Letter: Answering all prayers is no proof that God is loving

Editor,

I am a UNM alumnus who hadn’t read the Daily Lobo in decades. I picked it up Friday morning looking for a specific advertisement and read Mr. Schrader’s letter on the “lies” of Jesus.

I thank Don for being intellectually honest because C.S. Lewis has stated that, based on His claims, one has to think of Jesus of Nazareth as being either a liar, a lunatic, or the Son of God. Don seems to require proof of God’s existence as a being “who rescues all who fervently prayed for help.”

But what if we gave our children everything they asked us for? Would that be the loving thing to do? Would that teach love of God and love of neighbor? If God is just a giant ATM machine we are worse off than if there were no God. It is interesting that in John 6 Jesus withdraws from the crowd after multiplying the fish and bread  

He knew they were expecting an ATM machine for a king. We should look at the letter of James which tells us: “You do not receive because you ask wrongly.” We typically ask for things out of selfishness. A prayer that will always be answered is the one where we ask for “Thy will be done, not mine.”

A variation of this prayer is found in John’s first letter. To prove his thesis, Mr. Schrader would have to show that no one’s fervent prayers have ever been answered and that scientifically proven miracles are false. He would have to verify that intercessions of canonized Saints have not produced miracles.

There are incorruptible saints that he can see along with centuries-old Eucharistic miracles; all are available for viewing by the public. Finally, one would have to place the same historical rigor on the thousands of biblical texts that are extant as we place on the handful of texts we have that prove the existence of Julius Caesar or Cicero, etc. The biblical texts agree with each other at a greater than 99.9 percent clip.

Sincerely,

Anthony Vigil

UNM alum