The Problem of Unanswered Prayer

In Jesus'' prayer life, there was a codicil to every one of his prayers: "not what I will but what you will." This codicil is the solution to the problem of unanswered prayer

In life there are optimists, pessimists and Woody Allen. Allen looks at life with all its suffering and hardship, all its evil and misery, and boldly concludes that there is no God and that suicide is probably the most reasonable response to the angst of existence - only to quickly catch himself and consider, "Well, let's not get hysterical, I could be wrong, I'd hate to blow my brains out and then read in the papers they'd found something," (from his film Love and Death, 1975).

Throughout his films, Allen has kept asking the questions of life's ultimate meaning and considering the possibility that there is a God, and that this God cares about humanity - or at least about the existence of a rational universe. While he has allowed some of his film personae to express confidence in their convictions (in Sleeper his character announces, "I'm what you call a teleological existential atheist. I believe there's an intelligence to the universe, with the exception of certain parts of New...