Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
Jesus is not against repetition of the same words, but babbling:
. . it is said in the Recovery, that the purpose of prayer is not to have our needs met by asking God for things, but to be filled with God.
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I was praying with some Chinese LC members at one point, and was listening to the rhythm: Blah blah blah blah BLAH (Ayee- MAYYN!!) Blah blah blah blah BLAAH!! (Ayyee- MAYYN!!) Blah blah blah blah BLAAHH!! (Ayee-MAYYN!) which along with the fore-arm thrusts, produced a kind of hypnotising rhythmic quality.
Now, is this "vain babbling" or "more God"? Typically, the subjectivist LSM LC response is, "If we do it, it's not vain. When others do it, then it's vain." Can we perhaps do better than that?
The other thing I noticed about their prayers, was that I could tell the Alpha males and Beta males from the Gamma and Theta males about how they amen'ed each other. It was pretty clear to me that the call-and-response patterns had some socialization aspects as well. Who was "losing face" to whom. When you are habitually losing face to others you put yourself into submission. Again, why merely assume this is "God" and not fallen human subjugation, reinforced by centuries of culturally-derived patterns?
Now, my own response is subjective, and anecdotal. I'm not presuming objective reality. But it's worth consideration, and some scrutiny. Not just, "When we do it, then it's 'more God'".