The Free Will Paradoxes Part 4: Why We Pray

God clearly tells us we are to pray.  The Bible seems to have multiple stories wherein people’s prayers change God’s mind, and thereby change the way things unfold.  But isn’t God’s mind unchangeable, and isn’t the future already set since the moment of creation?   Buckle up.  This section is a bit long, but it will change your life.  

After reading the Bible, we come to believe that God tells us to pray because our prayers matter.  The Bible explicitly states that people have changed God’s mind like Abraham¹, Moses, and Hezekiah did (I expand on each a few paragraphs below).  God will act because of prayer like he did for Daniel, sending an angel to him immediately when Daniel prayed (though it was delayed by the Prince of Persia.)   We can ask that God’s Will be done on earth just as it is in heaven, in hopes that this will become true.  The Bible very clearly states:  

“The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”    James 5:16, KJV  

Does the Bible really say we can change God’s mind?  Yes.  

As a reminder, Abraham was told by God that He was going to destroy Sodom.  Abraham argued with God, and God changed His mind (Genesis 18) saying He would not destroy it if there were 10 good men.  It is very important to note that Scripture very clearly says that God’s mind was changed by Abraham.  Some theologians say that God was testing Abraham, or playing with him.  But if that is the case, then God lied to Abraham.  I do not believe that God lies. 

In Exodus 32, after Moses came down from Sinai with the 10 Commandments, he saw that Israel had made a golden calf, and was having a huge drunken, pagan orgy because Moses had been gone for forty days.  God told Moses to stand back.  “I will destroy them, and make a new nation from you and your seed,” He said to Moses.  Moses fell to his knees and begged for God to relent.  And God did.  Again, some may say this was a test of Moses.  But if it was, God lied during that test.  I do not believe that God lies. 

In 2 Kings 20, the Judean king Hezekiah fell ill.  God send the prophet Nathan to tell him, “Get your house in order.  This sickness will end in death.”  As Nathan walked away, Hezekiah turned over in his bed, facing the wall, and begged God to heal him, to extend his days.  God heard his prayer, and immediately had Nathan turn around and go back to the king.  Nathan declared that God had listened to Hezekiah’s prayer, and God would not let Hezekiah die, but rather would heal him and give him 20 more years.  Hezekiah asked for a sign that this was true, and God moved a shadow up 10 steps, in the opposite direction it would normally proceed through the day.  Some say this was a test to make Hezekiah more dependent on God or more humble.  If true, God lied in order to do this.  I do not believe that God lies.  

I mention these examples to cement into your mind that our prayers do change God’s mind, according to Scripture, which I hold to be true.  Below we will see how this doctrine presents a paradox in a number of ways.  

These are serious logical contradictions in the theory of why we pray.  These paradoxes of prayers seem to counter the Biblical position on prayer.  These contradictions are:  

• Can’t Improve On a Perfect Plan:  God is good and omniscient.  This implies He has a detailed, best plan for how the world proceeds.   Why would He deviate from His best plan at our request?   Wouldn’t any deviation (at our request) results in a worse world?  Why would a Good God answer a prayer that makes the world worse? 

• Can’t Change God’s Mind With New Info:  God is omniscient.  Thus we can never bring God new information to influence Him.  How could we change His mind by stating anything? 

• Can’t Change God’s Mind Period:  If God is immutable, you can’t change His mind about anything at all.  He is unchangeable. 

• Can’t Alter a Known Future:  If God knows the future, he also knows what we will pray, and how He will react to that prayer.  What is the point of even thinking about praying if it is all planned out?  There are really two ways God could know the future:  Hyper-time viewing, and calculation.  We will discuss both in future essays. 

Good Christianity is good philosophy and good logic.  Orthodox Christianity has never asked us to believe something that contradicts facts, history, or logic [footnote:  At most, Christianity asks us to believe in Love, which does, on its face, defy logic.  But in the long term, Love is beautifully logical.].   Christian theology, at its best, is guided strongly by logic.  Interpretation of Scripture is strongly influenced by evaluations determining which interpretation is most logical.  The Church has been crafting its doctrine for more than 1,900 years via Scripture and logic.  

