Our Prayers and Others’ Autonomy
Posted on 25 July 2010
If prayer really does count, really does affect what happens (and/or how it happens) in the lived world, then we have to ask ourselves how if at all God’s responses to our prayers leave room for others’ ‘free-will’ or self-determination. In his memoir, Hauerwas provides a striking example. His mother, he says, prayed ‘Hannah’s prayer’: he was ‘the result’. When Stanley was 6, she told him the story of her prayer, his birth, and her dedicating him to God.
At the time, God knows what I made of knowing that I was the result of my mother’s praying. However, I am quite sure, strange servant of God though I may be, that whatever it means to be Stanley Hauerwas is the result of that prayer. Morever, given the way that I have learned to think, that is the way it should be.
Hauerwas then allows the question, ‘Was I not robbed of my autonomy by my mother’s prayer?’ And provides his answer: ‘Probably’. In any case, he’s happy with what came of it all.
The problem, I believe, is simply resolved once we give up on our (mistaken) notions of self-determination. No one is the ‘I’ of his or her own making, independent of others. To put it another way, we shape others’ lives constantly and in countless ways, almost all of which remain (thankfully) hidden from us and from them. Further, much of what we do to others does them a disservice, making it that much more difficult for them to open themselves to the Life that intends their good. Through prayer, however, we’re allowed to trust our impact on others more completely to God, who can ‘weed out’ the chaff of our evil intents from the wheat of our holy ambitions for others. As a parent and a pastor, I find this especially reassuring.
2 responses to Our Prayers and Others’ Autonomy
This is the most important thing that I learned at ORU. Former talk of “God’s plan for my life” has not necessarily been abandoned, but it has been reshaped so that it is so multifarious that I can never “plan” it. I am learning how to be shaped by those whom I share this existence with and it is very hard to do right now, but I cannot imagine going back to such a narcissistic view of the Body of Christ.
Stevan,
That is a good lesson to learn; one of the truly important ones. And it brings such joy with it.