www.skeptical-christian.net/babinski-latest/july2003/capitol-hill-prayer.htm
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Imprecatory Prayer Still Lives on Capitol Hill!
by Edward T. Babinski
(Originally written in 2000)
I'm not exactly sure what "disturbs" people about the discussion of "hate"
in the Bible. If you want to find verses about love you can find those too.
But any student of the Bible should also realize how Luther and Calvin, for
instance, dealt with the verses on love. They agreed that to love one's
neighbor was fine, so long as God and His word weren't concerned, but if
one's neighbor was blaspheming God or denigrating "the Word," then Luther
and Calvin wouldn't give such a person even a glass of water if they were
about to die of dehydration (Luther put it in those literal terms himself,
see my quotations in chapter two of Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former
Fundamentalists avail. at www.amazon.com because by helping a blasphemer
they would be helping to tear down God and the Bible, and "the Bible says we
must serve God rather than man." I'm not saying that's the one and only
possible interpretation of how Christians should act, but Luther and Calvin
cited verses from BOTH testaments that certainly COULD be interpreteted that
way, and since they held a very DEGNIGRATING idea of the power and sway of
"original sin" on mankind, they believed that most of mankind was doomed
anyway, while the rest required DISCIPLINE of a strict CHRISTIAN sort to try
and keep them away from "sin." Today, people have a less denigrating idea of
original sin and just nonchalantly sum up the doctrine as "well, we're all
sinners, ha." So natually, they don't go about stressing the need to "hate
those whom the Lord hates, with perfect hatred," and they don't stress that
they need to "serve God rather than man," and hold hard line views on
disciplining their children and society.
IN SHORT, the ATTITUDES of people toward original sin and toward each other
have changed since Luther and Calvin's day, and hence the BIBLICAL
INTERPRETATION changed as well. And that makes one realize how dependent
biblical interpretations are on the cultures and attitudes of the people
doing the interpreting. The same could be said of the question of
interpretation of the pro-slavery passages in the Old and New testaments,
and how the times changed, and THEN the interpretation changed.
Anyway, here's some more recent news concerning "imprecatory prayer," it's
not restricted to three essays by home schooled children on the web.
In 1994 the Capitol Hill Prayer Alert, a Washington D.C.-based prayer group,
produced a list of twenty-five Democratic incumbents, and urged prayer
partners to petition God to bring evil upon the people on that list. "Don't
hesitate to pray imprecatory Psalms over them," wrote one of the group's
founders, Harry Valentine, in the group's newsletter. Imprecatory means to
"call down evil upon." Such Psalms include: "Let his days be few; and let
another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a
widow." (Ps. 109:8,9) "Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick
into Sheol." (Ps. 55:15)
"The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance: he shall wash his
own feet in the blood of the wicked." (Ps. 58:10) (How is this different
from sticking pins in voodoo dolls, or whipping up a witch's brew and
mumbling curses? I guess it's all right for Christians to "curse" people so
long as they use a "Biblically sound" method. - Skip)
- Skipp Porteous, "Election '94 Observations," Free Inquiry, Winter 1994/95
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