Thus many Christian thinkers, in viewing these logical statements, end up weakening prayer to something like:  

“Prayer doesn’t change God, it changes you.”  Or,

“Prayer mostly aligns our will with God’s Will.”

While these statements are technically true, most Christians know in their hearts that there is much more to prayer than this.  They wrestle with God over the fate of their wayward children.  They bargain for help with debt or danger.  They plead for God to intervene in their country, and they pray for the safety of missionaries in dangerous lands.   

Most Christians believe that their fervent prayer can avail, by God’s Sovereign power, to change the world and its future.  God’s Will is done on Earth to a greater extent because of the prayers of humans.  

So how do we square this circle?  How can we believe in the Biblical doctrines of purposeful prayer, but not ignore sound logic?  Part 1 of this essay, describing the paradigm of Total Free Will, has already given us most of what we need to form a coherent logical, scriptural Theory of Prayer.  Let’s briefly review.  

God Chooses to Value Our Free Will Over Much Else

As discussed in part 1, Total Free Will (choice + consequences) is so necessary in order for us to experience love and purpose, that maximizing Total Free Will must be one of God’s highest priorities.   And even our everyday, mundane choices and their consequences results in some low but steady level of Total Free Will in our spheres of influence.   Let’s bring back the graph of Total Free Will over a square mile in order to further illustrate our discussion.  

God’s could step in to any part of the square mile above, and work supernaturally to make circumstances better (“The Lord declares Rice Krispy Treats to now have negative 100 calories”).  But He does not do this, because His actions cancel out consequences and influence choices, and both of those reduce Total Free Will.  A significant supernatural intervention by God in the left, closer corner would result in a local Total Free Will reduction, illustrated by this graph:  

What does this have to do with prayer?  

Here is a key point:  Prayer is a strong expression of Free Will.  When you focus and ask the Creator of the Universe to step in and modify reality, you are strongly expressing your desire for a certain outcome.  A fervent petition might be illustrated like this:  

Courtesy LivePhysics. For fun, the equation I used to make this analogical illustration is: 100+4*sin(x/3*y)+40000*e^-(sqrt(x^2 + y^2))

The impassioned prayerful expression of free will is much stronger than the passive free will of people deciding what color slacks to wear.  It stands out.  In the Total Free Will formulation, fervent prayer is significantly increasing the expression of free will choice (no consequence is in play yet).  

What have we done here?  We have made a quantitative comparison of different expressions of Free Will (fervent vs. passive).  One could say the same for expressions beside prayer.  An expression of yelled hate in an argument would produce a similar peak, as would a sacrificial decision to swerve into a tree rather than run over your neighbor’s dog.  Different decisions and actions result in different intensities of expressed free will. 

So then, a fervent prayer asking for God’s intervention creates a strong peak of Total Free Will.  

What if God ignores this peak of fervently expressed free will?  The free will choice is not reduced in that situation, because God’s inaction does not change the praying person’s ability to choose to pray.  However, an unanswered petition does reduce the free will associated with consequences.  That petitioner is asking and willing for a certain consequence to happen.  And if that consequence does not occur, that person’s will is thwarted.   

This is another key point:  God not answering a prayer actually reduces the local Total Free Will, because the willed consequences never happen.  A person wanted God to intervene, and God did not intervene.  This is some amount of cancellation of free will due to God’s inaction, because that person did not experience the desired consequences of their prayer.   

Let’s look back briefly at the passive Total Free Will.  Remember, when God does intervene miraculously, the reduction in free choice and especially in felt consequence will likely cause a local reduction in Total Free Will.  And because God has sovereignly chosen to respect our Free Will because it maximizes our love relationship with him, He usually chooses to not intervene.  

But what if someone’s fervent prayer asking for God’s intervention creates MORE expressed Free Will than the reduction of Free Will that would come from God’s intervention?   A graph of this would look like this:  

I love graphing. The equation for this one is: 100+4*sin(x/3*y)+40000*e^-(sqrt(x^2 + y^2)) + 40*cos((.009*x-100)+(0.009*y-100))

The central peak is the expressed Total Free Will of the fervently praying person.  This person is praying for God to intervene in some situation, say to heal the meth addiction of his cousin Beth.  The black arrow in the pink corner shows where Beth’s area of influence resides geographically.  And the depression in that corner of the town is the amount of passive Total Free Will reduction that would occur if God did supernaturally intervene to address Beth’s meth problem. 

