People who love angry prayer.

Θυμοί/thymí, “anger,” is a work of the flesh. Ga 5.19 Period.

I know: For a lot of Christians there is no such period; anger is okay in various circumstances. ’Cause the LORD gets angry, Dt 4.21, 1Ki 11.9, 2Ch 25.15, Ps 60,1, Jr 10.10 and Jesus got angry that one time, Mk 3.5 and if God can get angry, we presume we can indulge our anger.

Forgetting, of course, God is absolutely in control of his emotions. Whereas we suck at it. We get angry, then forget all about loving people, take our revenge, get our satisfaction. We get murdery.

There are a lot of angry people in the world, and as a result there are a lot of angry Christians. And rather than get hold of their anger, fight it, and eliminate it by the time the sun goes down, Ep 4.26 angry Christians wanna embrace that anger, make it part of their character and lifestyle, and justify it as “righteous anger.” Even though there’s nothing at all righteous about how they wanna express their anger. They’re not seeking anyone’s good, nor God’s glory. They just want death and destruction.

So of course they wanna pray angry prayers. Again, they justify it by pointing out angry prayers are in the bible—and they’re right. The imprecatory psalms are a bunch of angry songs and prayers about God smiting David and Israel’s enemies. A lot of prophets prayed some really violent things about their neighbors. So, these angry Christians argue, we oughta be able to do likewise. These angry petitioners wrote Spirit-inspired bible, after all. While angry.

As I said in the angry prayers article, the reason the imprecatory psalms are in the bible is because God wants us to be honest with him. When we’re angry, he wants us to feel entirely free to tell him so, to tell him exactly what we’re feeling, and to hold nothing back. To do otherwise is hypocrisy, and he hates that. The last thing we should get is the idea there are off-topic subjects for God; that he’s too holy to discuss our issues, hangups, sins, problems, anything. So when our family and neighbors, even friends, certainly opponents and rivals, piss us off: Tell God so.

But of course angry Christians don’t really care about sharing themselves with God. Their angry prayers are about indulging the flesh: They wanna rage out, and now they can do it and call it good religion. It’s carnal, it’s harmful… and it’s popular.

Excuses, excuses.

I came across an article by one angry Christian who gave a big ol’ list of all the reasons we should pray imprecatory things against our enemies. Which he made a big point of insisting are God’s enemies, y’know; there’s Satan and its imps, there are antichrists and heretics and liberals, and he wants God to strike ’em all down. By jingo you’d better pray angry things:

• Christians pray the psalms all the time, and how dare we skip the imprecatory psalms? What, are you nullifying scripture or something?
• It’s not just an Old Testament thing either, ’cause Paul cursed people, 1Co 16.22, Ga 1.9 and the saints in Revelation called out for vengeance. Rv 6.10 So if you lean dispensationalist, it should make no difference.
• God is just, and he’s gonna stamp out evil, as the bible says on multiple occasions. So let’s get on board with the bible, and encourage God to stamp ’em out right away!
• In praying for the weak and needy, part of what makes ’em not weak and needy anymore is their oppressors get what’s coming to them. [Not flip ’em, like Jesus did with Paul; not forgive ’em, like he does with us.] So we kinda have to pray for God’s wrath upon those oppressors.
• It’s not really vengefulness, ’cause we’re praying for God to take revenge on our behalf. So that makes everything all good.
• It is being honest about how we feel, after all.

He had way more bullet points than I do, ’cause he got mighty redundant. I like to condense things, so I did. So he had excuse after excuse for why he should be able to pray angry prayers, and why any Christian should be able to pray angry prayers.

And lemme remind you: I don’t have an issue with praying angry prayers. We can pray such prayers. Often we should pray such prayers—’cause we’re angry, and we need God’s help with that!

Likewise we should pray against evil. God’s gonna vanquish evil, and we should totally be in favor of him doing that. The sooner the better.

But ultimately it doesn’t matter how valid the bullet points are, how true the excuses might be. The underlying issue is the motives of an angry Christian. Does he wanna pray an angry prayer to support Jesus and his kingdom, and glorify what God’s doing and going to do? Or does he just wanna rage against his frustrations, and feel self-righteous and justified for doing so?

Does he want to live a carnal lifestyle, and claim it’s really devout Christianity, full of prayer, conforming to God’s will? Does he even believe it’s not really Christianism, wherein he stays the same angry, bitter person he’s always been, but with a veneer of Christian jargon making it seem like something’s changed about him? Where he doesn’t love and forgive his enemies like Jesus taught; he figures his “tough love” is a valid substitute?

