5.6 A Prayer for Rain (Nov 2016)

I happened be at a Christadelphian breaking of bread service on 6th November. I don’t often go to any meetings and wouldn’t normally write about it if I did, but I feel this one needs to be called out and politely questioned because it conflicts with my interpretation of the world, not that I’m necessarily right but I do disagree.

CBM Day of Prayer

Those Christadelphians who keep an eye on the CBM will have been aware that they had allocated 6th November as a ‘day of prayer’ for the ill-fated people in Malawi and Mozambique who have suffered poor harvests for the last 2 years and are in desperate need of relief from famine. The local staple foods are apparently increasing in price beyond what the many Christadelphians, and presumably others, can afford. Famine is not something I have experienced so it’s hard for me to comprehend their predicament, but the situation sounds terrible and my heart goes out to those who are affected.

At the meeting there was a pleasant atmosphere with friendly people and a caring intent. The brother exhorting brought the CBM day of prayer to our attention and asked that the formal prayers at the meeting include petition for rain on the Africans affected by the famine and talked at length on this issue during his exhortation. The premise of the exhortation was that God provides and withholds the rain and linked it to the story of Elijah in 1 Kings 17 when he prayed for drought during the time of Ahab.

I have a problem with this premise. The direct linkage between prayer and the weather seems simplistic to me and little different to rain-dancing, something which is still practised in parts of the world today.

When I left the meeting I was under the impression that the famine was caused by lack of rainfall, but the CBM website tells us that it is less clear than that. While lack of rain was the cause for crop failure one year the other was caused by a deluge. So simply praying for rain is not necessarily what is needed and if God were to provide a simple answer to a prayer for rain it may actually cause additional problems in the region, but I digress. My question here is about if and how God answers prayers to provide desirable weather.

My Questions

So the first question we can ask is do rain-dances work? And the answer is: Yes, sometimes they do if you do enough of them and especially in the rainy season. But correlation is not causation so we need to dig deeper. While I’m sure some rain-dances correlate with rain I would propose that there is no causal link. If I wanted to try to demonstrate this I would need to use statistics and find out if the likelihood of rain increased significantly following a rain-dance. I expect it doesn’t.

So we can then ask if prayers for specific weather events fare any better. Following the day of prayer, there are various outcomes for next year’s harvest that could broadly be categorised into two sub-sets: the ‘good harvest’ set and the ‘bad harvest’ set. Now, I’ve not looked at any statistical review of harvest quality for the region, but to answer the question fully we would need to know the likelihood of two bad years followed by a good year and also for three bad years. My guess is that two bad years followed by a good is more likely than three bad years, but both are probably reasonably likely overall.

So, this time next year, if there has been a good harvest will it have been because of an answer to prayer, or just the normal outworking of the natural world and within statistical norms. Given that it is likely that the good harvest will be within statistical norms, we wouldn’t need to invoke God in an explanation of it, but we could if we wanted. We could overlay God onto a naturalistic view of the weather, but Occam’s razor suggests this is an ill-advised thing to do.

Alternatively, if this time next year those unfortunate people in Malawi and Mozambique are still suffering from famine because of poor quality rainfall, would that be a disproof of God? Would that cause people to lose faith in the type of interventionist God the premise assumes. I suspect it wouldn’t. From my experience people don’t base their faith on the quality of an African harvest in 2017 or any other empirical evidence such as this. But perhaps it should give pause for thought. It would as a minimum tell us that any empirical evidence for God isn’t as strong as it could be.

We also need to consider what the implication of a good or bad harvest next year, provided by God, would tell us about His character. Why did He choose to help or hinder those particular people at that particular time? If it’s a good harvest what does it say about God not helping others in their times of need, does He show favouritism and if so is that morally acceptable? If it’s a bad harvest does it demonstrate to us that those people are particularly godless, or are they just unlucky like those the Tower of Siloam fell on?

Unable to voice questions

One of the things I find particularly hard is that there is no opportunity to formally respond to what was said, and discuss these questions as a group in a direct manner. I found it very hard when I was still regularly attending and I still find it hard now that I don’t. The reality is that questions are shut out, even if the intent is that questions can be asked.

It felt like it was almost assumed that what was said from the platform was right. Presumably most of the people listening agreed with what was being said, it certainly felt that way to me. The peer pressure not to voice concerns about basic assumptions like this is palpable. I certainly felt like the odd one out and incorrect in my view.

My experience is that questions like mine are only asked in hushed whispers of small groups behind closed doors where there is less pressure to conform and I don’t think that’s healthy. I even wonder if the pressure to conform exceeds the desire to be right in many cases.

A different reading of 1 Kings 17 and 18

So if I could respond is in a more direct way what would I say apart from what I already have above? Well, I’d include some thoughts about the historical setting in which the original hears of 1 Kings would have been living and the presuppositions they brought to the text when they heard it.

In those times it would have been well known that the neighbouring god of the Canaanites called Baal was understood to be the storm god – the one who sent or withheld rain. The context of the story in 1 Kings 17 and 18 is that Elijah prays for two years for the rain to be withheld and at the end of which, in the third year, he has a standoff with the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel. This is when two alters are prepared one to Baal and one to God. The prophets of Baal (the storm god) are unable to entice Baal to send fire (lighting from a storm cloud) down from heaven to consume their offering. This was intended to be interpreted by the hearers of the story that Baal was not, after all, in control of the weather. Next, Elijah prayed to God and He does send fire from heaven which consumes the sacrifice. This was intended to be interpreted by the hearers of the story that God is above Baal, God is more powerful and even controls the things thought to be under Baal’s influence.

The story is a polemic against Baal, it gives supremacy to God. It is unlikely to be a historic event, and even less a demonstration of how God may work in our time.

next >