Christian Living

“A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.”—William Shedd

Yesterday my youngest son turned 3.

Our Peter has lived these last three years the same way he came into the world—bold, loud, and larger than life. He’s the family clown willing to do anything for a laugh. He refuses to let his age or size leave him out of what the rest of us are doing. And at three, he already knows two-column addition…as long as the answer is always “69”.

Peter: Mommy, let’s do numbers.
Mommy: Okay, Peter, what is 5+64?
Peter: 69!
Mommy: Good! What is 33+36?
Peter: 69!
Mommy: What is 27+42?
Peter: 69!

I have to admit, it’s pretty rewarding for everyone involved.

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By Karis Carlson. Posted with permission from Baptist Bulletin May/June 2012. All rights reserved.

In April, the First Lady hosted the 134th Annual Easter Egg Roll, one of the oldest and most unusual presidential traditions. Over 30,000 people flocked to the White House to roll eggs down the south lawn, watch a cooking demonstration, listen to celebrities read children’s stories, take a basketball lesson, and…do yoga.

Michelle Obama introduced the Yoga Garden to the Easter festivities last year as part of her “Let’s Move” initiative to combat childhood obesity. Yoga has become one of the most popular forms of exercise today. Not surprising, considering yoga already was a fitness phenomenon without the presidential seal of approval. As Stephanie Syman writes in The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America, “There certainly was no better proof that Americans had assimilated this spiritual discipline. We had turned a technique for God realization…into a singular thing: a way to stay healthy and relaxed.”

Stephanie has succinctly summed up the entire argument of yoga for believers. Should believers condemn yoga for its pagan origin, or embrace it for its modern benefits? The Christian community is closely divided over this issue, and both sides are passionate about their viewpoints. So who is right?

Jesus wanted to teach His disciples how to pray, but He also wanted to teach them how not to pray. In the Sermon on the Mount, He told them that they should not pray like the hypocrites (Matt. 6:5-6). For Jesus’ followers, prayer should never be offered in order to impress the people who might overhear it.

He also taught that His disciples should not pray like idolaters (Matt. 6:7-8). According to Jesus, idolaters pray in empty repetitions, believing that their verbosity will gain a hearing from their deities. The true and living God, however, is never impressed by pointless reiteration.

By forbidding empty repetition, Jesus was not forbidding all repetitions. Not every repetition is necessarily empty. Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain how certain biblical prayers could have been honoring to God.

Perhaps the best illustration is Psalm 136, in which every verse ends with the refrain, “for His mercy endureth for ever.” This phrase is repeated twenty-six times in the space of a short psalm. That certainly counts as repetition.

It is not, however, empty repetition. God’s mercy (His cheesed or covenant faithfulness) is the point of the psalm. The psalm is composed of couplets, each of which begins with some fresh focus upon or description of God’s cheesed. The result is that each repetition of the refrain reflects a slightly expanded or re-aligned understanding of divine mercy. In other words, the refrain means something slightly different each time it occurs. A congregation that prays this psalm thoughtfully is never simply repeating itself, because the refrain takes on fresh meaning with each new iteration.

No one in the Bible was more interested in prayer than Jesus. Prayer was a natural and regular part of His life. He could speak to His Father spontaneously and almost conversationally. He could also devote long periods to planned prayer. Not surprisingly, prayer was one of the important matters in which He instructed His disciples.

A substantial portion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6:5-15) focuses on prayer. It occurs in the middle of a discussion of spiritual exercises, which is part of a larger discussion of idolatry, which in turn is part of a larger discussion of the meaning of God’s law. The positive side of Jesus’ instruction takes the form of the Lord’s Prayer, which is designed to provide a template for His followers to employ in their prayer lives. Immediately before the Lord’s Prayer, however, Jesus offers words of negative instruction. Before He teaches His disciples how they should pray, He describes two ways in which they should not.

First, Jesus tells His disciples not to pray like the hypocrites. This warning follows the pattern of Jesus’ instruction about giving and fasting. All of these spiritual exercises can be performed hypocritically.

How does one pray, give, or fast like a hypocrite? According to Jesus, spiritual exercises become hypocritical when they are performed in order to impress people—as the King James Version puts it, to “be seen of men” (Matt. 6:1, 5, 16). The reason is simple.

No one can serve two masters (Matt. 6:24). One must choose between God and money. In the same way, one must choose between God and human praise. When money and praise are pursued as ends, they become idols. Spiritual exercises performed in the pursuit of idols are idolatrous.