The Very Interesting Balance

This creates a very interesting balance.  On one side of the scale is the reduction of Total Free Will of an unanswered prayer, the cost of God not intervening.  On the other side of the scale is the reduction of Total Free Will associated with God intervening.  If the “weight” of the unanswered prayer is greater than the “weight” of God intervening, then something wondrous happens:  The Total Free Will is maximized by God intervening, not by His leaving things alone.  If one of God’s main goals is to maximize Total Free Will, there is now no Self-imposed compulsion for Him to not act.  

This simple realization is the promised intellectual destination.  It opens a new vista of understanding the logic of prayer.   Really, it exposes God’s priorities surrounding prayer.  It tells us what He values as we pray and He considers His response.  

We will look carefully at the results of this new view immediately below.  But first, let me make something abundantly clear.  In NO way is God ever compelled to act or not act.  He has sovereignly chosen to usually maximize Total Free Will.  If a situation of fervent prayer occurs such that His intervention actually increases Total Free Will instead of reducing it, this just means that He can choose to intervene, and there is now no tension between His desire to supernaturally act for good and His desire to maximize Total Free Will.  God is NOT limited, constrained, or forcibly compelled by this concept.  We are here simply illuminating how God CHOOSES to prioritize and evaluate the world in terms of our prayers.  These illustrations are not meant as constraints, but as analogies of how God seems to value different things. His sovereign will is not compelled, but rather we see what He chooses to value…our Total Free Will. He can act however He wants.

How We Change Things

Here is an analogy barely worthy of a theological discussion.  I am on a car trip with my young son across southern Florida via the Alligator Alley highway.  I decide to make one of my main goals on this car trip that he not experience a lot of bladder pain.  On this road, there are many stretches where there are no bathroom stops. Worse, it is a highway through a swamp, and there are sometimes barriers on the sides and middle of the road for many miles at a time.  Pulling over, even to pee in a bush, is simply not a safe option.  

During the trip, my young son gets thirsty and wants a water.  I tell him “No.”  Is it my will that he be thirsty? Of course not.  But there is a tension inside me between my will that he not be thirsty, and my will that he not experience bladder pain.  Thus, I will not hand him a bottle of water because I have an internal preference that he experience the lesser pain of thirst instead of the greater pain of having to urinate.  My mind is made up, given the current situation. 

Now, what if the circumstances change?  Say my son, sitting in the back seat, takes an old soda bottle and relieves himself (see?  Not a very appropriate analogy).   Well, he has taken an action which changes my internal calculus.  My priorities did not change, but my son’s free will act changed the circumstances against which I apply my priorities.  Now I know that he can drink water and still make it 45 minutes to the next restroom stop.  

In a similar way, a person praying and expressing their free will changes the local circumstances of expressed free will, and thereby total free will.  They change the circumstances against which God applies His priorities.  

Now, back into my analogy:  Does my son taking a “trucker break” (peeing into a bottle) compel me to give him water?  No.  I could clearly still refuse to give him that bottle of water.  But it does make me more likely to give him the water, because the positive benefit of slaking his thirst now outweighs the negative of potential bladder distress. Since I want his good, I am now more likely to grant his wish, though his actions have clearly not forced my hand in any way.  

So, by comparing prayer to peeing in a bottle (sigh), I hope you see that I am in no way saying that our prayers compel God.  Rather, they change the circumstances against which He evaluates His priorities.  Based on this, He can sovereignly choose to do whatever He wishes, just as before.  But He may be more likely to grant our desires than if we had not prayed.  

Having inoculated myself against accusation of heresy, we will now look at the consequences of this realization about expressed free will and prayer.  

Three Prayer Paradoxes Now Resolved

With this paradigm of how God sees our Total Free Will and prayer requests, we now better understand what Christ means by “Your Will be done on earth.”  Not that our prayers compel God, but that our prayers align His desire to do good with His desire to maximize Total Free Will.  

