“ Prayers. Or, No Prayers ”

 I'm a PK (preacher's kid). When I was in high school, my preacher father was regularly invited to give the invocation before home football games using the PA system at the stadium. Of course, I took my share of ribbing from classmates whenever my father was announced to intone the prayer. High School is socially awkward; sometimes, your father offering public prayer can be even more awkward. But I distinctly remember ...a Friday night, home football game, when my father wasn't praying ...someone else's pastor offered the invocation ...during which the pastor prayed for the holiness of our nation, he mentioned Jesus and that we believed in Jesus, and then prayed that the enemy on the other side would fall injured by the wayside and our team would go on to victory.  

I confess. I cannot remember the exact words. But there has never been any doubt in my mind, or the minds of my friends at the time, that prayers were said, invoking God, and the outcome would involve injured players or persons on the other side of the stadium. And I was utterly embarrassed.  

My father, despite everything teenagers are want to say despairingly about their fathers, always prayed well. And through this other's fault, my dad got a huge status upgrade in my mind (and it shouldn't have taken something this awful).  

It was also the first time I realized or recognized my faith being weaponized.  

I can't imagine what it was like for the other football team, the other band, the other students, the other parents--across the field--labeled as enemies and threatened with injury. As I'm writing this, I'm trying to tell myself all the ways it surely didn't happen as I remember--that no one claiming to be a Christian could pray for someone else to fall injured, or surely I mis-heard and the pastor was referring to the devil or demonic forces to be injured instead of players or students from another school.  

I have willingly participated in the rituals of public prayer as a religious leader, myself. I have defended the opportunity to present public prayers on behalf of communities where I have served as a religious leader; but always holding to my belief that I (and others) needed to be responsible for practicing our faith(s) with great care for everyone and without harm to anyone. I've been joined on some occasions by persons of other faith traditions, and not just Christians. But could it be true that this is simply not possible?  

I suppose, since we have demonstrated an inability to do this well, I should be prepared to live in a world where prayers are no longer offered at football games, before NASCAR races, in the city council and school board chambers, and all the other places. Perhaps we deserve to to not have "in God we trust" printed on our money and to have "Jesus is my co-pilot" bumper stickers banned, too--for the common good. ...But I do believe, somehow, our world would be the worse for it.  

And yet, it might just be worth it, to not have one more ya-hoo praying for people to fall injured by the wayside.

I just don't know how people, who claim to know and love Jesus, can ever get the idea, that Jesus is happy when we pray for others to be victimized in some way. I don't know why we believe Jesus is honored, respected, or glorified, by our insistence that our religious privilege should be to disparage anyone, ever. I don't know why, supposed bible-believing people, can ever believe that human beings are anything other than beloved people of God--in whose image we are created. And how we can see ourselves as "better" than others because we claim to have a personal relationship with God?

 

In our eye for an eye world, the suffering is endless.

 

When we believe ourselves to be better than others, the suffering is endless.

 

I believe Jesus is calls true believers out of this suffering, by changing how we see ourselves, by changing how we see God, by changing how we see others.

 

 

Prayers.  Or, no prayers.