Raistlin

:D
my understanding of theology is that God listens to prayers but he's not a genie. So I'm curious what is being 'measured' when you say God doesn't answer prayers.

Theology is bulltrout rationalizations.

When I was a fundie I would always return to Psalm 37:4 - "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart." Of course, I interpreted it as, if you truly delight yourself in Him, then your desires will be the same as his and you will have them. So basically, if prayer didn't work, it was because I was wanting the wrong things and my heart wasn't right with God enough. If I were truly humbling myself before Him, then I would want things that he wanted and he would provide.

When I didn't get what I wanted from prayer, even when I felt I was wishing for Godly things that weren't self-serving at all...I would feel like I had missed out on something. As in I thought I was asking for the right thing and doing it with a humble heart, but I was obviously wrong and God was showing me how shortsighted I was. It would make me feel bad about myself for not recognizing my own weakness. It was an endless cycle of trying to do better, want thing for myself, and feeling guilty when I wanted things that I thought he would want. I was beating myself up a lot over it when I would find myself failing to ask the right things.

But rather than apply logic to it, it just felt bad about myself and I tried harder to be more humble and more under God's thumb.

... religion is so f***ed up.

Yearg: that sounds tough, and sadly is consistent with other experiences I've heard of. Religion is all about guilt and shame; it just doesn't work without those.