This powerful concept alone completely resolves the first three logical problems with prayer.

Let’s look at each of them: 

•  Can’t Improve On a Perfect Plan:  God is good and omniscient.  This implies He has a detailed, best plan for how the world proceeds.   Why would He deviate from His best plan at our request?   Wouldn’t any deviation (at our request) results in a worse world?  Why would a Good God answer a prayer that makes the world worse? 

But now we know that God’s best plan is not only defined by the circumstances of the world through time.²  

When we think of God’s best will, we have to also factor in the impact His intervention has on Total Free Will.  There are some good things God would do, but He chooses to not do them because that supernatural intervention would reduce Total Free Will.  And that Total Free Will reduction may be seen by Him as more bad than the evil He lets happen.  

However, as free will agents, we can express our free will (through prayer) such that the Total Free Will is not reduced if God chooses to intervene.  Thus the circumstances of the world through time can be better because of our prayers than they would have been if we did not pray.  Without our prayers, God may have allowed a bad thing to persist because doing so would maximize Total Free Will.  But with our prayers, such tension may no longer exist.  Then God intervenes, and the world’s physical circumstances are better, and also now Total Free Will is not negatively impacted!  

Your prayers matter.  This aligns with Scripture.  

Now to the 2^nd paradox: 

• Can’t Change God’s Mind With New Info:  God is omniscient.  Thus we can never bring God new information to influence Him.  How could we change His mind by stating anything? 

Our prayers are not new information to God, as if to convince Him of some new way of looking at things by sharing some fact He did not consider.  But they do locally change God’s calculus of intervention and Total Free Will.  We are not changing God’s decision making process; we are changing our Total Free Will environment, and He is choosing to act or not act according to the new calculus we create.  

As an analogy that has nothing to do with prayer, let’s say that we lived in a universe wherein God usually saves toddlers from walking off cliffs.  If a toddler chooses to walk toward the edge of a cliff, it puts God in a position where He can choose to act.  If that toddler never chose to walk near the edge of the cliff, God simply is not put in that position.  The toddler’s free will choice changes the local environment in which God may act.  This is not changing God’s mind.  It is changing the environment in which God makes His sovereign choices.  It is the same thing here.  We don’t give God new information.  We change the Total Free Will environment, thus potentially changing God’s calculus of whether to intervene or not.  

Note that I am not here addressing whether God already knows we will pray, and all the time-travelling complications this introduces.  I will address this later when discussing the 4^th logical paradox with prayer.  For now, let’s just acknowledge that we aren’t changing God’s mind, just changing the environment in which He may potentially choose to act.  

• Can’t Change God’s Mind Period:  If God is immutable, you can’t change His mind about anything at all.  He is unchangeable. 

The immutability of God is a very misunderstood doctrine.  There are several verses about God not changing, but the most descriptive is James 1:17:  

Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.

Other verses about God not changing are clearly talking about His unchangeable attributes, upon which we can build our trust in Him.  We trust His character in part because He declares it is unchanging and trustworthy.  Some other verses, such as Numbers 23:19 and Hebrews 6:17 talk about the immutability of His plans and promises, but these are simply emphasizing that He is trustworthy to keep His promises.  

"God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?”    – Numbers 23:19

“In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath…”    - Hebrews 6:17

The Christian Doctrine of God’s Immutability is about the complete, rock-solid, concrete consistency of God’s character, nature, and promises.  He is infinitely trustworthy.  But many Christians apply immutability of God so broadly that they hold that God cannot be changed in any conceivable way. As in, He cannot even take in new information or react. This is obviously not true.  At some point in history, God had not promised anything to Abraham.  But then after that He did.  At some point in history, Jesus Christ was not incarnated.  But then after that He was.  Even more compelling is the realization that in order for God to love us, He must interact with us.  And because having a thought is a change, and having a real relationship involves having thoughts, it is literally true that God must be able to experience the change of having a thought about A and then B and then C in order to genuinely relate to us.  God must be able to experience changes of focus and interaction, or else it is simply impossible that God is Love.   

