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From: sher@rochester.UUCP (David Sher)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: what does it mean to talk to God [a brief attempt at an answer]
Message-ID: <7085@rochester.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 7-Mar-85 15:04:08 EST
Article-I.D.: rocheste.7085
Posted: Thu Mar  7 15:04:08 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 10-Mar-85 05:40:53 EST
References: <893@topaz.ARPA>
Reply-To: sher@rochester.UUCP (David Sher)
Organization: U. of Rochester, CS Dept.
Lines: 36
Keywords: Prayer
Summary: 

I found that the article that I excerpt below is a fairly good description 
of the way I think of prayer (aside from direct references to Christ).  
I am a Jew and the author is clearly a Christian.  Undoubtably other
Jews and Christians will disagree with this article.  Never the less
I think it is interesting that at least one Jew and Christian agree on
the fundamental nature of prayer.  Is this the case for the greater
mass of monotheists in general?
-David Sher

>Now on to communication with God...  There are certainly times when God hits
>people over the head, but for most of us, most of the time, communication
>with God occurs in the context of prayer.  When I say that "God showed me
>X", I think I normally mean that I realized X when I was praying.  If you
>want to look at this from the worldly perspective, it could probably be said
>that no information actually arrives from an extraterrestrial source when I
>pray.  I think most insights could be regarded as coming from one of the
>following sources:
>
>  - considering events around me and seeing patterns in them
>  - Scripture, particularly meditating on the life of Christ
>  - the views of other Christians (or non-Christians, for that matter)
>
>However in my view, God is still responsible.  One can see something like
>this even in the case of human teachers.  I have found that it is not always
>possible to teach something just by lecturing about it.  Often you have to
>find some way of pointing to it.  Socrates is well known for trying to bring
>his students to see matters for themselves.  Nevertheless, one would still
>say that a teacher of this sort is communicating.  In my view, God has
>arranged the world, and our lives, to help bring us to certain insights.  He
>has provided Scripture to remove any ambiguity that might otherwise be
>there.  Prayer is when I take time to think about things carefully enough
>that I can see what God is trying to tell me.  (NB: This is not a complete
>description of the role of prayer.  I am completely omitting intercessory
>prayer, and no doubt other types of prayer as well.)

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