How the Church Gets in the Way of Godliness

Mat 6:5 And when you pray, you should not be as the hypocrites [are]: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Truly I tell you, They have their reward.
Mat 6:6 But you, when you pray, enter into your closet, and when you have shut your door, pray to you Father who is hidden; and your Father who sees in secret shall reward you openly.

There is a lot of good stuff here, but the most interesting is the phrase, "Father who is hidden." In Greek, this phrase is identical to the more common phrase, "Father who is in heaven." The only difference is that word kruptos, concealed or hidden, replaces ouranos, meaning heaven or the universe. This equating heaven with the hidden in provacative. The faithful believe that much of the universe is hidden while materialists believe that the universe is only what we see. Materialists hold to this view despite the fact that modern physics incrasingly paints a true universe that cannot be directly perceived any more than heaven can be perceived.

Secondly, the perscription against public prayer seems a pretty major departure from Christian practice of public prayer. Personally, I have never been comfortable with public prayer and even am uncomfortable with saying grace in public. To me, it appears too much show and not enough go. As Christ says, God hears us in private. Why are we making a show of it unless we are doing it for social rather than religious purposes?

The truth is that much of modern Christianity is a social organization as much as it is a religious one. There is nothing wrong with this. Social organizations truly based on Christ's teachings cannot be as bad that work against Christianity. However, according to Christ there are inherent flaws with any social organization starting with the fact that they work on imperfect information.

The question that I wonder about the role of the Church in Christianity. The Church sees its role is central in spreading Christian teaching and that view clearly started with St. Paul. However, the Church it does seem that the larger and more powerful the Church is, the more it becomes a distraction standing between the individual and God. This is especially true as church members start acting for social rewards rather than spiritual ones. This is the whole point of this section of Christ's words. Religious leaders might be more faithful to Christ teaching people to read the Gospel and act on Christ's words in their private lives. Instead, too often they teach support of the Church instead of the sincere practice of prayer.

God is hidden. Does this mean that all prayer and all faith should be hidden as well?