To many Christians get worked up about the portrayal of Christians in the popular media. Television and music are forever lampooning Christianity, to the ire of the Perpetually Alarmed. Every now and then, I get e-mails from the American Family Association, which is always worked up in a tizzy about prayer in schools, public displays of the Ten Commandments, and a host of other trivialities. These thoughts come to my mind as I read Henry Neufield's excellent piece on public prayer. He correctly points out (as I have) that authentic prayer is directed toward God, not a dramatic presentation in order to score a political point. I'll go a step further and say that prayer which uses God as a prop is not just inauthentic, but disrespectful of our Lord."When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you." Matthew 6:5-6
7 comments:
Isn't it amazing that some will profane prayer itself to try to save it from an imagined death?
AMEN!
You are dead on the money, John. I love to consider what would happen when all of my fellow conservative, evangelical, Protestants who long for children to have the right to pray openly in the public schools. Of course, they only assume it will be Protestant Christian prayer. But let them get their desire and then let a Muslim, a Jewish, or some Eastern religion child show up and start leading the classroom prayer, and we'll see how fast they start filing lawsuits and (God Forbid) calling the ACLU. As a Christian, I personally think that the complete separation of Church and State is one of the most important tenants of the American way of life, for that very reason.
I think the best way for Christian parents to assure that their children can pray in public school is to teach their children to pray. If your children know how to do it themselves, are motivated by your teaching and example, and understand basic courtesy to others so they don't disrupt, it's not only legal, it's very hard to stop.
John, Thank you for the link to this excellent post.
John...we agree!!! That's great!
Thanks, everyone!
I keep in mind the promise of Revelation -- that we are going to win in the end. The lastest movie or TV show to make fun of Christianity is so completely unimportant.
Seekers' views of Christianity are not impacted by popular media as much as they are by the lives of Christians.
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