Are people praying wrong or is the bible wrong?

The other day i was getting very fed up with people arguing about the "religious freedom" and the "christian nation" nonsense so I started looking into the bible (something i have not done in many years for various reasons) for what Jesus actually taught not what people have turned it into. What I found left me with more questions than answers (which i feel is fairly typical) but the questions are some that I feel to be important ones.

First I looked at judging others for obvious reasons and that was pretty straight forward, don’t do it. But what I don't get is how people don't follow what Jesus says when they claim to. For example Mathew 6 talks about several topics but the first two are what I think are probably the most used to show that you are a "christian", but Jesus specifically says to do it secretly along with BASICALLY EVERY OTHER ASPECT OF CHRISTIANITY.

From the BIBLE
Matthew 6 New International Version (NIV)
Giving to the Needy

1 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Prayer

5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 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. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

9 “This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.’

14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

So what I get from this, which is DIRECTLY FROM JESUS, keep your relationship with God to yourself and be nice to people. Am I wrong in thinking that everything is being done completely opposite from how "christians" are supposed to do it? Considering these words it seems even the prayers at public events are not following Jesus' teachings. If someone would like to tell me that I am wrong please do, I honestly want to know what is correct.

Most people do things to make themselves look better. The truth is, you are just supposed to help those in real need without getting recognition. You are supposed to just talk to god in your head or pray in private, you do not need to go to church to pray.

You are not reading the bible wrong OP. All you have to do to be saved is to believe and be baptized. Now you can follow along the path of Jesus and do more, but that does not make you any better. You just become a profit and profit's are not supposed to get rich from their being a profit.

The Jews used to forgive a person's debt after seven years if something was left. I don't think they do that anymore.

a reply to: TexasSeabee

In one kind of prayer at public events, the person praying is understood to be acting as spokesman for the whole group in addressing God, in which case it would not count as "self-advertising". For example, that's what's happening in corporate prayer at a church service or meeting.

Incidentally, your last paragraph is in bold because you put a [ b ] at the end of v13. The software understands that as an instruction to bold, which is why it doesn't show on screen.

"Are people praying wrong?".

Firstly I'm sure you mean Christians, not just any people.

Secondly, when ending a prayer with "Amen"; the prayeree (lol) is tributing their prayer to Amen-Ra the much more ancient deity.

Most of Christianity comes from earlier experiences and cultures/belief systems. Christianity is one of the youngest religions, especially out of the big ones.

It rapidly got powerful by killing and burning competition and anything that threatened it's doctrination.

Do Christians know who Amen-Ra is? They sure say his name a lot.. I think Christians pray proper other then tri uting their prayer to something else unrelated

a reply to: DISRAELI

I was more talking about the aspect of public event prayer that they are asking for something specific when the bible says don't ask for anything because God already knows what you need. But I get what your saying.

thanks for the heads up on the bold information.

What the church teaches is totally at odds with what Jesus teaches on many things. "False prophets" are those who babble like the pagans, the preachers on the pulpit telling others how to believe who preach lies in the "synagogues" or churches.

It happens every time, when someone comes and speaks great truths, those in power kill them then completely obfuscate their teachings by promoting the very things they taught against, all under their name.

It's the bait and switch scheme called religion. Religion usurps spirituality all while claiming to be "true" spirituality. It is not spirituality, it is the suppression of it.

a reply to: TexasSeabee

Basically do what you should because you are doing it for its own sake, not to make yourself look good.

So if you feel moved to pray, do so and wherever you happen to be. Don't simply make a big show of prayer because you think everyone around you ought to know how deeply you believe. If you feel moved to donate or do good works, do so, but don't then go around everywhere and tell everyone how much you to gave this, that or the other group ... or how much in tax write-offs you got because of charity.

As for judgment, you need to look deeper into the Bible. We are told over and over that we can make judgments. What we are not to do is to tell people they are going to Hell. No one knows that, and we don't even know that about ourselves. Again, this falls under the topic you are discussing of being self-righteous and holier than thou. We can are absolutely to make judgments about behavior and sin, and we are also to call it out where we see it in ourselves and others. If you look, this is constant theme consistent with "hate the sin." It also jives with the "love the sinner" and "love our neighbors as ourselves" because you strive to help those whom you care for and love. You want them to live a good life.

And judgment is a dicey thing. You have to be careful. Plenty of people here assume that every single person they may see making a huge show of faith is doing so just to show our how faithful they are. Not all are like that, the only person who knows for sure what the intent is ... would be the person making the show. So you can call them self-righteous and holier than thou, but they could be honest. This is where Christ calls out the judgmental.

However, you absolutely can make a call on someone committing adultery with a married person or someone who committed murder in cold blood or raped. Those are all sins that are clearly wrong. A person can be forgiven and given a second chance, but you can definitely look at the act and say, "That was wrong, very wrong."

a reply to: Elementalist

Yes I did mean "christians", I apologize. I would have to say that most probably do not know that little piece of information. I did go back and look at the prayer example Jesus gave and it does not include amen, so it only leads to more questions but seeking answers is how we gain knowledge.

Thank you for your input.

a reply to: ketsuko

i get the point you are getting at with the judgement topic, but Jesus says:

Matthew 7 New International Version (NIV)
Judging Others

7 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

calling someone out for committing murder and calling someone out for cheating on their spouse are not exactly the same thing... granted the murderer is "judged" but they are not "judged" on a level of saying you are a bad person and are going to hell only that they are guilty of committing the crime. The laws of man and God are two separate things. In gods eyes talking back to your parents is just as bad as murder, and in the laws of man those are at two opposite ends of the spectrum. You can be "judged" and convicted of murder but you can still repent of that sin and be good with God but you must still face the punishment of societies laws. So I think the different types of "judging" is the real thing here. As for the cheating spouse, is what they did wrong? yes in my opinion, but should i label them a bad person? no, because that is not my place to, their "sins" are between themselves and God. This conversation could go very deep if we wanted it to.

a reply to: TexasSeabee

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."

