CHURCH LIES ABOUT PRAYER
PRAYER
Prayer is communication with God. We only pray when we are trying to cause a change in the universe or in ourselves or both. Even if we simply tell God we love him we are doing that for we are trying to get him to cause us to love him more. If we didn’t we wouldn’t be loving him. Prayer means trying to cause God to change something, to make something different. But God is all wise and all knowing. He will do the right thing whether asked or not. Prayer then amounts to blasphemy (insulting God) and black magic (you can’t expect to fool God except by magic) and superstition (you are nothing in comparison to God and yet you think you can manipulate him). If prayer does no good then why pray? It would be an iniquitous waste of time. What prayer does is not bring us closer to God but brings us closer to the representatives of God who try to control what we think about God. When we follow the image of God they have painted we follow them in reality.
Church says: We must not think that God refuses to give us blessings until we ask for them. Prayer is basically letting God know that he knows best and his will be done. It is implicitly asking for his blessing and strength to endure the trials that he may send and he will give these whether we ask explicitly for them or not. Prayer is not just talking to God, its more than that. It is uniting your heart and mind with the heart and mind of God. When we say you need to pray to get blessings from God what we mean is not that you have to ask for them but that you become worthy of them so that you will be able to receive them. Even if you don’t use words in prayer but just desire to become like God that is a prayer itself for it is telling God you need his help to become more like him.
The Truth: Prayer then is about moulding and shaping you into the Church's idea of perfection. That's all. For example, the married Catholic should turn away from using artificial contraception to please not God but the Church's understanding of God.
It is the worst kind of hypocrite who claims to be humbly making prayer to God to say save the life of a friend. Prayer doesn't mould you into anything praiseworthy.
#Hypocrisy 1 Asking God to help a friend when you mean, "God do whatever you want", is pretending that you want God to do what he wants. You are trying to manipulate God and lie and use trickery to get what you want.
#Hypocrisy 2 You think that it is you not God that knows best.
#Hypocrisy 3 Praying for the person will comfort them for they like to think somebody is thinking of them. But this is misleading them if your meaning is, "God do whatever you want".
#Hypocrisy 4 You think they should be doing the praying themselves. If prayer is just about doing the word of God and saying, "God do whatever you want" then you are not doing the person any favours by praying for them. They should be praying to get close to God for that is what prayer is all about and nobody else can get close to God for you and pray for you.
#Hypocrisy 5 If John had stayed in London and not moved to Arizona he probably would not have contracted cancer. Doing different things makes your life different. So he didn't pray, pray right or pray enough so he deserves what he got.
#Hypocrisy 6 If you need help and prayer doesn't work then clearly it may be your own fault. Prayer increases human sanctimony.
Church says: An all-good and all-powerful God doesn’t need to be asked for anything. But if you make yourself good and holy as you can and become his friend and express that through prayer you will find that good things from him will come your way. Prayer does not change God’s mind, if we want something from him we have to sanctify ourselves so that he will be able to reward us and give us what we ask. If we ask for something that isn't good for us he will give us something better. No prayer made in the proper spirit is ever unanswered. The only thing that stops us receiving what we ask for is sin. God will not give us much if we sin for then we only want to abuse his goodness, we want good things but not to be good.
The Truth: Saints have experienced years of depression that they call the dark night of the soul and have even showed signs of possession by the Devil. God will do what God wants to do. All the prayer in the world will not stop you becoming depressed if that is what God wants. Doctrines like the above are just bait to manipulate people into the Church.
Church says: Prayer cannot change God who will always do what is best.
The Truth: Then when prayer isn’t doing anything for the person you pray for, the feeling of peace it gives is an illusion.
Church says: Praying for famine victims is noble
The Truth: Donate your wages first and then pray
Church says: Prayer changes people.
The Truth: It does not for the people would change anyway because there are many people who pray who God makes worse when he sends temptations or gives them a nature that invites them to sin inevitably.
Church says: Prayer protects us from temptation. When faced with temptation to sin, prayer fortifies you.
The Truth: Nonsense – when God won’t protect you from temptation and gives Satan the supernatural power to tempt you, he would tempt himself for there is no difference. Also, if prayer protects you against temptation or fortifies you, clearly though temptation is not a sin in itself it is a sin when you didn't do much to avoid it and didn't pray enough.
Church says: Mother Teresa got her strength to do good from prayer
The Truth: Most people who pray do not do as much good as they could for other people so we have no way of knowing if this is true, not everybody reports such strength. And many would take issue with Mother Teresa's goodness. Psychologists would not take such a simplistic view that it was prayer that empowered any good that Mother T did. Prayer must be anti-psychology then!
Church says: Prayer must always be made in a spirit of gratitude to God. Even if we ask for healing for a friend, we must make sure first of all that we are grateful to God so that the prayer is made with gratitude at the back of our minds. Ungratefulness is offensive to God and will stop the prayer from being answered.
The Truth: Though Christians claim to believe God is in control they do not. They don't thank him for killing their babies with cancer. They don't thank him for letting them be abducted as infants and raped left right and centre by sick paedophiles. They don't dance up and down with spiritual delight at how God let Hitler come to power. How then could any of their prayers work? If anybody is answering them, it is not God.
Church says: The best thing you can do for others is to pray for them.
The Truth: This puts the God theory before people for we should be saying the best thing for others is to actually do something for them that you KNOW will have results.
When what is prayed for is seemingly granted, this supposedly bears witness to that Church’s version of the gospel of Jesus. This gospel says that the main commandment is to love God with all our strength and power. Even loving yourself and your neighbour isn't as important. If you don't have the strength to love somebody enough to save their life you have to give the love to God instead. We know we cannot love God as much as the so-called gospel demands. So accordingly, everything we do is a sin. No matter what good we do we are glad that we are not asked to suffer for all eternity to save somebody else at God's command. So we love freedom from pain more than God or other people. We cannot protest that it is not our fault that we cannot love God enough for he must help us for he cannot command the impossible. These answers to prayer and miracles then have taken place to make us more sinful by believing in God not less and cannot be relied upon as the testimony of God to the truth of the gospel or evidence for a really good God.
If religion is right that the miracle of answer to prayer is a sign of God's love, then the following mystery occurs. Why is Johnnie boy cured of paralysis and why is toddler Tanya who is dying of lung cancer overlooked? Obviously religion has to say that God puts himself and his own will first. So they will have to say miracles back up the doctrine that God should be put first by me even if it means me enduring extreme torment forever to help others.
Prayer cannot be done without sin when God is so holy that he can only endure perfection. So it must be Satan who is answering the prayers! "God I want you but not too much," is an insult not a prayer.
Prayer is hypocritical superstition. It fails to help anybody and many are lured into superstition by its promoters. It is inhuman when understood properly.
Conclusion
Prayer is bunkum. And so is any miracle that advocates prayer.