ETA: Ninja’ed
It’s certainly the Jesus definition. You’re not even supposed to ask for or thank for stuff (Dear Lord, thank you for helping us convert on 3rd down with 40 seconds left in the 4th quarter. Please help us make this field goal and smite our enemies) – just recite the Lord’s Prayer and He’ll know what’s in your heart.
First, obviously, Matthew 6:6 isn’t defining prayer, it’s describing best practices to have your prayer heard. It doesn’t say that if you’re not in your closet, you’re not praying, it’s just saying that’s the best place to do it.
Secondly, y’all really want to make a passage from the Christian Bible as controlling the definition of “prayer” for everyone on the planet? Hindus aren’t praying if they don’t follow the instructions in Matthew 6:6?
Lastly, if prayer isn’t prayer unless you’re all alone when you do it, what the fuck is happening in church on a Sunday? None of that counts as “prayer?” That’s surely going to be news to pretty nearly every single Christian on the planet.
… When I was back there in Seminary School
There was a person there
Who put forth the proposition
That you can petition the Lord with prayer
You cannot petition the Lord with prayer!
You can pray in church, or when you have lost your car keys.
Church is about socialization, indoctrination and $.
I was thinking “prayer” by the definition of that coach, who claims to be a Jesus follower. I have no idea why churches do what they do – they seem to directly contradict Jesus’s clear instructions. It’s one of the clearer passages, really.
In order to push their religion; Jesus is dead; his opinion doesn’t matter, he lost control of the religion he started when he died. What matters is pushing the religion on as many people as possible while suppressing all possible rivals. That’s been the primary focus of Christianity (and Islam for that matter) for nearly its entire existence. That’s how it got so widespread in the first place. Anyone who disagreed simply got out-competed.
Every religion in the world practices some form of communal prayer. It’s practically the defining characteristic of religion, period.
I don’t know what to tell you, Jesus tried to go another way if Matthew is to be believed.
So what, we’re criticizing people for not being biblical literalists now?
Biblical literalism is more about thinking that Adam and Eve were actual people who lived in an actual Garden of Eden about 5,000 years ago. It’s about whether real evolution can happen or do animals and plants stay within their “kind”. It’s about whether some Jesus stories are parables or commands.
This is flat out direction by Jesus. I mean, Christians ignore all kinds of Jesus commands, of course. This one is just weird for how clear it is, and how obvious it’s constantly violated.
I disagree. Many religions have a source text - like the Bible - and years of interpretations and commentary, with the latter being the actual religion people follow. Take the fact that Jews aren’t supposed to each meat and dairy together. All the Bible says is “don’t eat a kid in its mother’s milk”, which is as clear an instruction as can be. And yet, over the past 3000 years Jewish thought has reached the conclusion that the rule should be, not to eat meat and dairy in the same meal.
And that’s a good thing! Religions change, they evolve over time, even though their source texts do not. They have to, because humanity always changes with them. And it’s this sort of interpretation that allows beliefs like, say, evolution, a round Earth, a prohibition on slavery, equal rights, or other things modern believers can accept despite contradicting scripture.
This argument doesn’t make any sense - even a literal reading of the text gives the way one “should” pray, not the definition.
You can argue the coach was not following best practices (and I’d agree with you there) but to argue he wasn’t praying at all (whether limited to the Christian sense or not) is absurd.
Per Kahlil Gibran:
Once every hundred years Jesus of Nazareth meets Jesus of the Christian in a garden among the hills of Lebanon. And they talk long; and each time Jesus of Nazareth goes away saying to Jesus of the Christian, “My friend, I fear we shall never, never agree.”
But have either of them talked to American Jesus?
Went to my FIL memorial service and funeral. At the ‘Viewing’ (ick) These people broke out in a chant. I’m not sure what it was. Some ‘prayer or something’ But Catholic for sure. It shocked and surprised me. It really creeped me out. These people are in a cult.
Thankfully my Wife has not been indoctrinated into any of this bullshit.
Last time he tried, Jesus of Nazareth got sent to Guantanamo.
You don’t fuck with American Jesus.
I still cracks me up that they think he was a white dude.
That’s fine. He was directly contradicting the instructions of his Lord and Savior in order to prove to the world he was a hypocrite by praying in public.