Imps of the Imprecatorio, Or When Bad Men Pray For Your Harm

Let's start with a sickening display of hateful Gospel witness before I go further, shall we? The following is an exchange between a Baptist minister and a television host, and I think it'll introduce today's subject just fine, sadly:

Talking to Alan Colmes of Fox News Radio, Pastor Wiley Drake of First
Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, California, asserts that he is praying for Barack Obama's death. The two are discussing prayer.

-----------------------------------------

Colmes: ...you then said, I asked for whom else are you praying in that
fashion and you said President Obama. Are you praying for his death?

Drake: Yes.

Colmes: So you're praying for the death of the President of the United
States?

Drake: Yes.

Colmes: Are you concerned that by saying that you might find yourself
on some secret service call or FBI most wanted list. Do you think it's
appropriate to say something like that or even pray for something like
that?

Drake: I think it's appropriate to pray for the will of God. I'm not
saying anything; what I'm doing is repeating what God is saying. If that
puts me on somebody's list then I'll just have to be on their list.

Colmes: You would like for the President of the United States to die?

Drake: If he does not turn to God and does not turn his life around I am
asking God to enforce imprecatory prayers throughout the Scripture that
would cause him death, that's correct.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8NJPsj5kdU

*************************************************************************************

More readers than you might expect are familiar with the term "imprecatory prayers," because they've been taught by Doug Wilson and his cohorts to pray them. Most people, however, not only don't know what the term means but, when I tell them, will likely not believe me. "Imprecatory" prayers are prayers for the harm of one's enemies. The thesaurus includes "curse" as a synonym for "imprecation," and they truly are scattered through the Old Testament, primarily in the Psalms.

The inclusion of these prayers, not devotions but rants -- cries of heartbreak and pleas for rescue -- doesn't mean they're endorsed by God, and most Bible students who've been taught by trained teachers understand that one of the reasons we don't draw doctrine or practice directly from the Psalms is their use of hyperbole and imagery. We cringe at the thought that men of God prayed like that, but we at least understand two critical points: One, these prayers are DEscriptive, not PREscriptive, like so much of the Bible that seems ugly to us. Two, the New Testament has no examples, not one, of imprecatory prayer, unless you include Peter's rebuke to the sorcerer Simon (Acts 8), in which he condemns him for trying to buy the Holy Spirit's power; yet the desire is only that Simon's money perish, not him.

Further, the believer's model is Christ, not King David, and the reconciliation offered by our Lord's atonement and resurrection is the only Way appropriate for us to walk. I've noted before that Jesus prayed for those who were killing him; David, on the contrary, was well known for his "warlike" spirit. Christians don't get to look back to him or any other Old Testament figure when the example of Jesus is too much. We don't, when we're feeling manly, root around through King David's Psalms to find imprecatory utterances that we can mimic out of a desire to be like him. Sorry, but that option's out for the Christian, although taking a rhetorical whip through a Father Hunger Conference might have precedent. Anyway, the difference between King David's use of imprecatory, and likely hyperbolic, prayer is a point I made during my July 2006 radio debate with Christ Church leader and all-round Reformed poster guy and posturer; you can find links to all 2 1/2 hrs. by googling my name, and I'm happy to send copies to anyone who writes. I won't belabor David's example of imprecatory prayers here.

I don't have to. This week's spewing of vomit from a Baptist "pastor" about his praying for Obama's death, and the continued practice of encouraging imprecatory prayers amongst the Christ Church and Trinity Reformed congregations, brings the issue up close and personal. Has hatred of Obama, hatred that I'm convinced is brought on largely by his name, his color, and his origin, become so entrenched on the Right that we've now got a dearth of angry Evangelical rebuke when a preacher confidently asserts his right -- nay, duty -- to pray for the death of the leader Scripture insists he submit to?

A few months ago, a former Christ Church member, now out of state but not far from the Kirk in his heart, delivered a curse on me and all I put my hand to. That was upsetting. Not because I felt threatened; God has the number of my days and no amount of cursing, imprecatory prayer, evil eye, or fire from Super Gamma Laser Ray Guns will change that. No, what was upsetting was that Wilson's accolytes -- given the content of much of their education and the results of much of their pastoring, I hate to go with "students" here -- pray prayers like this, aloud or not, during worship services. Right here in Moscow, there are people who I believe truly love the Lord, or truly love the idea of being a Christian, who pray for harm to befall those they perceive of as enemies. And there are those who defend a grown man's stated, public, specific desire that God cause harm to me. I'm grateful this man has since apologized, and I absolutely forgive him, but there are many in the Kirk, here and throughout those communities saturated by Kirk teachings, who can't imagine why he ought to -- and who wonder how it's gonna happen to me.

Dear God. Still, cursing a middle-aged housewife with a bad back and a B.A. is of relatively little consequence. Broadcasting one's vocation as a pastor -- remember, the word means "shepherd" -- and calming explaining that the Bible instructs him to pray for the death of his President is of tremendous consequence. I hope the FBI and Secret Service run him through the investigatory wringer, and I hope his church and its denomination (there are more than a hundred Baptist denominations in this country) severs all ties with him. It would be sin not to.

It is wrong for every single Christian who hears this exchange to NOT stop and pray for Obama's protection and the Spirit-conversion and filling of this evil man who wants him dead, and to NOT tell someone, ANYONE (hell, chat up the checker at the deli counter), how grieved you are AS a Christian to hear someone utter such filth, such violence, in the name of your Savior.

And then pray that everywhere the "pastors," the "teachers," the "fellows," and other imps of the Imprecatorio gather, they be consumed by the Righteousness of a Holy God, convicted of their sin, and brought to their downy soft knees to correct the vicious hardness in their hearts.