It always comes down to motives. What’s inside him? What’s inside us? A person motivated to follow the Holy Spirit wherever he might lead? Or someone who’s still as self-focused and self-pleasing as ever?

Let’s not fool ourselves. We’re certainly not fooling God.

Jesus explains Elijah’s second coming.

Mark 9.9-13, Matthew 17.9-13, Luke 9.36.

In the previous passage, Jesus took his students up a hill, where they saw him transform into a glowing being, and Moses and Elijah appeared to have a chat with him. Various Christians love to interpret this as Jesus showing off his divinity; I prefer the alternative idea that this is a ὅραμα/órama, “vision,” Mt 17.9 of the glory of God’s kingdom, as indicated by Jesus in the verse right before the transfiguration story.

Probably because this vision is so open to utter misinterpretation, Jesus decided to have his kids keep it to themselves for a while, just till the context of his own resurrection helped make it make sense.

Mark 9.9-10 KWL

9As they’re going down the hill,

Jesus commands his students

so no one who saw these visions would describe them

till the Son of Man might rise from the dead.

10The students kept this word to themselves—

though arguing, “What’s ‘to rise from the dead’ mean?”

Matthew 17.9 KWL

As they’re going down the hill,

Jesus commands his students, saying,

“Nobody may speak of the vision

till the Son of Man might rise from the dead.”

Luke 9.36 KWL

As the voice came,

the students find Jesus alone.

They are silent,

and in those days, report nothing they see to anyone.

Obviously they told everybody afterwards, ’cause now the story’s in the synoptic gospels. Though you notice in Mark they were still wondering about this “rise from the dead” business—because in the Pharisee timeline of the End Times, nobody gets resurrected till the very end. This is why Jesus getting resurrected only three days after he died, was completely unexpected.

Because the transfiguration is a vision of the End, naturally the students had the End Times on the brain. Especially since they’d just seen a major End Times figure, the eighth-century BC northern Israeli prophet Elijah of Tishbe. Elijah had been raptured instead of dying, so he went straight to heaven instead of paradise. And Pharisees believed he was coming back from heaven, right before the End, to spark a major revival. ’Cause Malachi said so.

Malachi 4.5-6 NRSVue

5See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. 6He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.

—Well, y’notice if people don’t respond to the revival they’ll be cursed, which is how ancient Christians interpreted when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. But in Jesus’s day, Pharisees figured Elijah would return to warm up the crowd for Messiah. And since Elijah had just appeared to Jesus’s students, part of their terrified excitement was the idea, This is happening! The End has come! The kingdom has arrived! RIGHT NOW!

Only to have the Father order them, “Listen to my Son,” the vision blink out, and Jesus back to normal. It’s not the End yet. Bit of a disappointment.

But since the topic comes up, what is Elijah’s role in the End Times?

The second coming of Elijah.

The followers of John Nelson Darby’s general view of the End Times—whom I call Darbyists—include Elijah in their timeline. They think he’s one of the two prophets in Revelation who show up and prophesy for about 3½ years. An angel described ’em to the apostle John:

Revelation 11.3-12 NRSVue

3“And I will grant my two witnesses authority to prophesy for one thousand two hundred sixty days, wearing sackcloth.”

4These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. 5And if anyone wants to harm them, fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes; anyone who wants to harm them must be killed in this manner. 6They have authority to shut the sky, so that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have authority over the waters to turn them into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire.

7When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the bottomless pit will wage war on them and conquer them and kill them, 8and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that is prophetically called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. 9For three and a half days members of the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb, 10and the inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and celebrate and exchange presents, because these two prophets tormented the inhabitants of the earth.

11But after the three and a half days, the breath of life from God entered the two witnesses, and they stood on their feet, and those who saw them were terrified. 12Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here!” And they went up to heaven in a cloud while their enemies watched them.

Elijah’s known for praying for the rain to stop, and Moses (well, Aaron too) is known for smiting Egypt with lots of plagues, including the water-to-blood plague. So various Christians note the similarity to Moses and Elijah… and some Christians are pretty sure these guys are literally Moses and Elijah, even though Moses is dead. Dt 34.5-7 Not that God can’t resurrect Moses before the End, same as Jesus, but since Revelation says these two prophets get killed, Rv 11.7 it’s likely not Moses. Resurrection appears to be permanent.

