The Inadequate Prayer Study

This morning I heard a segment on the radio about how a ten year study had shown that prayer really didn’t make any difference in the health of heart bypass patients. Apparently there were three groups, those who knew they were being prayed for; those who thought they might or might not be, who weren’t; and those who thought they might or might not be who were. What was reported was that there wasn’t much difference between the two groups who might have been prayed for, but that there were actually more complications for those who knew they were being prayed for than the other two groups.

There is a major flaw in this study; actually there are three major flaws in this study. The first is the fact that they were talking about whether or not prayer made a difference. Their pray-ers were three groups of Christians, two catholic and one protestant who prayed specific printed prayers for the persons in question.

Here is the first major flaw. There was no way to control for variables in this study. I find it hard to believe that those who were “maybe” prayed for had no people in their lives that didn’t care whether they lived or died. Just because no “official” person prayed for them, doesn’t mean that there weren’t family or friends who were fervently praying for them. In fact, knowing that there might only be a possibility, not a certainty that an official praying group might pray for their loved one, they might have been more likely to spend time praying themselves. For the group that “definitely” had an official group praying for them, perhaps the people who really loved them just trusted in those official prayers and failed to add their own petitions for their loved ones health.

And this gives rise to the second major flaw. It was said that the prayers were all printed out and read by those who prayed. So did they actually mean those prayers? What makes prayer effective anyway? Doesn’t it have to do with actually believing that there is a listener out there to whom one can appeal when the possibility or certainty of losing someone you love looms? The official Word on the subject is that it is “the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man (no gender) avails much.” We can hope that the official pray-ers were righteous, but can we, with any certainty, say that they were fervent. Was it their father or mother who was hovering by death’s door? Was it a face that they loved that might never come home, or just a name on a piece of paper?

This brings us to the last major flaw. The God part. The study sounds like they expect prayer to be a little formula that obligates the Master of the Universe to take note and to do what we want. When we pray are we just reading words on a page and putting in our time, or do we actually believe that we are communicating with a Being dramatically unlike us, but a knowable Person who can touch our heart of anxiety as well as the body of the person for whom we pray – a Person who cares for even the individual sparrow, and “how much more” for us who have so little faith.