Pain and prayer

Why do we pray for people who are experiencing pain?  And why do people experience pain in this world if God is such a wonderful God?  Isn't it better for God to save people from pain without the experience of it?  Here is my attempt to answer those questions from the Christian perspective.  We will start, "in the beginning..."

In Genesis, scripture says that God did originally design existence without pain and evil, but like the Matrix, man would not "accept the program" as the agent says in the movie. The story of Adam and Eve is that story. Man eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. "Whole batches," they say in the matrix, "were LOST."  Lost to an existence that was unaware of spiritual life.  The "revised" rules of the universe were set up in collaboration with man. Man did not want utopia. So God set the rules up that way, out of respect for man's wishes and with the input of man's relationship with Him. 

Pain is how we grow, how we get out of ruts and are forced to change. Without it, or if we avoid it, we remain spiritual infants. God is the ultimate loving parent. And like a parent, he will let the child learn from bad experiences out of love, but will also intervene if the child will not grow. There are many reasons why God will not intervene, but the reasons are beyond our capacity to understand. Life and death is but a shadow of the bigger picture, which only God knows. So I believe God designed the revised universe with certain rules, allowing for pain. But he will intervene sometimes when it is in our interest of we make supplications in prayer.

So there is pain in the world. And you could say that God designed it that way. Not originally, according to scripture, but life as we know it is marked with pain, and that's how we grow.  It's one of the ways we become aware of the spiritual world.  But we can ask that we be saved from pain. I believe that God will do what is in the long view, best for all of man, and best for us in the long view - a view that we cannot begin to understand with our small human perspective.

So In many ways I am grateful for the pain I have experienced, as I have grown so much from it. 12 step, and life has taught me that. But I am also thankful that God provides a "lifeline of hope" in prayer. I may not get the answer that I think I want, but it is always answered somehow in God's time, not mine.