I stumbled across this little parable last week and it’s been bouncing around my head ever since:

A voyaging ship was wrecked during a storm at sea and only two of the men on it were able to swim to a small, desert like island. The two survivors, not knowing what else to do, agree that they had no other recourse but to pray to God.

However, to find out whose prayer was more powerful, they agreed to divide the territory between them and stay on opposite sides of the island.

The first man was hungry and prayed for food.* The next morning, the first man saw a fruit-bearing tree on his side of the land, and he was able to eat its fruit. The other man’s parcel of land remained barren.

After a week, the first man was lonely and he decided to pray for a wife. The next day, another ship was wrecked, and the only survivor was a woman who swam to his side of the land. On the other side of the island, there was nothing. Soon the first man prayed for a house, clothes, more food. The next day, like magic, all of these were given to him. However, the second man still had nothing.

Finally, the first man prayed for a ship, so that he and his wife could leave the island. In the morning, he found a ship docked at his side of the island. The first man boarded the ship with his wife and decided to leave the second man on the island. He considered the other man unworthy to receive God’s blessings, since none of his prayers had been answered.

As the ship was about to leave, the first man heard a voice from heaven booming, “Why are you leaving your companion on the island?”

“My blessings are mine alone, since I was the one who prayed for them,” the first man answered. “His prayers were all unanswered and so he does not deserve anything.”

“You are mistaken!” the voice rebuked him. “He had only one prayer, which answered. If not for that, you would not have received any of my blessings.”

“Tell me,” the first man asked the voice, “what did he pray for that I should owe him anything?”

“He prayed that all your prayers be answered.”

I like this, but I suspect it exists somewhere in another, more internally consistent form.

My major concern is that praying for someone else’s prayers to come true requires an impossible amount of faith in the other person. Otherwise you could be complicit in bad prayers. Or maybe, faith isn’t meant for the other person, but rather in the divine wisdom that would sort the good and bad prayers. But still, it introduces a sort of logical feedback loop where the worthy may be praying for the fulfillment of prayers to the unworthy. And if so, wouldn’t the worthy person then be challenging the judgement of God?

I haven’t done much specific reading of theological discussions around unexpected consequences of various prayers, but I’d be curious to read another take as to why the first man prayer for a wife is granted through the death of everyone else on his wife’s boat. And of how that prayer is then reflected onto the second man’s prayer.
Anyway, interesting thought experiment.
* This line originally read “The first thing they prayed for was food.” Since the second man is revealed to have only had one prayer, he couldn’t have prayed for food. I changed this for consistency.