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This topic is about the historical legal case, where a high school student wanted to play American football but refused to engaged in the group prayer that the team of not community held every game before and after at midfield.
The question is, does the player have the right, not to pray? And for the solution, one must know, for one, if someone has the right to pray, and if so, must one pray with others, at a certain time and place? The other, more deeply personal question one may ask herself is, can one ever not pray?
For the first question, I am sure to hear many opinions from many differing perspectives, but for the second question, I believe no one aside from Michael would have the Authority to answer properly. For instance, sometimes when I try to pray, “the words just don’t seem to come out right”, and in other cases, I find myself praying even though I wish with all my might that I did not, or would have. The prayer exudes me, spontaneously, and I cannot with my own moral restraint withhold my tears or my desperation. Whether those moments were constituted in prayer or otherwise is not my prerogative to have judged. For after all, I am not the witness of myself.
- So consider the timelines of that boy’s claim, whether it is bolstered or supported wholly, you should notice some type of facsimile. I speculate with the hopes of universality unto this generation, and not to spot him out. I want to know of course what is the ideal perspective of prayer, but with regards to individuality, I cannot say at this point that he or his defendant is either wrong or right, even righteous to posit this case here and now. Perhaps Michael shall descend and speak frankly for all and unequivocally upon this matter.
70:9.13 When rights are old beyond knowledge of origin, they are often called natural rights. But human rights are not really natural; they are entirely social. They are relative and ever changing, being no more than the rules of the game — recognized adjustments of relations governing the ever-changing phenomena of human competition.
What may be regarded as right in one age may not be so regarded in another. The survival of large numbers of defectives and degenerates is not because they have any natural right thus to encumber twentieth-century civilization, but simply because the society of the age, the mores, thus decrees.
Jesus was not a sociologist. He wasn’t an economist or a politician. He had nothing to say about these matters regarding civil society of either his time nor ours. He did councel a wealthy man about what to do with his wealth, but made it clear his council was for that man and that man only. He counseled, “Render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and to God the things which are God’s.”
Jesus’ life was/is about God, not sociology. His life is an inspiration to us – the generations of people of this planet here and elsewhere, even throughout his entire universe past, present and future. Does he not touch you with his inspiration to live a better and consecrated life? It is foolish to attempt to live as he lived in the first Century. He lived a unique life. You and I live unique lives too, but you and I have been around several decades of earth time, whereas he began to organize Nebadon about four hundred billion years ago. 119:0.7
140:8.2 1. Doing the Father’s will. Jesus’ teaching to trust in the overcare of the heavenly Father was not a blind and passive fatalism. He quoted with approval, on this afternoon, an old Hebrew saying: “He who will not work shall not eat.” He pointed to his own experience as sufficient commentary on his teachings. His precepts about trusting the Father must not be adjudged by the social or economic conditions of modern times or any other age. His instruction embraces the ideal principles of living near God in all ages and on all worlds.
140:8.10 Jesus was not, therefore, a political reformer. He did not come to reorganize the world; even if he had done this, it would have been applicable only to that day and generation. Nevertheless, he did show man the best way of living, and no generation is exempt from the labor of discovering how best to adapt Jesus’ life to its own problems. But never make the mistake of identifying Jesus’ teachings with any political or economic theory, with any social or industrial system.
The right not to pray is left to the lawyers, the politicians, the social reformers, and personal choice.
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