Psalms 17-20

[wolfpurplemoon]

Psalm 17: Someone who is trying to impress the Lord with how rigteous he is
Psalm 18: A celebration of God-inspired war and the rigteous smiting of enemies
Psalm 19: This one tells us that the laws of God are perfect and right, so a passage in the bible confirms that other passages in the bible are true, can't fault that circular thinking!
Psalm 20: Some people praising the Lord who trust in him rather than their chariots or horses.

Sorry for the three posts today everyone, I was away for a couple of days and am now caught back up with my reading plan!

Comments

[wolfpurplemoon]

It's not just those prayers, our national anthem is practically a prayer for the Queen as well! I love that someone tested if the praying worked in 1872, shame it didn't have any effect on the use of prayer in this country.

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were in the UK.

Both my wife and I are premier-league Anglophiles. I lived in Kempston, Beds. back in the mid-seventies. It was there that I converted to Anglicanism.

Actually, you might consider yourself fortunate in having a state religion. If you consider religion as living organism (something I touched on in my sermonette today - http://bill-sheehan.livejournal.com/138973.html), competition strengthens it. Here in the States, our vaunted separation of church and state has yielded thousands of denominations and sects, each more virulent than the last. The C of E, like the monarchy itself, is an anachronism. There are certain rituals (birth, marriage, death, the Queen's Christmas message), but it's otherwise irrelevant.

[wolfpurplemoon]

Oh yes, it definitely dampens religion to make it state sanctioned.

I hardly know anyone who came through school with the state mandated religious assemblies and religious education on the curriculum that actually holds any sort of serious belief in it all.

You are right about the irrelevance of the church in this country, and in fact we are most likely to mock seriously held religious beliefs in our public figures.

I'll pop over and read your post!