POL - Praying Out Loud

A friend of mine directed my attention to a person on Facebook, an avowed atheist, who posted the following picture:

Expect to see this around the Internet by Tebow's detractors and snarky atheists.  The Biblical passage referenced goes as follows:

When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. ⁶ But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

See?  Ha ha, that Tebow - by his own religion he's a fraud, ha ha . . .

I never understood why atheists - not all, but the more but the vocal ones, it seems - call the Bible nonsense and then like to quote it to support their arguments.  Nonetheless, let me say this about using this passage and Tim Tebow's public  acknowledgment of his Christian faith (and this, by the way, is what I posted as  acomment on Facebook to the original post).

If one gave Matthew 6 a cursory reading, one might conclude that Jesus wants us only to pray, locked way in our rooms.  That would, seemingly, contradict Matthew 18:20, where he says, “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”  In order to come “together in [his] name,” there must be some acknowledgement among the group that they are his followers, i.e., prayer. 

But note that Jesus does not say, “do not pray in public, else you will be a hypocrite.”  There is a difference between that and “Do not pray as the hypocrites do.”  He is admonishing the prayer of hypocrites that is not sincere, and a demonstration of that is  that they “love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.  “That they may be seen of men” – there is the qualifier in this passage.  There may well be someone standing next to them engaged in public prayer who is praying with sincerity of heart – that they are in public, or “where two or three come together in my name,” does not make their prayer vainglorious. 

So here we see a young man seemingly bent in silent prayer.  Is his prayer sincere?  I don’t know and neither do you or anyone else (in my world of courtrooms, to say otherwise would raise the evidentiary objection of speculation).Thus it cannot be concluded that his prayer is sincere nor done with a hypocrite’s heart – but to make a conclusion of a latter maligns Tim Tebow’s character without foundation and demonstrates possible malice, a trait unbecoming to atheist and believer alike.

Selah!