I re-emphasize that nothing in God’s character or promises is changeable.  I am merely stating that He interacts with us, so He does experience some minute state changes in order to do that.  I am not saying that we cause His Person to evolve or experience fundamental change.  I am saying only that He inputs and outputs information and emotion, which is necessary for any love relationship.  This completely aligns with all Scripture.  

In this orthodox understanding of immutability, there is no contradiction with God reacting to the changing Total Free Will environment introduced by our prayers.  Thus the 3^rd prayer paradox is resolved.  

The 4^th prayer paradox is much more complex, and will be the subject of a separate, future article.  But besides this remaining issue, we have a very powerful new understanding of why we pray.  It can be summarized concisely:  

1. God desires to maximize Total Free Will (choice + consequences)

2. God supernaturally intervening somewhat reduces Total Free Will

3. Praying can be a strong expression of Free Will 

4. God ignoring this prayerful expression would reduce the passive Total Free Will via unrealized desired consequences. 

5. God granting the prayerful expression would increase Total Free Will via realized desired consequences.  

6. The Total Free Will increased by God supernaturally intervening per the request of the praying person may be more than the passive Total Free Will reduced by God doing that same intervention. 

7. When this is the case, then God’s desire to have a sum total increase in Total Free Will aligns with His desire to act to do good in our world.  

8. Thus our fervent prayers create an environment in which God can choose to act supernaturally without reducing Total Free Will.  And so such supernatural interventions are more likely when we fervently pray.  

9. In no way do we force or compel God to act or not act by praying.  We just make it so His dueling purposes of doing good and maximizing Total Free Will are aligned.  

There are wonderful consequences to be unpacked with this paradigm.  

The most important corollary is that prayer matters, just as Scripture and our heart tell us. And many Scriptures now make more logical sense, with paradoxes evaporating. 

“Bible” by Van Gogh, 1885

Now we understand how and why God changed His pronouncement that Hezekiah would die, due to Hezekiah’s fervent, trusting prayer (2 Kings 20:1-11).  Hezekiah’s expressed Free Will that would have been cancelled out by God not answering the prayer may have exceeded the reduction in passive Total Free Will that would have been caused by God intervening and healing Hezekiah.  In that case, the calculus of the good of the healing aligned with God’s desire to maximize Total Free Will, and God chose to act. 

There are now no paradoxes in the Jesus’ parable of the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8).  In the parable, the widow’s pleas were only acted upon by the king after she had come back again and again.  While the king in the parable acted out of annoyance, Jesus clearly states that God, being good, reacts to our persistent prayers out of better motive than the irked king.  The paradox was:  Why doesn’t God act after the first few words of the prayer?  Now we know that there is a quantitative value involved:  the expressed, intentional free will of the supplicant, which can increase with how much and how hard the person’s praying is.  

Finally, and to me most beautifully, we understand the Lord’s Prayer better. 

“Our Father, Who art in Heaven, 

Hallowed be Thy Name. 

Thy kingdom come, 

Thy will be done

on earth as it is in heaven…” 

The tension between God’s will to change our circumstances for the better often wars with His desire to maximize Total Free Will.  But when we beg for what we know is Good to be actually done by Him, the calculus changes.  Our peak of fervency is a swell of expressed Free Will that if negated, would reduce Total Free Will more than God’s physical intervening would have.    

Jesus made it very clear that the kingdom of God, in the Church Age, is really the sphere of influence of God’s power and spirit and people making the world a better place.  With our fervent prayers, He finds it more amenable to pour Himself into the world through His miracles, through His Spirit, and through His People.   His kingdom comes into a corner of the earth unfettered by concerns of reduced Total Free Will, just as it is in heaven.  

What a beautiful universe of love, purpose, free will, and prayer God has created for us.  Let us rejoice and be glad in Him.    

1. Abraham’s bargaining with God about not destroying Sodom if he found 10 righteous people there is the weakest example of someone changing God’s mind. But still, we see God being influenced, and granting that influence to Abraham because of Abraham’s future import in God’s plans: v 17: …the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? ¹⁸ Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. ¹⁹ For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.”

2. by “by circumstances of the world through time,” I mean this very broadly.  It includes all physical circumstances and our heart/mind states, including belief.