For the Deist ... prayer is calling across a void to a distant deity. This lofty figure may or may not be listening. He, or it, may or may not be inclined, or even able, to do very much about us and our world, even if he (or it) wanted to ... all you can do is send off a message, like a marooned sailor scribbling a note and putting it in a bottle, on the off-chance that someone out there might pick it up. That kind of prayer takes a good deal of faith and hope. But it isn't Christian prayer.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the nature of deistic prayer, suggesting that it requires faith in a distant deity who may not respond.
N.T. Wright's quote explores the concept of prayer from a deistic perspective, highlighting the uncertainty and ambiguity involved in reaching out to an indifferent or absent deity. Unlike Christian prayer, which engages a personal and responsive God, deistic prayer is portrayed as an act of hope and faith, where the individual sends forth their thoughts and desires into the unknown, likening it to a sailor's message in a bottle sent out to sea, hoping for acknowledgment from an unreachable entity.
In practice
In a sermon discussing the nature of belief, one might quote this to illustrate the differences between deistic and Christian prayer.
The resurrection completes the inauguration of God's kingdom. . . . It is the decisive event demonstrating thet God's kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven." "The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it.
True worship doesn't put on a show or make a fuss; true worship isn't forced, isn't half-hearted, doesn't keep looking at its watch, doesn't worry what the person in the next pew is doing. True worship is open to God, adoring God, waiting for God, trusting God even in the dark.
Most of the things that really matter require faith. How do I know that my wife loves me? How do I know that Mozarts Jupiter Symphony is sublime and beautiful? There are all sorts of things which come at a more lowly level than that - How do I know that two plus two equals four? There are different layers, different types of knowing.
To get overprotective about particular readings of the Bible is always in danger of idolatry.
Without God's Spirit, there is nothing we can do that will count for God's kingdom. Without God's Spirit, the church simply can't be the church.
I'm not a universalist, and the way I talk about final loss is this: People worship idols - money, whatever. Their humanness gets reshaped around the idol - you become like what you worship. That's one of the basic spiritual laws.
The value of a man is in his intrinsic qualities: in that of which power cannot strip him and which adverse fortune cannot take away. That for which he is indebted to circumstances is mere trapping and tinsel.
We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos.
The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a trumpet. But the voices of the saints and sages, recommending contentment, should sound unceasingly, like the sea.
You have been saying much about Dr. Carey and his work. When I am gone, say nothing about Dr. Carey; speak about Dr. Carey's Saviour.
America is a nation that conceives many odd inventions for getting somewhere but it can think of nothing to do once it gets there.
The becoming of man is the history of the exhaustion of his possibilities.
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