[BRIEF NOTE] Convenience

[rfmcdonald]

While reading today's weblog at Christianity Today, I noticed their dismissal of a recent study suggesting that multifaith prayer doesn't noticeably improve the survival rate of hospital patients. After acknowledging admitted and necessary flaws in the methodology, the author presented what is supposed to be--to a certain class of believer, at any rate--the clincher.

In fact, such tests seem to violate the biblical prohibitions in both Old and New Testaments not to "put God to the test." Paul's admonition to "test all things" and God's command in Malachi to test his response to tithing, so often quoted by Word-Faith folks, can be the subject of a separate Weblog, but as Wright notes, these prayer studies are "like setting an exam for God to see if God will pass it or not." In other words, these kinds of studies may themselves be sinful.

I'd like to congratulate the Church Fathers on their construction of a religion that forbids its followers from engaging in the critical study of their religion. But then, religions tend to work that way, don't they?