What do we believe about belief? Is what we believe what we inwardly believe or what we say we believe? By “what we say we believe” do we mean “what we say to others” or do we mean “what we say to ourselves”? What if what we say now is different from what we said yesterday or for many years or for all of our lives? If we say we believe one thing, but inwardly we know we believe something else, is our belief different as belief than if what we say we believe and what we inwardly believe are the same or very close to the same? What if we are wrong? What if we believe our beliefs are what we say our beliefs are, but what we say we believe is absurd and cannot authentically be believed by anyone? Is what we say we believe actually ever the same as what we actually believe? Can it ever actually be said to be the same? Is what we believe ever said in a single saying or set of sayings or is it only ever a life of sayings or a crucial tested saying or is it just in many sayings, the ones last or most recent, or only in the unintended sayings? Is what defines our belief most essentially what we believe can be said about belief, and especially what we believe the relationship of statements or statement regarding belief is to authentic belief? Or is our true and authentic belief not what we or anyone can say we believe but only ever what we actually do? Is our belief that we pray or what we pray? Or neither? Is our belief what we pray when we are seen to pray or admit to praying or what we pray without admitting that we pray? If we pray without admitting to ourselves that we pray can we still be said to pray? Or is the prayer without admission of prayer more a prayed prayer than the prayer prayed knowingly? What if we must believe the prayer prayed without or even against the pray-er’s intention to pray is the truest or most prayerful prayer, the prayer prayed with all our heart and all our mind and all our soul completed in the previously not intended but only after not intended now truly entirely intended prayer-from-authentic-belief? Or is the true prayer therefore the prayer never uttered? If so, then let us not pray.
). Go to our Not sure I find your rendering of history very useful. Not sure that the characterization of prayer you give, not unfamiliar to me, answers the questions, or would more than superficially complicate their construction. But I’ll think about it.
As usual, you miss the point, prayer is about a conversation, a relationship with the lord, now whether you believe or not, is immaterial, but what drove the Churched into public life, was Caesar’s willingless to intervene into what didn’t pertain to him.