The Atheist Prayer Experiment, which began on 17th September is about half-way through. Justin Brierley, presenter of Premier Christian Radio’s Unbelievable show, has signed up 70 atheists who have committed to praying for a short time each day to see whether, at the end of 40 days, any of them report a sense of encountering God.
It seems a rather daft experiment – someone has suggested that The Script’s Breakeven should be the theme song for the project simply because of its second line ‘Just prayin’ to a god that I don’t believe in.’
In fact, the experiment has been inspired by the work of Oxford University philosopher Tim Mawson. Tim asks us to imagine we hear people claiming that they’ve encountered an old man in a particular dark room and that their lives have been significantly enhanced through conversations with him. Even if we think there’s only a slim possibility of there being anyone actually in the room, Tim suggests, it would be sensible for us, if we have time available, to go in and call into the darkness ‘Is anyone there?’
Another philosopher, Bertrand Russell was an atheist. He imagined discovering after his death that God existed after all, and asking God why he didn’t give more evidence of his presence. Tim Mawson wonders how Russell would respond if God retorted ‘You didn’t ask!’
So there is a case for saying that atheists who consider there’s even the remotest possibility that God might be there should call out the question sincerely if with great scepticism ‘Is anyone there?’
Tim Mawson’s likening God to an old man in a room reminded me that each of carries with us our own mental picture of God. It could be, for example ‘God the indulgent father’, ‘God the benign, bearded being beyond the clouds’, ‘God the fault-finder whom we can never please no matter how hard we try’ or ‘God the impenetrable silence.’
Our atheist friends insist that since these flawed mental images of God are simply the products of our subconscious the honest, healthy way to live is to discard them. But supposing behind these muddled, inadequate ideas of God there is a being to whom the word ‘God’ properly applies?
After all we carry round with us ideas of what other people are like, but the mental pictures we have of the people closest to us, to say nothing of distant public figures, is flawed and inaccurate. But the fact that we don’t fully know people as they are doesn’t mean that they don’t exist in all their glorious complexity. So it is with God, we believe as Christians – God exists, vast beyond all our imaginings.
I find prayer really difficult. It’s hard to still the many voices in my mind, the noise and clamour, the impulses which shock me. You feel you must somehow push all this stuff aside, and calm the storm before you can connect with God, and this is hard to do.
Mt friend Iain lent me a fascinating book last week, Primary speech: a psychology of prayer. It contains a powerful insight – that we don’t need to push aside the clamour as we try to pray. Instead we can listen to the voices, the fears, the impulses, the daydreams, asking what they tell us about ourselves, and bringing the self we discover to the God who meets us when we are honest about who we truly are.
It’s as we embrace our mixed-up selves that we find God close. To deny who we are is to hold God at a distance. This is liberating – God meets me right where I am in the middle of my chaotic life.
But this, in fact is what you’d expect of a God beyond all our imaginings who, in Jesus has come to us in the middle of the chaos of human history, showing us as far as we are able to see what he is like, challenging our flawed images of divine otherness.
Sometimes I get mad with God for being so elusive. Sometimes I get mad with Jesus for making asking for myself and for others sound so easy. But I have learned from experience that prayer opens your eyes to evidence for existence of the God beyond all imaginings – evidence in creation, in the arts, in the lives and words of others, in the Bible’s awesome story-arc, in the certainty glimpsed periodically through the mist.
And what of all these atheists praying? Well, to pray in a spirit of sincere questioning is itself to draw closer to God. Some of us have found ourselves standing in the dark room, crying out hopefully ‘Is anyone there?’ The door opens, and there stands a figure, bathed in sunlight. ‘There you are!’ he says.
(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News, 4th October 2012)
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