- Transactional Theology is not Reverence - Praying Is Asking God to Cheat. Who Knows the Divine Will? The Only Prayer Is: “Thy Will Be Done.”

They say ''our father who hath in heaven ''give us '' - as if their father doesn't know what they need, therein lies the powerful daddy or mummy in the sky, no need to ask Sigmund Freud ''.

Praying Is Asking God to Cheat.
Who Knows the Divine Will?
The Only Prayer Is: “Thy Will Be Done.”

Most people are taught from childhood that prayer is virtuous. You want a job—pray. You want a house—pray. You want your child to succeed, your rival to fail, your illness cured, your country to win a war—pray. This habit is so normalized that few stop to question what is actually being asked.

When you strip away the sentimentality, most prayer is not humility. It is a request for divine favoritism. It is asking God to bend reality in your direction. In plain language: it is asking God to cheat.

If God is all-knowing, all-seeing, and possesses a complete understanding of time, causality, and consequence, then what exactly is prayer trying to achieve? Are you informing God of something God does not already know? Are you persuading God to revise a plan that was supposedly perfect before you spoke?

If so, that God is either not all-knowing or not competent.

Prayer as Spiritual Self-Interest

Look at how people actually pray—not how theologians sanitize it. People pray for raises over colleagues who may be more qualified. They pray to win court cases regardless of guilt. They pray for their sports team to win, which automatically means praying for someone else to lose. They pray for wealth, status, influence, beauty, dominance, survival at the expense of others.

This is not alignment with a divine will. This is personal desire dressed up as holiness.

When someone says, “I prayed and God answered me,” what they usually mean is: events unfolded in my favor. The implication is disturbing but rarely acknowledged—God chose me over someone else. God intervened for me and not for them. God sided with my convenience, my tribe, my ambition.

That's not reverence. That's transactional theology.

Who Exactly Knows the Divine Will?

Here is the deeper problem: everyone claims to know the divine will. Priests, imams, rabbis, pastors, popes, prophets, politicians, and ordinary believers all assert—often with absolute confidence—that they understand what God wants.

But how would they know?

If divine will is infinite, cosmic, and beyond human comprehension, then any human claim to fully grasp it is either arrogance or self-deception. Historically, “divine will” has conveniently aligned with power, hierarchy, conquest, and control. God always seems to want what the powerful already want.

Wars are justified by divine will. Inequality is excused by divine will. Suffering is dismissed as divine will—unless it happens to us, in which case we suddenly pray for intervention.

This selective logic exposes the contradiction.

The Superhero Problem

The idea of divine intervention shares the same flaw as the superhero fantasy. Superheroes are celebrated for stepping in and “saving the day,” but this assumes we understand the full consequences of events.

Imagine a moment in history that looks unquestionably evil or tragic. Now imagine that intervention prevents it. You feel relief—until you realize that history is not linear, and outcomes are not isolated.

What if an intervention that seems good in the moment leads to greater harm later? What if a disaster prevented today results in a catastrophe tomorrow? What if suffering, while horrific, prevents something far worse?

A child saved today could grow into a tyrant tomorrow. A war prevented now could allow a more devastating one later. You do not know. I do not know. No human does.

If there is a divine intelligence capable of understanding the full arc of reality, then human interference—through prayer or heroics—becomes absurd.

The Logical Conclusion

If God exists and is truly all-knowing, then God does not need reminders, requests, emotional manipulation, or bargaining. God does not need you to beg. God does not need cheat codes.

In that framework, most prayer is not faith—it is insecurity. It is fear disguised as devotion. It is the refusal to accept uncertainty, randomness, and responsibility.

The only prayer that makes philosophical sense is the one that asks for nothing specific.

“Thy will be done.”

Not “give me.”
Not “take from them.”
Not “make me special.”
Not “choose my side.”

Just: whatever is meant to unfold, unfold.

Anything else is an attempt to bend the universe in your favor while pretending it is holy.

A Hard Truth

This perspective is uncomfortable because it removes the illusion of control. It means you are not protected by favoritism. It means suffering is not a divine punishment nor success a divine reward. It means morality is your responsibility, not God’s.

And it means prayer, as commonly practiced, is not spiritual maturity—it is spiritual regression.

If God exists, God does not need you to ask Him to cheat. If God does not exist, prayer is simply talking to yourself.

Either way, pretending you know the divine will is the greatest lie of all.