$20 to Mint Your Prayers on “The Blockchain”(eternalprayer.org) |
$20 to Mint Your Prayers on “The Blockchain”(eternalprayer.org) |
But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
> Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
I find this bit in particular pretty humorous because it makes it sound like god's voicemail inbox is overflowing and he doesn't have time for your shit.
So in that respect, a Christian's relationship with God ought to me markedly different from how many other religions relate to the gods they worship.
There can be moments of personal intentions (both during vigils and prayers) but most of the time people offer them for health and well being of others. We are not supposed to really care much about earthly possessions as our hearts should belong to God first and our neighbors second (Matthew 22:36-40).
Ideal marketing is both puffing your product and dissing the competition. The old testament is really full of the latter...the new testament has less.
> > Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
So why pray at all?
Seriously though, you do have to wonder who it is they think they're praying to. Also, if the love of money is the root of all evil, is the love of blockchain the root of all foolishness?
https://web.mit.edu/jywang/www/cef/Bible/NIV/NIV_Bible/MATT+....
It's interesting to me that Christians never seem to consider praying standing in churches where they can be seen by others as a violation. They invented a new word (at least in English) for their places of worship, to allow public prayer on a technicality.
eugene peterson’s translation of Matthew 6:6 is
“ Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.”
and that’s at least within the realm of possible for the patterns of communal worship that have come after. I’m inclined to say most of “a church service” isn’t exactly prayer, either.
"At the corner is the store known as Soul Scrolls. It’s a franchise: there are Soul Scrolls in every city centre, in every suburb, or so they say. [...] Ordering prayers from Soul Scrolls is supposed to be a sign of piety and faithfulness to the regime, so of course the Commanders’ Wives do it a lot. It helps their husbands’ careers. [...] The machines talk as they print out the prayers; if you like, you can go inside and listen to them, the toneless metallic voices repeating the same thing over and over. Once the prayers have been printed out and said, the paper rolls back through another slot and is recycled into fresh paper again."
Side note: I found the quote by searching my comment history¹ and then picking up the book, because that is faster than finding the text in the book without any hints. I really can't decide if that is good thing or not. Like some super weak version of Chiang's Remem²
¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25672286
² https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_of_Fact,_the_Truth...
If their attempts to charge your credit card fail then the pay later company can use the usual tactics to get you to pay loans, since they require some of your personal information when setting up the payment: sending threatening messages, adding a bad mark to your credit report, etc.
Also, looking at the way their payment and submission system works, it is quite literally "buy now, pray later"
I should read more of his work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stories_of_Your_Life_and_Other...
so that you learn what you need, too.
and, ultimately, to say "thanks".
(same question asked differently: "why meditate?" "why mindfulness?")
Seems like a strong assertion to make based on a short comment by someone who based their statement on having read the gospels and a good chunk of the Old Testament.
And what’s with the mention of hate? I don’t see any in the comment. And sure, there’s plenty of it in the Old Testament but the New Testament doesn’t even want you to hate the Romans.
Was the Apostle Thomas not a believer? Did he preach hate?
The beam might be in your eye, tekknik.
What’s with the “marketing” thing? Can that be taken as hateful or not?
I was responding in my comment to a previous comment which was correctly describing various parts of the old testament in which their god assails all those other gods, says that you have to worship him first, talks about his wrath and jealousy and the risks if you don’t stick him first. Not to mention the dissing of other tribes, and witches, and other undesirables. All that stuff is a pretty clear marketing message.
There are of course other messages as well, but the original commenter, and my response, referred to the marketing sections.
As for being religious: is there a constraint on who is allowed to read the texts and or interpret them? Are adherents of only certain religions permitted to read them?
This comment makes me think you've never had a toddler, much less a teen.
Tell that to Job. Whose "Father" tortured him to win a bet.
And yet that's not how the bible is taught at a vast majority of churches. "The bible is the word of God. Jesus changed his relationship with us, which is why his behavior is different between the old and new Testament. End of discussion."
I still recall the lecture I got when I once questioned whether Genesis was an allegory for the creation of the universe over billions of years. "No, it was 7 days, exactly as the bible says."
Christians "who suffer according to God's will should entrust themselves to their faithful creator while continuing to do good." (from 1 Peter 4)
"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer." (from Romans 8)
"Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning the shame, and sat down at the right hand of God" (from Hebrews 12)
So Job, like Jesus himself, serves as an example of a faithful son who endured suffering and after a short while was restored.
I'd like to believe it's a generally accepted truth that if you have the knowledge that something really, really bad's happening (by way of Job praying, the topic of this entire thread), the power to do something about it, and have been doing things about it before, and yet refuse because of a wager, YTA.
In such a situation, whether it's God or the world doing the torture is kinda splitting hairs.
“My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”[0]
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/816617-my-point-once-again-...
The evidence is plentiful too: look at how the individual churches have taken Pope Benedict's tolerance of previously taboo individuals (homosexuals, for example). Something else I get to hear about at holiday parties.
