An Interview with David Johnson

Insights Editor William Greenway Interviews David Johnson

I think that one of the fallacies of our time is that prayer is supposed to feel good. A lot of devotional literature talks about the rewards of prayer, which can be real. But not everybody experiences that. And people who don’t often think they are doing something wrong or that there is nothing to this prayer business. Julian has a pastoral emphasis. Her words to people having difficulty praying are: God hears you, God loves you, God cares about what you say. And you can trust God to be there for you, no matter how your prayer feels at any time.

For Julian, confidence comes from her conversations with Jesus Christ. Showings recounts visions she had while ill to the point of dying. There is a crucifix in front of her. The crucifix comes to life, and she has extended conversations with Christ on the cross, who assures her of God’s love. Now, not everybody is going to have that kind of experience. But I think a reason for Julian’s popularity in the 20th and 21st centuries is that people need to hear that God is love. If they hear that secondhand through reading books, it still works, it still is the assurance of God’s love. I also think the emphasis that God is love is scriptural, and the words of scripture are trustworthy, and it seems to me that Julian is trustworthy as well.

All genuine prayers bring us closer to God. That might not be the only thing they do. It is standard to divide prayers into categories: thanksgiving, intercession, petition. But every prayer is done with knowledge that we are talking to the God who loves us, and we are transformed by prayer. A lot of times it is slow. Transformation involves healing, uniting our will with God’s will and uniting our work with God’s work. I wouldn’t say prayers only bring us closer to God, but I would say every prayer does that, no matter what else the prayer is doing.

Transformation might be different for different individuals, but part of the transformation would involve increasing confidence in the presence and goodness of God and the willingness to let our lives be shaped by that. Christians who write on

spirituality emphasize the decreasing importance of material things in your life, being willing to give up things, not basing your identity on what you own. Another sign would be that your capacity for love grows, in particular, your capacity to love people who are disadvantaged or even your enemies. This does not necessarily make you happy. It might be that you are subjected to tremendous difficulty. But that shouldn’t be news to anybody who knows the New Testament. Luke says pick up your cross daily—and you can only do that because you trust that God will not abandon you.

I would encourage people to pray for healing, to pray for safety, to pray for whatever they think they need. But if what you ask God for does not come about, that doesn’t mean nothing has happened. Sometimes what has happened is within you. I think it’s important for people to understand that God desires to hear our prayers and that God does not censor our prayers, but God does not necessarily respond in the way we desire. Barth says God hears our prayers, but that God perfects our prayers.

We pray in part because the Holy Spirit moves us to pray. For people who might say, “I tried to pray, and it seemed like I was just speaking empty words out into the void,” Julian would say the very fact of praying, no matter how it feels, means that God is already at work within you. If you know the hymn “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” that was my grandfather’s favorite. He was a farmer and I learned it because he would sing it to himself when he was out on the tractor or picking fruit. Not everyone experiences a “sweet hour of prayer.” But even if you don’t think anything is happening, even if you think it’s pointless or fruitless, the very fact that you try to pray is an indication that God is already at work within you.

Do it. It’s that simple. Pray. Pray hard. Sometimes we are anxious because things are dangerous, things are scary. That’s how life can get sometimes. But God loves us, so don’t stop praying. Don’t worry about how it feels. Don’t worry about results. Just do it. I think that’s her essential message.

I think prayer is doing something. I wouldn’t want to make too hard a distinction between praying and doing. It’s a problem if there is a divorce between what we pray for and what we do. That may be part of the difficulty I have with the bumper

sticker “Let go and let God.” Well, I think that we can let God and we don’t have to let go. What you pray for and what you do should have some relation to each other. If you pray for the poor you should also be doing for the poor.

We might not experience commands as expressions of love. But that’s because there are things in life that command us that are not divine. God’s commands are based upon love. One of the commands is to pray. Paul famously says, “pray without ceasing,” make your desires known to God, pray to the One who loves you. That is not just a suggestion. Prayer is a matter of obedience, and how that might feel at times is irrelevant. The basic principle you see all through Barth is that God commands, and God’s commands are expressions of God’s love.

It’s entirely consistent with Barth’s theology. Universalism shows up in Barth in many places. He says God justifies all, God sanctifies all, and God gives a vocation to all. That is decisively universal. Christians in the church have a special job. Their job is to announce the grace of God, to share the good news. But the love of God according to Barth is for all of God’s children. God’s love is expressed in the willingness to hear all prayers, and that means some prayers are not explicit prayers. It might be my desire that my child do well on the exam today or the hope that my friend who has cancer experiences healing. That’s almost a prayer. I think God hears them as prayers. To make them actual prayers, just think about who it is you’re talking to. Does this mean that all will be saved? Barth says we might deduce that from our theology, but God is not going to be bound by our theological deduction. So, universal salvation is not something we can deduce, but it is something we can pray for.

