Why does Mother Mary pray for us?

Let me begin with a disclaimer, as this is going to sound like I am denying a central tenet of the faith. I'm not, and indeed this is not all that critical an issue to determine whether we are to be saved. And yet, let me say, I love Mother Mary, and I pray the Rosary frequently. I have even written an expanded set of daily mysteries that I call the Wildflower Rosary, to make it more useful for teaching about Jesus. I think it would be edifying for Protestants also to pray the Rosary, even if they feel they would need to alter it somewhat. They can say decades of the "Jesus prayer" that Orthodox Christians say, in place of the "Hail Mary," if they want. But here, I begin my rant.

The Catholic Church has gone too far in its teaching about Mary. This is a case where the "traditions of men" have grown into accretions on the faith. We need to discern, instead, the earliest teachings of the Church, and fortunately, those are clear. Yes, she is certainly the Mother of God and the Queen of Heaven, whom we love as the Mother of the Church. That much can be supported from the Scriptures. Thus, we can reverence her, and speak to her in prayer, but we must not worship her. She is only human, like us. She can indeed pray to God, in the person of her Son, on our behalf, but that is the same intercessory prayer that we can do for others. 

The Early Church Fathers have always taught that we can pray to Mary and the Saints. In the creeds, we call it the "Communion of Saints," and that's why we keep track of canonized saints, to know whose prayers are most effective. The Saints can hear us, and like the Angels, they observe the living and see how we behave here on Earth. They can pray for us, but they do not act as mediators for us. Mother Mary, too, can pray for us, and her prayers are often quite effective, but she is not the royally authorized "Mediatrix" pleading our case to Jesus that the Catholic Church has lately promoted her to be.

Only Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, can stand as our Mediator before the Father. It is sure and certain what He said: "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except by Me." 

There is only one person who can act as Mediator between you and God the Father, and that is Jesus, the uniquely divine and human Son of God. He is the one who paid the penalty for our sins on the cross, and He died so that we might live. Only Jesus will stand beside us on the Day of Judgment, and He can declare that we are covered by his blood and our sins are forgiven. Jesus knows the quality of our faith, and whether we love Him. He does not need anyone to stand for us, to speak for us. We stand before Him all by ourselves, and He will either commend or deny the way we have lived our faith for Him. 

But Jesus can also hear how many voices speak to ask Him to grant us mercy, just as we have prayed for others. He hears his Mother asking Him to overlook our sins and see only our faith, to be generous with his mercy. It's just like the day He heard her ask Him to do something when the wedding at Cana ran out of wine. There is no sense of compulsion, but how can He refuse his beloved Mother? And has she not asked us to "do whatever He tells you"? Of course, Mary will pray for us because we are also her children. It's her natural response to our request. That is not mediation. It's petition and supplication, and it's what we too are supposed to do for those who need our prayers. 

Creation or Evolution?

Not only atheists are stupid enough to believe that they have all the answers without actually having investigated the truth. If you think that God (or Darwin) is pleased to know that you don't want to hear the whole argument because you have already made up your mind... think again. The Bible only says "why" God did this or that, not "how." God's idea of creation in "six days" really means "six eons." The time frame is fluid for an eternal Being. 

The creation is just too impossibly unlikely to exist by accident. The fine-tuned universe is obviously a creation, not a single instance out of a million attempts in a multiverse. One God creating time, matter and the laws of physics is the simplest explanation, as long as you don't insist that "supernatural" is ruled out before you do the logic. 

If you don't want to know the truth, don't claim to have all the answers.

Imagine... every time a scientist says, "something happened" that made the Earth habitable, something that made it possible for life to evolve, something that would eventually lead to the rise of humanity... we should hear... "God did something amazing!" It wasn't just random luck. It was all planned, step by step.

So what caused the Big Bang? The tiny flicker of a quantum. But quanta require space and time in order to exist, and before the Big Bang, there was no space or time. So where did the quantum come from? "Something happened."

All of the physical constants that we need in order for this Cosmos to exist had to come from a Mind setting them just right. There are too many of them, and their values are so specific, that there is no way for them to just happen all together at once so that everything would just happen to come into existence. "Something happened!"

Nothing (not even "nothing") just "happened" to exist. Everything was created by God, who designed us.

Adamant skepticism is not a valid worldview. Science must be open to the discovery of patterns and confirmation of theory. If a theory that posits its foundation on the existence of Mind hasn't been disproven, but it explains a plethora of questions, then it should be accepted, at least provisionally.

Still, the adamantly literal interpretation of a book of stories, even a spritually inspired infallible Bible, is equally invalid. The Bible was written thousands of years ago for people who did not share our modern world view, and didn't speak our language. When we try to insist that the words on the page are unquestionable, we are trying to make God fit into our own tiny box. God doesn't have to explain Himself in a fashion that pleases you. It's up to you to try to grasp how God works within the Laws that He created for our physical world to follow.

I absolutely believe in every word of the Bible, but I humbly request the option to interpret it in accord with reason and evidence. Genesis is not a literal story, but it is an explanation meant for people who would never understand the "scientific" facts on the ground. By reason, they grasped the story, but they didn't have any knowledge of the evidence, like we have. 

We talk about metaphors in the Bible when we want to interpret what it says in obscure language and apply it to modern times. If you can read the book of Revelations and say that "Babylon" is a metaphor, why can't you admit that the "six days" creation in Genesis is also a metaphor? God is eternal. His idea of time is totally different from ours. He was telling the story to men who could never understand the idea of millions of years, much less billions. He created the heavens and the Earth perfectly for us, and then He created us "from the dust" of the Earth. Nowhere does it say how He did either. 

We believe because it's his story. When we investigate his laws of nature, we begin to see how magnificent and wise his works were to bring us this far. Just because the story is a metaphor, that doesn't mean it isn't true. If God wasn't so much more amazing than we can think, we wouldn't be here to debate the literal-ness of his Bible.

The Story is impeccable, even without the evidence, if you have faith. And it is the same today, you can believe by faith alone, and ignore the glorious evidence of how our Almighty God created the entire Cosmos out of nothing, then made life and humanity from the dust, and saved us by his Cross. 

The Bible has never been contradicted by evidence, but only by men who refused to see the Truth. Reason was given by God, and He left the evidence for us to find, but we will ALWAYS need faith to find our Creator, and to make our peace with Him through Jesus, is uniquely begotten Son.