Quebec Floats Ban On Public Prayer | Here's Why Bibles Are Next
- Tanner Hnidey
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
Quebec is on the verge of banning public prayer.* If their campaign is successful, it will not be long before they start banning Bibles.
After all, prayer is the simple act of speaking. I grant that it’s a supernaturally special sort of speech insofar as it’s speaking to the Creator of the Universe, but it is the act of speaking nevertheless.
It is not, as some might say, a sort of abstract interaction with the Divine. Neither is it a spiritual state of gratitude, or a mystical connection with nature. You cannot call those things “prayer” any more than you can call two strangers sitting across from each other at the mall a “conversation.” Prayer is only prayer if it is man speaking to God, and a conversation is only a conversation if both gentlemen are talking to each other.
That is precisely the point. When two men talk, it is to engage in dialogue. One man speaks, the other man listens and responds. It is an instinctive, natural, spontaneous, process. The moment one man starts talking, the other man listens, and once he is finished listening, he happily submits a reply.
The same is true with our conversations with Christ. Between ourselves and the Lord Jesus, one man speaks, the other man listens and responds. One man says something, the other waits for a reply and counters with his own.
Now it is very easy to understand how we speak to Christ. We speak to Him as we speak to anyone else – with our words. This is the action we call prayer, and this is the action that the Quebec government is trying to outlaw in public.
But initially, it is not so easy to see how Christ speaks to us. We do not hear an audible voice from the sky. We do not hear him talk to us over the phone. But Christ does speak, and here’s how:
He speaks to us through His Scripture. It is not accurate to say Christ does not speak; it is accurate to say Christ has spoken. He has spoken to us and His words are not recorded in epics like Principia Mathematica or in The Odessey, but in the Bible.
For this reason, the Bible is no ordinary book. It is a living and active truth that answers our every question and solves our every problem. It is nothing less than the very word of God, “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16).
Here is what we mean to say. Prayer is the act of speaking to God and reading Scripture is the act of God speaking to us. When combined, prayer and Scripture constitute a conversation between oneself and the omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, God. In a sense, you cannot have one without the other. The more we talk to God, the more we want to see what He says, and the more we see what He says, the more we want to talk to Him.
By banning public (what is meant by “public” anyway?) prayer, Quebec is effectively telling their people “You cannot talk to God in public,” but it takes two to tango.
When you tell Jane, “I don’t want you talking to Jones” you also imply that Jones cannot talk to Jane. What you really mean by “Don’t talk to Jones” is “Don’t have any contact with Jones whatsoever.”
Likewise, if I tell Jones “Don’t talk to Jane,” I don’t mean that Jane can talk to Jones as much as she wants, just as long as Jones doesn’t talk to her back. I mean that neither of them are to talk to each other. Jones is not to talk with Jane, and Jane is not to talk with Jones.
So too with Quebec’s law. Whether they know it or not, when lawmakers say, “You cannot talk to God in public,” they are effectively saying “You cannot have any visible contact with God.” When they say “You cannot speak to the Lord,” they are simultaneously saying “You cannot let the Lord speak to you.”
And there is really only one way to police that request (which will soon become a command). Just as Quebec wants to ban man’s ability to speak to God, they will try and ban God’s ability to speak to man. Just as they are trying to ban prayers in public; they will soon try and ban Bibles in public.
Then they will send their religious police into the home.
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