[Dave]

Originally Posted by OBW

And not only our sole channel of reality, it often replaced reality. (Sounds like and Adam Savage line from Mythbusters).

Pray-reading, while ostensibly spiritual and even scriptural, was a practice that too often divorced the words from their context. I so often gripe about the common practice (not even just in the LRC) of reading the Bible as a collection of disconnected fortune cookies arranged in such a way that there is a cover story that really doesn't mean anything. Instead, the meaning is in the context-less fortune cookies. Add pray-reading (the LRC version as described in that little booklet) to the mix and even the words of the verse get disconnected. They cease to be even the context-less sentence that is the fortune cookie. Now the whole thing is a blank. It is wrapped in emotional "spirituality" but has lost its solid meaning. Now the suggestion that it means something other than what the actual construct of words means can be made. And it is so divorced from the context that anything beyond the little fortune cookie will never be considered.

It is almost as if we had the words so thoroughly disjointed that we could put then into a boiling pot, and out would come something new and amazing. Like a golden calf.

I have no problem with praying over and with scripture. But "I. Oh, Lord. I am. oh Lord Jesus. I. Amen. I. I. Amen Amen, Oh Lord Jesus . . ." is too easily a variant on sitting in a yoga position humming "om." Your mind becomes disconnected from rational thoughts. Not always. But it becomes more about our experience of emotions than a meaningful prayer with the scripture as the base.

I know that it is difficult to think that anything can be said negatively about including the words "Lord Jesus" in something. But I honestly think that those can become no more meaningful words than the excited declaration "Jesus Christ" when some heathen gets startled or their toe stepped on. And in this particular case, it too easily becomes part of Lee's system of error. Use truth and a kind of prayer to disconnect the follower from their discernment. Anything that works.

And someone will complain that they have had such wonderful times with God through pray-reading. And I did not say that pray-reading was simply wrong or not Christian. I said that it is easily an emotional distraction from the truth and potentially a way to manipulate the mind by disconnecting more than verses from context, but the words of verses from each other.

Further clarification. Great stuff! I would think that extends to primarily reading Life Studies and the trainings that go on where you lose touch with Christian spiritual reality and live in the WL world reality where it is difficult to extract oneself.