This isn't even, necessarily, talking about God's judgement. We see it playing out right now! Christians wanting the right to publicly judge and condemn same sex marriages are stunned by the backlash of people calling them out, itemizing their hypocrisy, i.e. judging them in the same way, by the same measure they use to judge others.

Time to get out of the kitchen!

a reply to: rickymouse

Thanks for the straight forward answer. I just read that the other day and started to question everything about my past and what I thought I knew, which I guess is a good thing to do from time to time.

originally posted by: TexasSeabee
a reply to: ketsuko

i get the point you are getting at with the judgement topic, but Jesus says:

Matthew 7 New International Version (NIV)
Judging Others

7 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

calling someone out for committing murder and calling someone out for cheating on their spouse are not exactly the same thing... granted the murderer is "judged" but they are not "judged" on a level of saying you are a bad person and are going to hell only that they are guilty of committing the crime. The laws of man and God are two separate things. In gods eyes talking back to your parents is just as bad as murder, and in the laws of man those are at two opposite ends of the spectrum. You can be "judged" and convicted of murder but you can still repent of that sin and be good with God but you must still face the punishment of societies laws. So I think the different types of "judging" is the real thing here. As for the cheating spouse, is what they did wrong? yes in my opinion, but should i label them a bad person? no, because that is not my place to, their "sins" are between themselves and God. This conversation could go very deep if we wanted it to.

Ah, but labeling them a bad person isn't what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about telling that person something like, "Look, I know you've been cheating on your wife. You know what that will do to your family when it comes out if you continue? Have you thought about that? What the family of the person you're cheating with?"

That talk isn't condemning the whole person, but it is letting them know what you think of their behavior. That's the kind of judgment we are told over and over to make, both for ourselves and for others. It's a part of hating the sin. We should not abide it and tolerate it, but a person is not their sin. Haven't you read the nearly ubiquitous St. Augustine saying - love the sinner, hate the sin? You can't both love the sinner and hate the sin without seeking to address the sin in both yourself and those around you.

Or another way to explain it is to think of being a parent. We make judgments for and of our children's behaviors all the time and yet we never stop loving them.

a reply to: windword

I would have to completely agree with that, and I am glad it is happening honestly. I'm tired of people using "christianity" to justify hatred and is one of the reasons I have distanced myself from the church for a long time.

a reply to: Elementalist

Secondly, when ending a prayer with "Amen"; the prayeree (lol) is tributing their prayer to Amen-Ra the much more ancient deity.

While Amun does precede Judaism by probably 2,000 years, there is absolutely no evidence to support this claim aside from the fact that in English, written in a Latin alphabet, the word amen ("so be it") is a homograph of a popular spelling of the deity's name (by English speakers using a Latin alphabet).

It's a popular myth but complete BS.

originally posted by: DISRAELI
a reply to: TexasSeabee

In one kind of prayer at public events, the person praying is understood to be acting as spokesman for the whole group in addressing God, in which case it would not count as "self-advertising". For example, that's what's happening in corporate prayer at a church service or meeting.

Incidentally, your last paragraph is in bold because you put a [ b ] at the end of v13. The software understands that as an instruction to bold, which is why it doesn't show on screen.

When I prayed along with the crowd in church, it meant nothing at all to me. It just showed me that others prayed also. Now, there are a lot of people who just pray in church during these things, but that does not show belief in my eyes, it only shows me that they want others to believe they pray and it means something to them.

I knew a lot of people in the past that Jesus would definitely not be proud of and these people went to church every Sunday and that is just about as much as they thought about god or being good to others all week. They went to church to look good and belong to a church. That was it.

a reply to: ketsuko

I see where your coming from, that makes sense to me.

a reply to: windword

What do you mean stunned by it? *snort*

If we're stunned by anything, it's the lack of freedom to follow our conscience in a country founded in part on just that idea and the willful ignorance on display about a law that exists at the Federal level and in at least 27 other states with no similar hue and cry
.

But hardly stunned by it. No one cries like a vengeful gay lobby. We saw that in California and our memories are not short.

This is another display intended to intimidate anyone who might disagree.

a reply to: ketsuko

What do you mean stunned by it?

Indiana GOP Leaders Shocked Their 'Religious Freedom' Law Is Seen As Anti-Gay

Indiana's Republican leaders said they were shocked, confused and completely caught off-guard by the backlash to their new "religious freedom" law, telling reporters Monday that they had not expected criticism calling the measure anti-gay.

I could have told them, apparently, you could have too!

a reply to: TexasSeabee

Are people praying wrong or is the bible wrong?

Yes.

a reply to: TexasSeabee

The Bible isn't as straight forward as you'd think on the judging thing.

To judge or not to judge

Judge Not:
Matthew 7:1

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

Luke 6:37

Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:

Romans 2:1

Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.

Romans 14:10

But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

James 4:12

There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another?

Judge everything and everyone:
Leviticus 19:15

Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty: [but] in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour.

John 7:24

Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.

1 Corinthians 2:15

But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.

1 Corinthians 5:12-13

For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within?

But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.

1 Corinthians 6:2-3

Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?

Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?

To answer your OP question, the bible is definitely wrong.