And when you pray, do not be as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have already received their reward. But when you pray, go into your closet and close the door; pray to your Father in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. (if Matthew 6:6 is to be believed).
Odd, debates on the constitution aside, you think if people claim to believe what they wear on their sleeve, they would at least read some of it, if not take it to heart.
If only Christ could have had a TeeVee ministry or even a PA system, he could have been somebody.
> Worst of all, prayers at football games are usually prayers for your team to be victorious
A lot of them are prayers that nobody gets injured & the like, which would explain why it’s more common at a football game than other sports where serious injuries are less likely. Sometimes both teams pray together.
I think it is clear that Jesus is holding up the hypocrites as an example not to follow and he is clearly commanding his followers not to do as they do. I’m not sure how they got the message that Jesus was commanding the hypocrites. Also, these No Pray No Play people seem to have the same motavations, from an atheist standpoint, as the hypocries that Jesus was talking about. They are praying to get people to pay attention to them and think, “Oh look how religious they are; they are praying so loudly in public they must be pious.” As Jesus said they have recieved their reward.
I think praying as a team is completely despicable. I played football, and before games the team would pray, which would make me extremely uncomfortable. I can’t believe they would automatically assume everyone on the team was uniformly Christian.
Also, we had an assembly for something involving the giving of awards, congratulations, scholarships, etc. to outstanding students. Anyway, every student awarded was apparently required to give a speech. Virtually every one of them thanked god at the beginning of the speech. Many even said prayers. This made me pretty mad, so I elected to leave. As I was walking out, I was accosted by a “teacher”(i hesistate to call her that, considering she never taught me a damn thing). I was told I wasn’t allowed to leave the assembly until it was over. I argued saying that I felt uncomfortable with all the christian nonsense, she seemed to be pretty offended at this. Again, she asked me to sit down, and I refused, eventaully I was sent to the “time out” room.
At the end of the day, I went to the principal, and told him what happened, and he pretty much dismissed the whole situation, saying it wouldn’t happen again. Of course, the teacher was never talked to, never reprimanded.
I guess I can understand why you would feel uncomfortable by the prayers. But people thank God in award acceptance speeches all the time. Whaddya gonna do? There have been people who have thanked God when winning an Oscar. Whaddya gonna do? Start to dictate what people can say in their acceptance speeches?
I believe nick was complaining about being forced to witness this and how the teacher was unsympathetic about the situation.
To use your ill analogy, I think he would have a right to cpmplain if, while watching a parade of God-thanking awards winners on the televised Oscar ceremony, he tried to change the channel and his teacher wouldn’t let him.
You do see the difference here, yes?
This is a continuation of a trend I have seen which really irks me. People saying “Why are you trying to take God away?” and “What do you have against prayer,” and similar nonsense.
Nobody has anything againsyt God or prayer. We object to WHEN and HOW in some cases when it infringes on our rights to be free from religion, and those rights of our children.
Yer pal,
Satan
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Cool. Using the same standard, the condemnation of homosexuality (from Romans 1) only applies to those who suppress the truth (or is it those who claim to be wise, but are fools):
It’s truly impressive how fundies can claim to believe in Biblical inerrancy, but weasel out of any verse that gives them heartburn. Of course, that’s pretty hypocritical, so the verse in Matthew 6 applies to them anyway.
This a.m.'s Chicago Trib carried a column by Leonard Pitts addressing those folk who are “spontaneously” reciting the Lord’s Prayer at football games to get around government involvement. A bit I found especially good:
“… Never mind that Christ himself said, ‘When you pray, go into your room, close the door.’ The problem with that injunction is than nobody gets to see how pious you are. Moreover, by keeping your prayers private, you compromise your ability to set the standard, to impose conformity, to render invisible or intimidate the Muslim, Buddhist, atheist or Jew who might have the temerity to come out to a football game on ‘your’ turf. …”
LPJ also speeks reasonably to the points of how it is impossible to stop anyone from praying whenever they want to ("…no one can stop you. No one even has to know. …"), as well as the fact that this campaign to pray out loud at public gatherings has little if anything with spreading the message of Christ("…Where’s the pugnacious attitude when it comes time to push people to volunteer in rest homes …").
Just wanted to bring attention to a fine article by what I consider a fine columnist. IMO, his primary agenda is reasonableness and honesty.
BTW
aha: “fire=bad”?!
Guess you like your eggs extra runny.
The FBI would have to enforce the law. Actually the Executive branch does the enforcing of laws. They would be the teeth. I guess congress must first pass a law which sets fines for missuse of government property in this manner and then Mulder and Scully would have to attend all the high school sporting events.
(How many HS football games occur on a single weekend?)
I went to a Catholic school. We had prayer all the time and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
