Question: Hello everyone, I have a question. I am a Christian and I stumbled upon a website that attacks the Bible by pointing out what they think are contradictions. One of them I found pretty curious about. I know God’s Word is ALWAYS right. I’m just having a hard time breaking the supposed contradiction. Here it is: They quote Matthew 6:5-6 and 1 Timothy 2:8, and then say the 1st one tells Christians not to pray in public, but the second says pray in public. Can you explain this to me please? Thank you very much and may God bless you!
Answer:
I have personally spent quite sometime on that site in the past looking through the author’s claims so I am well acquainted with it. Many of the arguments presented there sound great, until one remembers some of the more basic rules of reading. This is one of those cases. The author is ignoring the context and the audience, and because of that is misapplying the statements.
It should be clear from the rest Scripture that public prayer is not considered a bad thing in general, even Jesus prayed in public on many occasions (i.e. Matthew 15:36, Luke 23:46, John 11:41, and so on). In light of this, we need to look at the one passage that you mention (Matthew 6:5-6) and see if it really is in disagreement with the rest of Scripture.
When we look at this passage we need to keep on mind this is part of a larger sermon that starts back in Matthew 5:1 and does not end until Matthew 7:29. When we look at the entire sermon as a whole we can see that a reoccurring theme in this sermon is motivation, and heart issues. Now that we have the big picture, we can drill in to this section of the sermon, which takes up most of Matthew 6. In this section we see Jesus addressing those he calls hypocrites repeatedly. These specific hypocrites are known by their actions, and by their actions we can see that they love attention. This ties in well with the larger theme of motivation. Now that we have that level, we can drill in to the issue more closely. The text says that these hypocrites do their deeds “before men, to be seen by them.” (Matthew 6:1). That is their motivation for prayer is to gain the praise of men, and not out of their love for God. Jesus then tells his audience “do not be like them,” (Matthew 6:5) and offers them a way to avoid that.
To apply this lesson directly to us, if you are praying like them, that is in public with the desire to gain the favor of men, then stop and go find a closet or other private area and pray there instead. It is the showmanship before man that Jesus is speaking against here, and not prayer in general.
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