By Quin Hillyer at PJ Media:

 

The Gospel reading assigned in most mainline churches this week has always seemed problematic to me. From Luke, it recounts these familiar lines said by Jesus:

Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

On one hand, this is one of the most comforting and reassuring short passages in the whole Bible. It seems to promise that anything we ask for will be granted to us (if, at least, we ask with good intentions and in the spirit of spreading God’s love). It seems to say that petitional prayers from a loving heart will always be answered in the way we want — almost to the extent that it makes God’s will subordinate to our own, as long as our own will is not antithetical to God’s ultimate designs.

prayer

The problem with this interpretation is that we know, on multiple levels, that it can’t be true. Logically, we know that God’s will can never, even in a minor or short-term way, be subordinate to our own. Experientially, we know darn well that we ask God for all sorts of things — things that we think are good and for which we ask with a loving heart — only to have the requests not granted, the comfort not given, and the door apparently not even opened…..

 

So does this make Jesus a purveyor of false promises? Worse, if He is omnipotent and therefore has the absolute power to carry out His promise but doesn’t do so, does this make Him an outright liar?

Well, if God is good, then He can’t be a liar. We therefore are left with a conundrum: Is God either A) not entirely good? or B) not entirely omnipotent?

Or are we perhaps misunderstanding Jesus’ words?….

To see how I puzzle this out, please read the whole thing here.

 

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