So again, prophets who are like Moses and Elijah. Although why these men have to be Old Testament saints, and not present-day Christians, makes no sense to me… and in any case I don’t believe these prophets are meant to represent literal men at all. But that’s a discussion for another time.

Same with Malachi. He wasn’t speaking literally of Elijah’s second coming, as Jesus quickly makes clear. This is a prophet like Elijah, of Elijah’s spirit and power, whom Jesus had already singled out as fulfilling that prophecy.

Matthew 11.14-15 NRSVue

14“…and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. 15Let anyone with ears listen!”

Gabriel had told John’s father Zechariah the same thing, even going so far as to quote Malachi.

Luke 1.17 NRSVue

“With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children Ml 4.6 and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

John the baptist was pretty sure he wasn’t Elijah, and publicly said so. Jn 1.21 But Jesus knows better. So when the students asked him about Elijah, that’s what he told ’em.

Mark 9.11-13 KWL

11The students ask Jesus, saying this:

“Why do the scribes say Elijah must come first?”

12Jesus tells them, “Indeed Elijah’s coming is first;

he restores everything.

How is it written about the Son of Man?—

he might suffer much; he might be despised.

13But I tell you Elijah also came,

and people did to him whatever they wanted,

just as is written of him.”

Matthew 17.10-13 KWL

10The students ask Jesus, saying,

“So why do the scribes say Elijah must come first?”

11In reply Jesus says, “Indeed Elijah comes,

and will restore everything.

12And I tell you Elijah came now,

and people didn’t know him,

but did to him whatever they wanted.

The Son of Man is also about to experience the same things.”

13Then the students understand

Jesus speaks to them of John the baptist.

Of course Darbyists are more attached to their timelines than the bible, so they wanna explain Jesus away by pointing to how he said, “Elijah also came” Mk 9.13 and “Elijah comes [and] Elijah came now,” Mt 17.11-12 and insist Jesus is speaking of multiple comings of Elijah. There’s the first coming in the eighth century; the second coming, i.e. John the baptist; and a third coming during the End Times, in the person of one of the prophets of Revelation 11.

But Malachi’s Elijah prophecy is ultimately fulfilled in John the baptist. It needn’t be fulfilled again. Not in our End Times prophecies, nor elsewhere.

There are always gonna be prophets who do Elijah-like things. Which stands to reason: They’re filled with the same Holy Spirit who empowered both Elijah and John. And some of them, like Elijah and John, are gonna be into long hair and leather. But the Second Coming of Elijah isn’t a literal second coming; it’s John.

And the restoration of everything doesn’t start with the End Times. It started with the birth of John the baptist. It began when John was born, grew up, proclaimed God’s kingdom, and pointed to Jesus. It continued when Jesus started teaching about his kingdom, died to free us from sin so we could enter his kingdom, and left so we could get to work spreading his kingdom. It ends when Jesus returns to reign over it personally.

To listen to some of the End Times watchers, they sound like the restoration of everything doesn’t start till the rapture. So what’re they doing in the meanwhile? Well they might be spreading the kingdom, but not intentionally! They spend far more of their time worrying about it.

Don’t you worry about it. Jesus wins. Meanwhile, seek his kingdom. John the baptist is the sign the last days have begun, and God is making all things new. Join him.

Valentine’s Day acrostics.

Probably the first time I saw one of those John 3.16 Valentine acrostics was back in 2012. It’s where somebody took all the letters in “Valentine,” found ’em within an English translation of the verse, and arranged it so we can “see” John 3.16 is God’s valentine to the world. Like so.
The gospel according to graphic designers. Pinterest

Aww. Now I don’t need syrup for my waffles.

I see internet posters like this all the time. I even make some of ’em. Some of these things are inspiring or clever or well-designed. I also appreciate it when Christians quote the bible properly.

But some designers aren’t so conscientious, and some Christians are mighty gullible. They don’t read their bibles, y’see. They’re not gonna read their bibles, either; they’re never gonna fact-check an internet poster, find out the scripture’s been misquoted, or that the sentiment or inspirational saying actually isn’t biblical. They leave that to killjoys like me.

I don’t have an issue with laying out John 3.16 so it looks like a happy Valentine’s acrostic, but if you’re trying to claim there’s something profound or insightful in layout, of all things, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Any scripture can be rearranged this way. Did it myself.

