Peripheral Vision 09.23.22

Learning how to pray for vengeance.

Image by lbrownstone from Pixabay

Learning How to Pray for Vengeance
In morning prayer, I’ve been using the Psalms regularly, and that means I’ve regularly run across passages like this:

For the Lord takes delight in his people.
He crowns the poor with salvation.
Let the faithful rejoice in their glory,
shout for joy and take their rest.
Let the praise of God be on their lips
and a two-edged sword in their hand,
to deal out vengeance to the nations
and punishment on all the peoples;
to bind their kings in chains
and their nobles in fetters of iron;
to carry out the sentence pre-ordained;
this honor is for all his faithful. (from Psalm 149, The Divine Office)

This goes hand-in-hand with the many Psalms in which the Psalmist prays that God will deal harshly with Israel’s enemies.  The end of this Psalm is the classic example:

O that you would kill the wicked, O God,
and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—
those who speak of you maliciously,
and lift themselves up against you for evil!
Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with perfect hatred;
I count them my enemies.
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
 test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (NRSV)

In the Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican traditions especially, praying the Psalms is part and parcel of the devotional life. So, passages like the above are prayed regularly each month—except when such Psalms are simply excluded, which the Revised Common Lectionary does exclude. This is a troublesome move because it more or less implies there is nothing to be gained by praying such Psalms.

Assuming we don’t take that route and are committed to praying all the Psalms, how are we to understand such Psalms when we join in to pray them?

In his Reflecting on the Psalms, C.S. Lewis emphasizes that the Psalms are, if nothing else, utterly honest prayers, and we are deceiving ourselves if we imagine we don’t desire revenge on our enemies from time to time.  There is no sense in hiding this from God, who knows our hearts better than we do ourselves.  Graciously, God does not answer all our prayers!

In “How to Pray for God’s Vengeance,” Adam Borneman mines the wisdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Bonhoeffer asks us to think and pray in and with Christ:

Can we, then, pray the imprecatory psalms? In so far as we are sinners and express evil thoughts in a prayer of vengeance, we dare not do so. But in so far as Christ is in us, the Christ who took all the vengeance of God upon himself, who met God’s vengeance in our stead, who thus — stricken by the wrath of God — and in no other way could forgive his enemies, who himself suffered the wrath that his enemies might go free — we, too, as member of this Jesus Christ, can pray these psalms, through Jesus Christ, from the heart of Jesus Christ. (from Life Together)

I’d add one more dimension to these two perspectives.

As disciples of Christ, we are to learn to love what God loves and hate what God hates.  This is often cast in terms of loving the sinner but hating the sin. Yes, but there comes a point when the sinner completely identifies with sin and deliberately and finally turns his back on God in willful disobedience. He knowingly becomes an enemy of God and his ways. This, I believe, is one example of the unforgivable sin that Jesus talked about (Mt. 12:32).  

The chief example of this is, of course, Satan and his demon disciples. One prayer in the Catholic tradition, which is said at the end of daily Mass in many churches, goes like this:

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.  May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who wander around the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

We live in a sentimental age when such a prayer seems harsh and unforgiving. Well, Jesus himself said there are sinners who have crossed a line and are unforgivable. If we don’t wish judgment on the enemies of God, then who are we really serving? The God of the Bible or the sentimental God of our imaginations?

Naturally in this life, we cannot tell who has such a hard heart against God. But knowing who deserves divine wrath is not our job. Praying that God will utterly defeat his enemies, whoever they might be, is.  

The Need for Moral Capitalism
Here is an article (“The Corporate Culture War Against America: Corporations need to signal moral virtue, not ‘woke’ virtue”) that explores the moral dimensions of capitalism, arguing that without a moral hedge, capitalism quickly becomes an evil system. It’s a thoughtful analysis that reminds one of a simple truth that is often forgotten in these times: that we are called in society not merely to seek justice but to build a moral framework that makes it easier for people to do good.

Without the abiding moral foundation that religion brings, we are defenseless against the predations and excesses of the market. But with religion in place to anchor it, capitalism offers us its dynamism and its enormous capacity to unleash and channel our skills and creativity for the benefit of ourselves and the larger whole. Capitalism’s “creative destruction,” to say it another way, is inherently entropic and destabilizing, an ongoing economic revolution that always threatens to become a political revolution. To resist the downward pull of its maelstrom, we need a sturdy life-preserver that steadies and uplifts us, that props us up again and again when the waters are rising, the winds are howling, and we are most in danger of going under once and for all.

Grace and peace,

Mark