“Briefly, then, let me identify three distorted images of divine power. These images, I believe, can be plucked from the minds of conscientious Christians and other religious folks as well as from the minds of thoughtful atheists. These images of divine power hinder our practice of prayer. These three images of power were identified and carefully delineated by Daniel L. Migliore, under whom I had the privilege to study. He was professor of systematic theology, now Professor Emeritus, at Princeton Theological Seminary. His insightful little book is entitled The Power of God. 10
GOD AS UNLIMITED POWER
The first and perhaps most common distortion of God's power is to imagine God as the supreme monarch, a kind of heavenly Kubla Kahn who can impose the divine will without limitation (cf. McFague’s “Monarchical Model”). This view has been a dominant one throughout the history of the Church. “The Christian movement never abandoned the royal metaphor for God and God’s relation to the world. The logic of sovereignty, which presumes that God employs whatever means are necessary to ensure the successful accomplishment of the divine will, eventually pervaded the total criteriology of Christendom,” McFague cites from another source.11 God is seen as exercising an absolute and unlimited power to dominate and control. Like an earthly Byzantine emperor, God can do and accomplish whatever God chooses.
Even the traditional image of God as Father enshrines some such notion of dominance with unquestioned authority and power. In societies from ancient times up until the present notion of a democratic family, a father held absolute power and control over all members of the tribe, clan, or family in much of the world. His was the power of life and death. It is still true in numerous cultures today. Unfortunately we still see some of this legacy today in our American culture with husbands and fathers who dominate their spouses and their children and demand that other family members submit themselves unconditionally to the father's will.
Prayer to such a God of unlimited power, as supreme monarch, is to appeal, to beg, to persuade God to grant us our wishes. If God has such unlimited power, than prayer is simply the attempt to get God to exercise that immense power on our behalf or on behalf of those for whom we pray. If God does not act to meet our prayerful petition, it is supposed because God chooses not to use that immense power on our behalf. We hear Job cry out in anguish, “God pays no attention to their prayer.”
This view of God's power raises an obvious question. If God has all that power and knows what needs to be done, what should be done, then why doesn't God just use that power without any need on our part to pray about it? Why does God need us to grovel in prayer in order to prod God to use that unlimited divine power for good? Should not the God of this universe do what is right, argued Job. Should not what is right and just be done by God because it is right and just and not because of anything we may or may not pray?
Such questions suggest that a view of God's power as unlimited power raises more questions about prayer than it answers. After all, how can God be both all powerful and good and yet not use that divine power to ensure justice and goodness? Likewise, should not an all powerful and just God use the divine power to resist and defeat what is not just and good? Would not such a God use that divine power to answer the many prayers we pray for just and good causes?
GOD AS CAPTIVE POWER
A second distortion of God's power Migliore identifies is to imagine God as a captive power, a power under our control that we can manipulate at will. This image of God's power suggests that we can by various means harness or tap God's power to serve our needs, our wants, our purposes, no matter how noble or how selfish they may be. This view can take many forms. It may hold that God owes us something because of our goodness or our labors. Therefore, God becomes obligated to use the divine power on our behalf. This view of God's power can assume notions of a contractual business relationship or of a great magician. With the contractual idea, a person delivers certain goods, whether clean living, worship, or good works, and God is obligated to deliver certain services, such as answered prayers, prosperity, or good health.
The great magician view of God's power would hold that if you want a promotion or a new car or a winning lottery ticket, just ask with enough faith and you will manipulate the divine power to make your wish happen.
JOTTINGS (from the author's prayer notebook)
Prayer is not rooted in our faith. Rather prayer is rooted in the nature of God. When we focus upon faith as the operative principle in prayer, we make prayer a kind of ‘power play' against God. Our faith, then, becomes our leverage to manipulate God and God's power.
The captive power idea can even be harnessed for nationalistic service. God becomes drafted into the service of the military or the national purpose. Whenever we go to war, God is seen to be clearly on our side. Whenever we confront our enemies, God is invoked in our service by the government or one of the political parties reminding us that such enemies are, for one reason or another, God's enemies also. The church as institution can also fall into this distortion of God's power, using God to sanction its views or its decisions or its authority as though God were only a domestic servant in the household of the Church....”