How are we to understand petitionary prayer? This is a key question for any thoughtful believer who desires to take both the Bible and experience seriously. Some believe God answers any prayer as long as the one praying has enough faith and/or persistence. Others conclude from experience that prayer is really for our benefit and has no impact on God's actions. According to David Crump, both views are extreme and potentially harmful.

While books that deal with prayer from a devotional or experiential perspective have their value, Knocking on Heaven's Door takes a different approach....

This book is a kind of "thinker's toolkit." It's a guide to clear reasoning. The sources range from Plato to Pareto, from Kant to Clausewitz, from Rawls to Rousseau, from Freud to Friedman, and from Adam and Eve to Adam Smith. In these pages, you will be amused by the fallacy of Bertrand Russell's chicken-and by game theorists' analyses of the game of chicken. You will see how air conditioning works, how obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is diagnosed, and how General Norman Schwartzkopf started the invasion of Iraq that began Operation Desert Storm. If some of these names are...