Pretty much. I have never seen such a common collective response to problems. If someone expresses going through a drama or a trauma, (on social media for example) an American's first and most common response is "I'll pray for you"......or the one experiencing the problem will ask others to pray for them. It doesn't seem to matter that all their collective prayers don't appear to do much in actual fact, but I guess it makes them feel better for offering. I am not sure of the mindset.....do they expect that God will wave a magic wand and fix it, even when prayers for everyone else have not really altered anything? Does prayer become the thing you do when you can't do anything else? If God is not answering, then what is the problem? If the Bible tells us to pray, then what does it tell us to pray for? Miracles? Nope. Prayer is for the strength to cope with the traumas, not necessarily to miraculously remove them.
The book of Job tells us why we are going through these traumas in the first place. It's about maintaining faith in spite of the problems.....and its about recognising who is responsible for them....and why he is permitted to bring them on us.
If we Christians understand this, then we don't blame the wrong person.
