What is Reddit's opinion of Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust?

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> in your hypothetical, you're suggesting my son never asks for anything good.

I didn't mean to suggest that. I was just trying, by analogy, to suggest that if your son never asked you for anything but what was bad for him, then you'd never grant his requests. But the fact that you never granted his requests wouldn't mean either that you were incapable of granting requests generally or that you wouldn't have granted his requests had they been for something good. (Or that you didn't exist.)

But what about a "good" request? There may yet be some reasons, better known to you than to your son, for refusing to grant some request that, if granted, would be helpful to him. Like, say your son wants a new book. It's a good book and it would help him to get a better grade in school. But maybe you know that if your son gets that book, he won't work as closely with another kid who stands to benefit from your son's close involvement. Maybe you know that the help you give your son will have an adverse effect on some other kid. Maybe it's important that both boys get a passing grade, than that your son does great and the other kids fails.

I was thinking during my prayer time this morning about a young woman my wife knows. We've been praying for her because she's been in and out of the hospital with depression and an eating disorder for a while.

There are two possible outcomes, whether we pray or not. She'll either get better or she'll get worse. (I take it that "staying the same" would be "getting worse".)

Of course everyone's praying that she gets better, but we don't know--none of us--whether her getting better will be better for her in the end. That's the thing of it.

See, God wants us all to come to a loving trusting relationship with Him--to turn to Him with our whole heart. How can any of us know whether her getting better physically will result in her turning to God with her whole heart? How can we know whether as a result of this illness, she'll wind up closer to God? Or how can we know what the spiritual effect of her illness is on the people around her who love her? Maybe if she gets worse, the people who love her the most will lose their faith in God. Or maybe God is working through her illness to bring her and/or others to a closer relationship with Him.

That's why, though we may pray for what we perceive to be good, we must always temper our requests as Jesus did--"not my will, but yours be done"--trusting that "not a sparrow will fall to the ground apart from God's will", which we may take to be His Providence, according to which as many as will to be in relationship with Him are brought into his embrace.

>It sounds like you're suggesting that in fact, no outcomes we pray for should ever be granted by God, and that's why they're not.

Not at all. Because I do believe that my prayers are answered. I've witnessed the efficacy of prayer in my own life and in the lives of others. But that just doesn't mean that everything we pray for is granted.

However, when I earnestly pray for something, I thank God for always answering my prayers, because I really believe He does.

Take one recent example....

About 8:00 at night a couple of weeks ago, my wife came downstairs to ask me to help her because our daughter threw up in the bed. Once I got upstairs, I found there was puke in the bed, on the carpet on the way to the bathroom, and on the bathroom rug. There, white and scared, was my daughter in her onesie pajamas, with puke all over them and in her hair.

My wife, who had already been nauseous, had to run downstairs to throw up, too.

My wife and daughter had both become deathly ill. Nothing was staying inside either one of them. After getting my daughter out of her pajamas and into the shower to wash her hair, I took everything that had puke on it and I threw it out the window to hose off later. I made my daughter as comfortable as I could, and then got to work cleaning the mattress and the carpet.

It was miserable. Both of them were doubled over in pain and throwing up every fifteen minutes for the next several hours.

At one point, I fully expected everyone in my family to be sick and I imaged all five of us in the hospital hooked up to the intravenous.

So far, though, my sons were sleeping soundly.

Until about 3:00 AM when my middle son woke up screaming. He had thrown up in his bed.

I moved him to my daughter's room, away from his baby brother, and went between my son and daughter cleaning puke pans.

By morning the worst was over. My daughter was dehydrated and by then end of it her face looked like a middle-aged woman.

I thanked God that, so far, my two-year old son and myself had escaped it.

That morning was a Thursday. I stayed home from work to take care of everyone.

Friday I went back to work.

Friday, just before starting for home, I could feel it coming on. By the time I had completed my hour-long commute, I told my wife I was sick, I went upstairs to shower, and then I laid down in bed.

An hour later, I was in the bathroom with the same symptoms as my daughter. It was miserable. I literally slept naked on the bathroom floor on a pile of of towels to be close to the toilet.

And all the while I prayed that my two-year old would be spared this. It would just be a horror for him. We wouldn't be able to explain what was going on. And what if he got completely dehydrated. I prayed and prayed, "Please let him not get sick like this; please let him not get sick like this; please..."

By morning I was weak but feeling slightly better. It took another week to fully recover. But thank God my youngest son never got sick.

Now, there could be any number of naturalistic explanations for why he didn't get sick--his age, something special about his immune system--I don't know.

But is it reasonable to interpret it as an answer to my fervent prayer?

But what if he had gotten sick in spite of my petitions?

Clearly, then, I would have to interpret it as an unanswered prayer.

Let me give you one more example, very briefly (you can read the whole story <strong>here</strong>).

I've heard Immaculee Ilibagiza speak, but I've never read the book. She survived the Rwandan genocide through the human agency of a man of the other tribe who had hidden her in his house. Immaculee was hold up in the bathroom. Throughout the ordeal she never left that room.

The way she tells it, she had doubted her Catholic faith at various times during the crisis (who wouldn't?). She had already lost her whole family. She had a Rosary with her, though, and when the killers came to the house where she was hiding, she fervently prayed for deliverance from their machetes. She heard them come inside the house. They looked in closets, in the attic, in the crawl space--everywhere. They searched the whole house. And just as they came to the bathroom where she was hiding, she heard one of the men say to her protector, "Ah, we believe you, there's no body hiding here." And they left.

She alone, from among all her family, survived the genocide.

Was that an answered prayer? Was it just coincidence?

What about the countless other Rwandans who prayed as she did but who did lose their lives in the slaughter?

What about Anne Frank who, we may suppose, prayed for herself and for her family?

But here's the thing...we just can't know what good our lives will do, or what good our deaths will do.

Immaculee has been sharing her story all over the world. I think it's done some good.

It may be a small thing, but in a very round-about kind of way, Immaculee was the catalyst that helped my wife grow even closer to God over the last several years. She was invited to a Healing Mass by a neighbor where an African priest was. Who uses Immaculee as an interpreter when he travels the States. She was looking for more information on this priest online when she found out that Immaculee was going to be speaking at a lay ministry half-a-state away the next day. She called the ministry headquarters and, even though they were booked solid, they not only let my wife come, but they sat her in the front row and treated her like a visiting dignitary.

She got involved in the ministry--and got me involved, too--and a few months ago she went with them to <strong>Betania, Venezuela</strong> on a pilgrimage. (<strong>video about the site, narrated by Ricaldo Montalban, here</strong>) It's been a great experience for her and my family, bringing us all closer to God.

And what of Anne Frank?

I think it's hard to wrap our heads around because we all kind of think that physical death--especially at the hands of wicked men--is about as bad a thing as there can be. But then we don't see things as God sees them.

The best thing that can happen to any one of us is that we die a happy death--and a happy death is one in friendship with God. That's the Christian view, anyway. If it's wrong, then no one's death can be called "good" because of its utter finality.

But if we live in a world in which prayer is possibly efficacious, a world more in line with what Christians believe then atheists, then death, sickness, suffering, whatever...isn't the worst thing that can happen. And they may even be the vehicles through which great goods come to be realized.