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"
