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Should one pray imprecatory prayers? Imprecatory prayers are prayers for another’s misfortune.
They’ve been going on for a long time. The Hebrew bible is replete with men asking God to do all sorts of terrible things to others, a lot of people wanted God to smite others. In Psalm 109 alone, there are 31 versus in which King David appeals to Divine justice. In verse 9, for example, David beseeches the Almighty to…”let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.” Talk about smiting!
In modern times it seems to me that as many people say “God damn” someone as as “God bless” someone.
Be honest. After a terrible hurt. After someone has done you so wrong that the anger goes to the very core of your being, haven’t you wished to yourself—or perhaps out loud—that God would do something terrible to that person. I think there are many prayers sent up for Divine justice or retribution or to get even.
The question is occupying much of the religious news these days. The Rev. Wiley S. Drake, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Buena Park, California urged his supporters to focus prayers on leaders of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The organization had asked the Internal Revenue Service to probe the tax exempt status of Drake’s church. Drake had issued a statement on church letterhead endorsing Mike Huckabee for the Republican nomination for President. Tax exempt entities are prohibited by the IRS from campaigning for candidates.
I wonder what God thinks about imprecatory prayers? Does He ignore them? Does He even consider the validity of them? Does He occasional answer them? Or does He make a note about the person who prayed for another’s misfortune?
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Leave it to my writing partner to bring up a kind of prayer that no one ever discusses, (yet one that consumes about half the Old Testament).
Imprecatory (as Teddy so aptly describes it) means praying for the misfortune of others, which leads me to ask, can you even use that word with prayer? Isn’t imprecatory prayer an oxymoran?
My understanding of prayer (and it’s ever evolving) is that prayer is not a wish list. It’s not some “Dear God” plea to an outside force, as if begging Santa to make things turn out the way I’d like.
No. The more I study, the more I accept that the only prayer I can personally count on is the one that says, “Dear God, forget changing them, please change ME.
More specifically, I’ve started to notice that those prayers I utter after hurt or betrayal, are more quickly answered when I ask God to realign me…so that I might find compassion in my own heart to release those who might’ve done me harm, (intentionally or otherwise.)
Some teach that every thought is a prayer, meaning the very notions we hold in mind, contain energy and affect our lives. If this is the case, then the power of prayer is not in its ability to sway God’s mind, but rather in the power to align one’s self with the highest good. The thought of praying “God please punish him,” punishes me. The prayer “God let him suffer for this…” becomes nothing more than my own assurance I’m going to be swimming in a sea of toxic thought as I ponder the suffering.
To Teddy’s question, I don’t think it’s a matter of “Does God hear imprecatory prayers?” The question is, “Where, in us, do such prayers (or thoughts) go when we pray them?”
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