have to be taken into account. Thoughts, and hopes and prayers in the future end up canceling out prayers that you make now.

One of the most important things to realize is that right now, life on Earth is serious business. We've got lessons about good and evil to learn. Those lessons for us and those lessons for other people mean that God cannot give people all sorts of things that they want right now. Later on, in Heaven, things will not be so serious so granting prayer requests instantly will not mess up things in Heaven. I don't think the following quotation applies to heaven, I think it applies for the situation in the Millennium, the thousand years of peace. This is Isaiah 65:24:

Well, back in heaven things will be just as good. In Heaven if you ask God for an ice cream cone, you can get it right away. This will not cause any problems at all. So God does answer prayers and this will be easier to see in heaven than it is now here on the Earth. Oh, and you can pray for gold in Heaven and get it right away as well. Of course, the streets are paved with gold so I don't think many people will want more. What would you want in Heaven, anyway?