Whose Prayers Does God Hear? (April 11, 2004)

A question was put to me the other day about whether God hears the prayers of Muslims. If they grew up addressing their Creator as "Allah," and that is all they know, can it really be wrong for them to pray that way? Won't God still answer them? Or what about those who pray to saints - does God receive those prayers?

The first thing I would say is that God is gracious, and he is free to respond to any prayer no matter how errant, misguided or malformed it is. All of us pray amiss to some degree. We pray with selfish motives, and we pray to our idea of God rather than to God as he is. Since our limited conception of God only dimly resembles him, I believe that in order for him to hear the petition of even the wisest, holiest and most theologically accurate saint he still has to reach out and snare it like a baseball player catching a bad throw.

A prayer to Allah is a bad throw indeed, but I do not feel it is for us to say whether God is willing to stretch out and grab it. I do see from Scripture that God hears prayers from people who have a minimal understanding of him. Hagar stood outside the covenant that God made with Abraham, and knew him apparently only by the name she gave him, "The God Who Sees Me," (Genesis 16:13). But God heard her (and her son - Genesis 21:17), and met her need. Though Naaman was a pagan idolater at the time he sought a cure from Elisha, (2 Kings 5), he received healing nonetheless.

But it would be wrong to assume that just because God graciously condescends to receive wrong-headed prayer and worship, it is fine to keep rendering him wrong-headed prayer and worship. We must grow. When I play basketball with a 7-year-old, I don't call him on every traveling violation. But if he is to mature as a player he will have to learn the rules, all the rules, and follow them.

The rule now is that we must pray to God the Father in the name of, or through, his Son Jesus Christ. (See for example John 16:24, where Jesus says, "Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask, and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.”) One of our jobs as Christians is to make plain that this is how God is to be addressed and worshipped and glorified. God has shown us his love by sending Jesus to be our Savior, and Jesus by his death has opened the way for us to be united with the Father. Our communication with God must now be mediated through Jesus.

And only through Jesus. The Bible says that "there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). Protestant Christians grieve that our Catholic brothers and sisters direct some of their prayers to other mediators - the departed saints - and we plead with our separated brethren to abandon this practice immediately. The Bible forbids contacting the dead (Deuteronomy 18:12: "Let no one be found among you who...consults the dead"; Isaiah 8:19: "Should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?"). The one time in the Bible when someone (Saul) sought help from a dead person he was roundly rebuked for it and the results were disastrous (1 Samuel 28).

Overall, I believe it is worse to pray to a saint than it is to pray to Allah. You could argue that Muslims don't know any better, but Christians definitely should know better than to pray to the dead. We are without excuse, since our Bibles give us clear instruction about how to pray, and to Whom, and through Whom. Also, Muslims at least could be said to pray to one whom they regard as the Supreme Being, who alone is worthy to receive the worship of prayer. But prayer offered to a mere saint is an abomination. If the saints in heaven are aware of the prayers made to them, I believe they recoil with the same kind of revulsion shown by the angel in Revelation 22:8-9. When John bowed to worship him, the angel insisted, "Do not do it!...Worship God."

Having said that, I believe that God may re-direct to himself some petitions errantly sent to his creatures - especially if the petitioners are humble and ignorant and the victims of bad teaching. Of course, it is not a good thing to remain the ignorant victim of bad teaching. It is the duty of all God’s children to learn and grow, to practice what is true and discard what is false. This includes how and to Whom we address our prayers.