Why is it when we talk to God we're said to be praying — but when God talks to us, we're said to be schizophrenic?

Why is it that when we talk to God we’re said to be praying, but when God talks to us we’re schizophrenic?

If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic.

An old joke puts its thus, "when a man speaks to a god its prayer, when a god speaks to a man its schizophrenia"... Many people hear voices without suffering any of the debilitating and dysfunctional effects associated with schizophrenia, some treat these as sources of inspiration of develop religious ideas around them, others become mediums or occultists.

It’s a funny thing, when you talk to God, you’re religious, but when he talks to you, you’re a psychopath.

If you tell people you talk to God, they'll think you're religious, but if you say God talks to you, it's ten to one they'll think you're crazy.

The wish to talk to God is absurd. We cannot talk to one we cannot comprehend — and we cannot comprehend God; we can only believe in Him. The uses of prayer are thus only subjective.

When we pray we speak to God; but when we read, God speaks to us.

Pious people spoke to God, and crazy people imagined that God spoke back.

What is conversation with God?

You’re saying God is all made up, but okay, who cares? People say, “I can’t pray because I feel like I’m talking to myself.” The rabbi would say, “Pray! That’s so good. Go talk to yourself.”

For preaching is a speech to man for his edification and instruction in faith and good life. But prayer is a speech to God, to honour and worship Him, in the acknowledgment of His dominion over, and His bounty and goodness towards all creatures, but mankind especially. And therefore, though a man cannot take too much pains in that which he is to speak from God to man, lest he be proved a false relater; yet of the two, there should be more care had, what prayers he puts up for himself and the whole congregation, unto God; lest he be not only a false worshipper, but also, lest he suddenly and unadvisedly ask that, which may be hurtful unto all.

At this time (when we make our petitions and our supplications to God, and we speak with Him)

He had thought that to pray was to talk; he learned that to pray is not only to keep silent, but to listen. And that is how it is: to pray is not to listen to oneself speak, but is to come to keep silent, and to continue keeping silent, to wait, until the person who prays hears God.