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Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 17, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Petitionary prayer is its own special problem. The above can easily devolve into the Prosperity Gospel and worse abuses. Yet in the Our Father, when the disciples say "Lord, teach us to pray", Jesus puts in the bit about asking for your daily bread.

That has been gone over for centuries about "does this mean real bread as in food, or some kind of spiritual bread of life, or what?" I think there are several meanings that can be taken from it, but I think if we wander too far away into "shucks, I don't need to pray for material stuff" we are missing out and are in danger of turning our faith into purely "spiritual, not religious" feel-goodism and forgetting that we are living in bodies and bodies need material stuff. Maybe sometimes we will be desperate enough to pray for bodily or mental health because we have nowhere else to turn in our neediness.