Recently, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about prayer. Some of its core concepts don't seem to jive with Christianity's other core concepts, and I want to explore those contradictions below. However, before we get into my central question for those that regularly engage in prayer and believe in its power, I want to get clear on the topic of just how ironclad God's will really is.

The Mutability of God’s Will

The first order of business is to ensure we're on the same page about a key detail. Do you believe that God’s will is mutable? Do you think any force in this universe can alter God’s will? It is my understanding that most Christians would answer this question, “No.”, e.g. — God’s will is immutable, and beyond influence.

For instance, as a kid in Sunday school, I remember hearing grand claims to the tune of, “God knows every hair on your head. He knows how many will fall out tomorrow, and how many will grow back.” This is obviously an incredible level of specificity, unlikely to be spelled out in the Bible verbatim, but was (and still is) repeated often enough to make me assume it a reasonable conclusion given the text.

If my understanding of the above is correct, my follow-up question for the prayers among us is:

Unoriginally around these parts, my parents are Christian, all four of my grandparents were devout Christians, my aunts and uncles are Christian, my cousins are Christian, my... whatever else is Christian. All authentically, too. There aren't any phonies in the bunch. Thus, my falling away from not only Christianity, but any form of religion whatsoever, bucked several generations of family tradition.