OK – so I’m a few days late getting this posted, as Lent started on Wednesday, so I apologise. A couple of years ago for Lent I committed myself to posted on a daily basis. This year, I want to something of an experiment. And that is that I want to challenge everyone to pray for one thing every day for the rest of Lent, and then collate the “results”. Here are the “terms and conditions”:
1. You don’t need to believe anything. You don’t even need to believe that prayer does anything.
2. You do need to commit to praying daily for the same thing until Sunday April 12th. (If you really want, you can skip Sundays, because traditionally the 40 days of Lent don’t include the Sundays)
3. Your prayer cannot be for yourself, or for something that would profit you most. It must be for someone else.
4. Your prayer must be measurable in its result.
5. Your prayer must be “local” in its scale – for someone you know or a situation that is personal to you (bearing in mind condition 3). World peace is not an option here (maybe next year).
6. At the end of the challenge there will be a simple survey for you to fill out to collate the results. (Said survey will not reveal names or identities)
7. This is a viral challenge – post it on your blog, or on your facebook, or where ever, and challenge other people to be involved.
8. Like it or not, I am a Christian, and this is a Christian challenge, so your prayer needs to invoke the name of Jesus.
My commitment is this – whatever the results, I will definitely publish them.
Are you up for the challenge?
mrBen
I shall give this some thought.
If you’re encouraging non-Christians to do this, which I think you are, then you might want to lay out what an acceptable sort of prayer might look like. If someone says, every single day I prayed “hey, Jesus, let my next-door-neighbour win the lottery, thanks” and you declare that as invalid at the end of the month, that’s not very fair…
@sil – you’re right. But your template seems fine. I’ll add something into the main post later on today.
Is praying daily in the form below acceptable?
Jesus, please make it so that the average rainfall in Yoker is at least 30% below average for the month of April 2009.
trivial, but measurable and since I don’t live in Yoker , it’s not “selfish” as such. I t does mean I have to find out what the monthly average rainfall in Yoker over the past few years has been though
[...] Lent Challenge: [...]
Please don’t pray for anybody who is undergoing an operation, or serious medical treatment.
“Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery from CABG, but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications. (Am Heart J 2006;151:934-42)”
If there’s a God, he truly works in very, very mysterious ways…
@willie: that’s fine
@Kevin: I’m confused – either it had no effect, or it had a negative effect, but surely both can’t be true?
mrben: blind intercessory prayer had no effect (i.e., if you got someone to pray but didn’t tell the patient, there was no effect). Non-blind prayer (where the patient knew they were being prayed for) was correlated with more complications in the patient. Kind of a nocebo effect in reverse.
sil – could that be an “Ohshit -they’re praying for me- It must be bloody serious” kinda thing leading to increased stress?
Apologies I wasn’t really going to comment on this but I’m happy to be a “control” for Ben’s experiment. Us atheists need to inject a spot of realism into this experiment – but I promise to try to carry it through. Only problem is — Lent doesn’t really exist for me cos I am neither an active Christian or a lapsed Catholic – the only groups I know of who would be aware of Lent to any extent – so keep reminding me mrben
Ben, do you mind if I modify it slightly to “area within 2km of Glasgow airport” which will include Yoker and will have much more accessible weather records?
@willie: that’s fine
@sil: Ahhhhh – thanks for explaining that for me.
@Kevin: Would you prefer me to add “You mustn’t tell the subject” to avoid any placebo or psychosomatic responses?
I prayed today (and yesterday) . Not since I gave up motorcycling have I been calling on the unspecifiable with such regularity
mrben you didn’t say what you are praying for?
Fantastic idea – I shall give it some thought and start tonight.
[...] had a couple of questions asked since I initiated the Great Lent Challenge – I hesitate to call them “Frequently Asked Questions” because they weren’t [...]