FireNellieQuick wrote:Matthew 6:5 (New International Version)
"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."
Credit: subaculta
Remember Jackson on the street corner? The guy is a hypocritical douche, and I cant imagine many Xians are proud of him. A truly poor representation of what their faith entails
One of the things that many do (when trying to interpret scripture) is to ignore context which is important when trying to determine it's meaning and in addition many tend to (when they are quoting scripture) to not quote the entire verse. In this case using KIng James which I believe to be the most accurate interpretation (the NIV translation was initially developed using the King James as its baseline) is as follows:
Matthew 6:5 (KJV) 5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
Matthew 6:5 (NIV) 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 men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.
Two translations are pretty close in this instance. However, looking at a bit more contextually (typically you want to look at the verses before and after the one you're quoting to get a better idea of its meaning) in verse 6:
Matthew 6:6 (KJV) 6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
Matthew 6:6 (NIV) 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.
So in terms of what Jesus is saying here, application wise, it doesn't really apply to Mark Jackson here. Jackson said "he will pray for Lacob", he was not praying for him in public which is what I think Jesus is referring to indicating that he will but will most likely be doing that privately, which is something completely different. And as for praying for someone, I think anyone has a right to do that for anyone they want to,
I don't believe there's any laws against it. And how someone can think that praying for someone is not "good will" towards them is beyond me. If they were saying that they were going to curse them or wish they go to hell or have a ton of bricks fall on their head, then I could see someone getting bent out of shape over it. As for telling someone you're going to pray for them (or not), again is something that I don't think anyone should look at negatively.
Just like some of the discussions we've had over stats over the years, context is important when trying to get a correct interpretation of their meanings which gives us the correct knowledge on how the results should be applied.
