-=Dark_Angel=-, P.I.19 Feb 2006

Because you're only doing it for the bonus points, obviously. Look, either you believe God will help the person you're praying for BECAUSE you are praying for them, or you don't. If you don't, then you're obviously only praying for them because you think it will get you into heaven. That isn't going to fool a Jesu. If you do, then you've got to accept that you believe in a pretty bizarre sort of benevolent God. The sort of God who would forsake someone simply because nobody happened to be praying for them. It just doesn't make any sense. The whole explanation Christians have for sufferring is that God doesn't intervene because He wants us to have free will. The second you bring prayer into it, you're talking about an interventionist God. If He's willing to intervene to alleviate the suffering of so-and-so because such-and-such prayed for him, why doesn't He just do that all the time? It can't be because doing so would make so-and-so run out of free will. Nine times out of ten, so-and-so has no knowledge or control over who prays for him.