I’m not sure you can address that in general terms. Perhaps we should ask ourselves, Is this the kind of prayer Jesus would pray? Say you pray that someone who has injured you might suffer misfortune. Well, that’s not a prayer Jesus would pray. But that prayer might be perfected. For instance, I might pray, “God, Fred injured me; take away my anger and help me understand that Fred is just a person who’s trying to get along just like everybody else.” That is a prayer that acknowledges your anger but is concerned for Fred’s welfare. I think that would be an example of a perfected prayer. I think Barth has in mind the way prayer can turn hate into love.

I think we pray with trust that God will hear our prayers and in a way that is an expression of God’s love. We might not experience that. It might happen outside of our sight. That is part of what it means when we say, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” We don’t get to what we need until the half of the prayer when we say, “give us this day our daily bread.” We don’t say that part until after we have said “thy kingdom come,” which may be happening outside of our sight. That’s what I have in mind when I say that prayers being answered might not be a matter of seeing but of faith—faith that God will work in ways that build the kingdom. The fact that we don’t see how God could be at work in a particular situation does not mean that God is not at work in that situation.

I think there’s a reason that the Lord’s Prayer doesn’t start with “My Father.” From the very first Christian treatise on prayer by Origin in the third century, up to the present day, people have used the Lord’s Prayer as a model for what prayer should be. So, “Our” means we are praying with other people. Sometimes we know it, as in a congregational setting. But even if you are praying when you are alone, that does not mean you really are alone, because other people are praying at the same time. Other people are praying in their individual ways, but we all experience the same things, not just the good things, but the pain, worry, anxiety, and trials. God knows us as individuals, but God knows us as a people as well.

To pray is to speak to the one who loves us. That is Part A. Part B is to surrender to the will of the one who loves us. So, prayer is talking to God who loves us, and prayer is submitting to God’s will.

Sometimes people are wounded and sometimes they’re killed. In such cases I think that the perfected prayer might be something like, “God, do not abandon me even in my pain.” Romans 8 comes to mind: nothing can separate us from the love of God. Those who have died have been welcomed into heaven. Now that’s something that also is a matter of faith, not sight. Regarding the “God saved me” or “God did not let me be wounded” or “God did not let my friends die,” it seems to me that the response to that from God’s side is, “I would not have abandoned you even if you had been wounded or killed.”

Quite honestly, I am not sure. I would certainly say that your disability does not separate you from the love of God, that God’s will was that you endure this, for whatever reason, and I would say that you can endure with grace and faith and a sense of humor, and with the sense that your life still has value. I wouldn’t want to make it cheap. I wouldn’t want to give young Philip platitudes. I do often think about the Gospel of John where Jesus encounters a blind man, and he is asked, Who sinned, this person’s parents or themselves, that he was born blind? Jesus responds, Nobody sinned, this was done to show the glory of God. I often come back to that story. And I think about the ways in which those who are unhealed can still be manifestations of the Word of God. And I think that happens. Actually, I know that happens. But I know that people who are wounded physically, psychologically, or spiritually suffer because of their wounds. I would want to say to anybody, but particularly people with physical disabilities, that the fact that you are disabled does not at all mean that you have lost your worth as a person. Your value as a person does not depend upon your disability. Your task as a disabled person is to find what it is that you can do and then do it. It might take a while to figure out, but you are a valuable person, and you can do valuable work.

Due to cerebral palsy, my legs are rather severely compromised, but my arms and my speech are not. That meant I could make a living by talking, which I have done. I first read Of Human Bondage as a teenager, and I was struck by this passage about Philip Carey. I understood it. I really did. I understood the desire. I understood why he prayed to be healed. I understood the disappointment. And I understood how that could compromise or destroy one’s faith. For me, personally, I think that my fundamental desire in relation to my disability was not to be healed as such but to belong, to be a part of things. That was what I really wanted. Boys growing up compete. You play football, you play basketball, you play volleyball, you roll around on the ground. I wanted to be a part of that because I wanted to belong. So, my prayer in relation to living with a disability was, “Let me belong, let me be a part of things. Let me find ways to do things I love doing that I can do without reference to being disabled.” And it seems to me that, in terms of whatever gifts I’ve got and in terms of where life has taken me, I’ve been able to do that. Would I like to have lived a life without a disability? Yes, of course I would. What is the reason that I must live with disability? I don’t know. I think there is a massive “I don’t know” that is part of the answer to any consideration about disability. Why am I blind? Why am I deaf? Why can’t I run? Why did God allow this to happen? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. But that doesn’t mean that you are without worth, and it doesn’t mean you have nothing to contribute. So, your task in life, and this is to myself and to other disabled people I know, your task in life is to find something that you can do, and to do it as well as you can.