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Why Do False Religions "Work"?
by James Barringer I usually listen to public talk radio on the way back from work, because I like to know what's going on in the world and also because, quite frankly, the Christian radio station in town is so nauseatingly bland that it's not worth listening to. Today, the news station had a report on an Iraqi woman trying to get in touch with her mother-in-law in Syria, which at the moment is undergoing some major civil strife. The woman was explaining how hard the situation was, and at the end of the report, the anchor concluded, "She says that she's relying on her faith to get her through," and in the background I could hear the woman repeating "Inshallah," a Muslim benediction meaning "if God wills it." That's a weird thing, isn't it? A false religion is giving this woman true comfort. People who pray to nonexistent gods receive actual peace and calm. It doesn't seem like it should work that way; it seems like only the real God should be dispensing those things to people who are actually calling on him. So why do false religions "work"? Why can followers of a false religion be just as happy, just as content, just as peaceful, as those of us who are calling on the one true God? I've been wondering this for several years, and I think the answer is as follows. The tools that we use to get in touch with God - prayer, meditation, focusing on spiritual truths - are powerful on their own merits, even when aimed in the wrong direction. Prayer, for instance, produces serious mental and emotional benefits, regardless of which deity it's aimed at, because prayer itself is powerful. That power is precisely why God mandates that we pray only to him. Meditation, which is absolutely a Biblical concept (Psalm 119:97), is effective at recentering and calming an individual, regardless of whether the person is meditating on Biblical truths or on new-agey garbage, and again, that power is exactly the reason why we're not supposed to be meditating on anything other than God himself. The spiritual realm is powerful, and spiritual things are powerful, and they're equally powerful whether they're being used correctly or misused, because that's the way God designed them to work. A good analogy is to think of them like cars. You can get in a car and aim it in any direction you please. It'll go a hundred miles an hour whether it's pointing in the right direction or toward the nearest lake. It'll keep on chugging if you're in the middle of your own lane or if you're driving down a sidewalk. Why? Because a car is powerful, and it's up to you to take this powerful thing and use it properly and responsibly. Spiritual disciplines like prayer and meditation work in a fundamentally identical way. It should be clear by now, but when I say that prayer "works," I'm referring only to the perceived emotional and mental benefits; I don't in any way mean to imply that prayer "works" in the sense of getting what you ask for, unless your prayer is directed at the only God who exists to answer prayers. Religious skeptics will often point to the fact that nearly all religions have a holy text, have practices of prayer and meditation, have religious rituals, and suchlike, and say, "See? All religions are just made-up. They're all the same." But I think the real issue lies one step backward. Why exactly do the overwhelming majority of people on earth, regardless of religion, feel compelled to express themselves through these very specific disciplines of prayer, meditation, and reading of holy texts? Why is this something which holds nearly universal appeal to all people? I think the most compelling answer is that the foundational knowledge of spiritual things is inherent in every human being (see Romans 1), and that these practices are employed by nearly every person because they're all trying to reach out to the God who is actually there. So that's why I'm not surprised to see people from other religions having the same religious practices as Christians, and also why I'm not surprised to see those practices actually "working" in the sense of providing real emotional support and encouragement. And I'm not surprised that God allows them to continue doing so. You might think that he would cut off that support and encouragement, that he would somehow find a way to make those things not "work" in a way that frustrates the false religions, but that's not the way he's chosen to do it. It's also in keeping with his character: "He causes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and he sends his rains on the just and the unjust alike" (Matthew 5:45). And I think it's wise of him to do so (mostly because it's generally wise to agree with however God decides to do things). I think that because if you put yourself in the shoes of a Muslim person who converts to Christianity, you already have all the tools you need in order to get in touch with God. You already know how to pray because you've been praying (to the wrong person) your whole life. You already know how to meditate, how to read sacred texts, and many other things. I imagine that's why God allows those things to keep having an effect: so that people who come to him don't have to learn a whole new religious apparatus. They just take what they've been doing all along and start doing it for the God who is real instead of for demons (1 Corinthians 10:20). It makes God accessible, and he prides himself on always being accessible. One thing I've found fascinating about the Bible is that instructions on how to pray aren't found until 3/4 of the way through the book. The Lord's Prayer is found in Matthew 6, which means that for the entire Old Testament, there were no explicit instructions on how to pray. Yet the first reference to prayer is found in Genesis 20, and the earliest chronological reference is found in Job 16:7 (many scholars believe that Moses wrote the book of Job shortly before he wrote Genesis through Deuteronomy). At no point is it ever explained how these people knew how to pray. The knowledge was just there. All they did was reach out, in some way that they innately knew to "work," and touch whatever was there. Another controversial question: does God listen to the prayers of non-Christians? The answer is that yes, he has to, or else nobody on earth would ever be able to become a Christian, because at some point during our lives you and I, while we were sinners in full-on rebellion and enemies of God (Romans 5:20), cried out to God and he heard us. So if there's a Muslim out there who sincerely prays (even if it's to Allah) for spiritual knowledge of the truth, wouldn't God hear and answer that prayer? So that's another reason I say that the prayer of non-Christians must "work:" they have no business asking for anything from God apart from salvation, but if they ask for that or for anything which leads them in that direction, then their prayer absolutely must "work," and that's evidenced by the thousands of Muslims becoming Christians around the globe every single day. In a similar way (if you'll permit a slight tangent), God also ignores the prayers of Christians on occasion (Proverbs 15:29 and 28:9). We typically close our prayers with "in Jesus' name," but if that prayer is something that Jesus would not voluntarily attach his own name to, then we're not only praying wrongly, but also taking his name in vain. For example, you couldn't pray for a million dollars "in Jesus' name" because Jesus himself never asked for wealth. You couldn't pray for God to refuse to forgive someone "in Jesus' name," as Catholics do when they excommunicate people, because Jesus never prayed for anybody to be refused forgiveness. So if you offer up a blasphemous prayer "in Jesus' name," God ignores it. This fits into the context of what we're talking about by demonstrating that God is more interested in the state of a person's heart (he would prefer a truth-seeking Muslim to a selfish "Christian") than about anything else. That's why he permits those from false religions to keep on praying, and even why he continues to pour out his rains of mercy and compassion on the just and unjust alike. It might be tempting to say that God should ignore the prayers of those who aren't Christians, but remember that at one point you and I were not Christians, and it was only God's hearing of our prayers that granted us eternal life at all. We can't apply a different standard to those from other religions than what we apply to our pre-salvation selves. To wrap things up, I believe that God has given us the spiritual disciplines (prayer, meditation, studying Scripture) precisely because they are powerful. As is the case with all things that God gives us, some people use his gifts rightly and some people abuse them, whether by praying to the wrong gods or meditating on the wrong concepts or whatever. God allows these disciplines to continue "working," even for those who are using them wrongly, because he knows that anyone who seeks after real truth will eventually be led to the Source of all truth (see Romans 1 again). It's a puzzle, but not really; it's just slightly different than the way you'd expect God to work. And "different from expectations" is, of course, the way that God most often operates. Jim Barringer is a 38-year-old writer, musician, and teacher. More of his work can be found at facebook.com/jmbarringer. 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