[Vision2020] the Princess, Part 5 (Imprecatory Prayer)

[Michael Metzler]

One of the kirk apologists anonymously posting under the “Princess”
writes the following defense off Kirk imprecatory rituals of the past
(and perhaps present). The Princess writes:

salvation cannot

be over-emphasized. No Christian has a right to dictate to God that He

should damn anyone. It is enough to know that some people are damned, and
to

fear and tremble. It is enough to know that insofar as we have a living

relationship with God, it is purely because we are the recipients of
grace,

without which we would be every bit as damned as Judas Iscariot. So who
are

we to call on God to damn anyone? 


And I may be wrong but I cannot recall a single place in the Bible where
any

person in a living relationship with God is shown actually praying for
the

damnation of another person.

And this brings me to the part of Keely's statement that is very wrong:
the

notion that imprecatory prayer has anything to do with calling for the

damnation of other people. That is a complete mischaracterization and

misrepresentation of imprecatory prayer. Imprecatory prayer is
defensible;

praying for someone's damnation is not.

Imprecatory prayer is nagging God to stop just sitting there on the

sidelines but to get up and deal with the problems that we face down
here.

It is asking God to come in judgment, but that is not at all the same as

asking God to come and exercise final, eternal damnatory judgment against

someone. The person who prays an imprecatory prayer is well aware that

damnation is a theoretical outcome of God's judgment. 


And that is entirely defensible.

This semantic discussion about “damnation” is sophistry in my view,
obfuscating the clear problems society has with this ritual of violence
in the Kirk; so I don’t wish to wrangle with that (although there is
evidence at the end of the prayer below against even this claim of the
Princess). Please note that Kirk imprecatory prayer is prayed against
people such as Doug Wilson’s local critics. Even the personal prayers of
the barbaric king in the OT were primarily dealing with people seeking to
murder him, or else within the broader context of literal, bloody war.
The Kirk, ironically, has not spent much time praying imprecations
against violent, literally oppressive people, but rather political
opponents that don’t make their community look so good. With that said, I
will leave you with a sample imprecatory prayer that Doug Wilson recently
presented as a model for the millions of conservative Christians we live
in community with here in the United States. Please compare this with the
Princess’ characterization of imprecation; the primary intent is clearly
at the end of the prayer:

If it is not Your sovereign purpose to destroy them through saving grace
[when? Two days? A month? A year? Lord, please love them, but if they
don’t stop bothering me in half a year then whack ‘em! This sense of
temporality would have to be present for the prayer to even mean
anything.], we pray that You would humiliate them and give them shame of
face regardless. We pray that they would fall into the pit they have
purposefully dug for us. We pray that You would turn all their plans and
purposes upside down. Like Haman, we pray that they would be hanged on
the gallows they have built for Your people. 


Father, we pray that You would deal with this situation. If it is Your
good pleasure to deal with it through saving them, then that is what we
would by far prefer, and it is what we ask for. But if it is not Your
good pleasure to save them [After a year? Maybe two if we are lovingly
long-suffering?], . . .

Father, we pray that the angel of the Lord would chase them down. We pray
that You would set for them a dark and slippery place, and that the angel
of the Lord would persecute them there. They have hated us without any
just cause at all, and they have devised all their plots without any good
reason. We ask You therefore to rise up and defend us. Stand in the pass
behind us, and lower Your spear against them. Turn them back from their
wicked attacks. Rout them, we pray. Chase them like chaff in a stiff
wind. We pray that You would string Your bow, sharpen Your sword, make
ready all the instruments of death. Ordain Your arrows to fly against
those who persecute the righteous. Make their mischief to roll back on
their own impudent heads.

. . . Let their table become poisonous to them, let it become a snare.
Let their eyes be darkened, and judicial blindness fall upon them.

We pray that their eyes would be blinded by You; strike them so that they
cannot see. Father, we pray that You would make their loins shake
continuously, that they would be seized with fear and amazement. Pour out
hot indignation all over them; take hold of them tightly in Your wrathful
anger. May their dwellings become empty and desolate—for whenever You
chastise anyone else, they love to pile on as though You were not there.
They persecute the one that You are disciplining, and by their talk they
dismay the one who is suffering under Your hand. Add iniquity to their
iniquity; make a great heap of their sins. Do not let them enter into
Your righteousness. Blot them out of the book of the living. Do not
record their names alongside the names of the righteous.

God of our praise, do not hold Your peace. The mouths of the wicked and
the mouths of the deceitful have joined in chorus together, and they are
speaking against us with lying tongue [sure]. They are surrounding us
with words of hatred, and they fight against us without good reason
[right]. It is because we love You that they are our adversaries
[likely], but we still give ourselves to prayer. Not only have we
incurred their hostility by loving You, but we have also loved them, and
have been treacherously betrayed by them. They returned evil for good,
and hatred for love, ingratitude for kindness [in sum, here’s my enemy
theology for Moscow, Idaho].

Let these wicked men come under the rule and reign of wicked men. Let
Satan be continually at their right hand, accusing them. When they come
into judgment, when the trial comes, we pray that the verdict of guilty
would be rendered. When they cry out to You, let their prayers be
reckoned as sinful. When they pray to You, let the ceiling above them
remain silent. Cut short their days. When they have abused offices within
Your Church, let other faithful men rise up to take their place.

Let their children be orphaned, cut off without a father. Let their wives
be widows, and we pray that their children would be desolate, having to
beg their bread in empty places. We pray that the extortioner would come
back at them, catching them in their plots, and taking all that they
have. May strangers and aliens pillage them and leave them with nothing.
We pray that when this happens, and Your hand is evident, that no one
would show mercy, and that no kindness would be extended to his
fatherless children. Cut off his posterity; may his name and his line
come to nothing. Recall how sinful his father was, and call up again the
sins of his mother. May their sins come before Your throne continually so
that their name may be blotted out, and remembered on the earth no more.

We ask for this because he is merciless. He loved to kick the poor and
downtrodden, and sought to kill the broken-hearted. He loved cursing, and
so give him that cursing. He detested blessing, so let blessing remain
far away from him. He would put on curses like a comfortable coat; let
those curses of his seep into him deeply. Tie those curses around him
permanently. Let this be the clothing of all our enemies.

Let them curse, so long as You bless. When they get up in the morning,
and hear of the blessings You have bestowed on us, let them be greatly
ashamed. Let confusion cover over them completely, as though it were a
mantle. I pray that You stand at our right hand, and that You would
always save us from those who would condemn our souls.

We offer this pray to You in the righteous and holy name of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and amen.


Posted by Douglas Wilson - 11/24/2006 1:04:30 PM | Link to this post |
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