So I have to return my book to the library tomorrow and Friday is your book club, so I thought I would post a few things that I thought were interesting thoughts. In fact, I've been tired, so they kind of hurt my brain to think about. But either way, I thought it would be fun to start putting some ideas out there before the big meeting.
First quote from the book, pg. 218 on intercessory prayer.
"I'm not finished with my year, so I'm witholding judgement, but my rational side says that intercessory prayer today is no more effective than Abraham's effort. I still can't wrap my brain around the notion that God would change His mind because we ask Him to."
I particularly liked this last part, because it made me look at prayer in a very secular way. But I mean, really, can our prayers truly affect the agency of others? I can wrap my head around the concept of pleading and negotiating with God for ourselves. But how can we essentially have more power over others' choices? I mean, okay, if you're the prophet, that's a whole different ball of wax.
The other quote is one page 243 and is about choice.
"My brother in law Eric- now geting his doctorate in psychology- likes to lecture me about an experiment at a grocery store by researchers from Columbia and Stanford. They set up two tables offering free tastes; one table had six flavors of jam, the other had twenty four flavors of jam. Oddly, more people bought jams from the table with six favors. Nearly ten times more people, in fact. The conclusion was that the big table was just too overwhelming, too many options."
It kind of clicked for me when I read this that I am very much that way. I think part of it is anxiety, part of it is laziness. But I prefer in many ways to have less choices. It makes life less complicated. I've been doing scheduling for students. And kids have no idea what they want, and so when they have a bazillion choices, they never have "the perfect" schedule, because well, frankly, it doesn't exist. And I think life can be like that. I think if we have too many choices, it can only leave us lost and continually searching for perfect. Whereas, when something is much more clear cut and simple- less choices- I tend to be more satisfied and accepting of whatever that might be. My brain doesn't really want to do more work.
Does any of this make sense? It's way past my bed time and I'm tired! But comment as you may.
Ashraf Pahlavi
7 hours ago
3 comments:
Sorry I haven't been able to reply before now. I had a crazy busy day at work and afterwards. Anyway, on to intercessory prayer...
You know, I actually didn't think too much about this at the time, only passingly thought it was funny that the concept was somewhat foreign/pointless to him.
I don't think God will affect the agency of others, but I do think God influences others by the spirit - the same way he does for us. Many times I have promptings, and I can choose to act on them or not. And often those promptings involve me doing something for/to anothe person.
And I believe He can also influence surrounding circumstances that can influence the situation.
I do believe that God can and sometimes does (and sometimes does not) choose respond to an intercessory prayer. If you take the example of Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham pleading to the Lord, he was obviously willing to bargain a bit.
And sometimes I think that is the point of faith - I believe that God helps me the most when I ask for it. He wants to know that we have enough faith in Him to put a situation in His hands.
Anyway, that was long enough. There has been a semi-interesting discussion about agency and "fate" over on segullah.org/blog today. The topic of intercessory prayer reminded me of it a bit.
Next up, choice...
Okay, now CHOICE.
I totally agree with you about this topic. It really clicked for me too. I mean, I can't even choose a restaurant for dinner unless someone narrows it down first. Too many choices! In fact, I think that is why I have a hard time with T.J. Maxx and Nordstrom Rack (Bri can back me up on this). They have too many choices - I can't really make any sort of decision when faced with SO many random articles of clothing.
I really liked what you said about too many choices making it more difficult because it makes you continually search for the perfect.
Anyway, I didn't have too much to add to your thoughts (except to agree).
Thanks for the post! I am going to try and make some time to do a post about it myself tomorrow (or I guess just comment more under this post). And depending on who shows up to BC (which right now looks like three people) I might do a post on Saturday or something.
I'm really, really, really missing you at BC, Lex. It's not the same!
I really like these thoughts. And I really like this site. I must check in more often. I'm so happy to hear people interested in talking about these important things. I will be blogging about some of these MORMON things soon, in an indirect, somewhat comical way, because else wise people close their ears.
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