Unlike John 3.16, it’s even broken up into full clauses. TXAB

Nope, Isaiah 1.2-3 isn’t about love whatsoever. On the contrary: It’s about ancient Israel’s utter lack of love towards God. It’s about depending on cheap grace, figuring big displays of worship will make up for institutional injustice and sin against the needy and powerless. That making a big fuss makes up for taking God for granted.

In other words, it’s kinda perfect for the way most people celebrate Valentine’s Day.

Pretty sure it won’t go viral though. John 3.16 will always get all the love.

Happy St. V’s day. Love one another.

Tracts: How to share Jesus with handouts.

TRACT trækt noun. Short written work in pamphlet form, typically on a religious subject.

By “tract” I mean any booklet, broadside, brochure, card, handout, invitation, flyer, pamphlet, or poster, which introduces the gospel to people. And there’s nothing wrong with using ’em to share Jesus.

Certain Christians object to tracts. Commonly because of the contents of the tracts themselves. I’ve seen plenty which are ridiculous, inaccurate, or even offensive. I certainly don’t wanna hand out those types of tracts; I don’t wanna be associated with foolishness, error, and slander, or make people think Christ Jesus has anything to do with such things. Plenty enough of that in Christendom as it is.

One argument I’ve heard against tracts, is they’re impersonal. These folks claim the way to share Jesus is to make personal connections with fellow human beings, then introduce them to the person of Jesus. But a tract does no such thing. It kinda reduces a living relationship with our awesome Lord… to an advertisement.

These are valid concerns, so I’ll deal with ’em.

Ridiculous tracts.

There are a lot of stupid tracts out there. No, seriously, a lot of them. Certain Christians think that’s the way to get people to read ’em: Be funny, be silly, or be shocking.

But not every tract-writer has a good sense of humor, and the end result is a groan-worthy tract which isn’t funny, or full of stale and overworked jokes, or makes light of all the parts we probably shouldn’t trivialize. Or they try to use wordplay and sarcasm, but they do it in a way where only they seem to get the joke, and everybody else who reads it is simply confused.

And not every tract-writer knows how to make a good-looking tract. They can’t spell, or have poor grammar. They can’t design, so the text is too small or too large, or they put it on top of an image… but it’s nearly the same color, so you can barely read it. They can’t draw, so the images are childish. Or they pulled their images off the internet… and didn’t pay for them, so you can still see the watermark in all the photos. And of course they don’t know how to resize the images, so they’re all stretched and squashed.

Sometimes it’s much worse. Dark Christians love to make tracts, and of course they don’t present the good news; it’s all bad news. It’s all about how we’re dirty sinners, going to hell, and nothing can save us but the sinner’s prayer. It’s not about speaking the truth in love; Ep 4.15 they really don’t have love to give.

Many a dark Christian tract begins by bashing something. Certain sins which offend ’em, Hollywood and the media, politics, other religions, even fellow Christians who worship too differently. While this sort of tract definitely appeals to dark Christians, it’s wholly inappropriate for sharing Jesus. It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to convict people of sin. Jn 16.8 Not ours. He convicts ’em in the right way—in a kind way. Whereas dark Christians don’t do kindness either.

Trendy tracts—cards with a pop star or images from a movie or TV show on the front, and the gospel on the back—become out-of-date awfully fast. (Especially since the tract-makers are usually behind the times anyway.) Unless you evangelize teenagers, or parents of teenagers, the percentage of people who are actually up on the latest trends is quite small. I don’t bother with trendy tracts either.

And let’s not forget the deceptive tracts. There’s a tract I came across which, no foolin’, looks like a folded $100 bill. People grab it because they think it’s money, and surprise!—not only isn’t it, but it rebukes you for desiring something as fleeting as money, when you can have eternal life with Jesus. You do realize there are evil people out there who will try to give these tracts instead of tips, and think they’re being righteous. Don’t encourage such behavior.

Don’t use bad tracts. Pick ’em carefully. I prefer any tract which presents the gospel in a straightforward way. I don’t wanna waste people’s time with provocative tracts—with something which appears to be about one thing, and surprise!—it’s religious material. I’ve seen pagans straight-up flinch at such things, and throw them away in disgust. I don’t want that reaction. I want it nice and obvious, on the cover, what this is—because many people will throw out handouts unread, and if I’ve wasted the cover on a hook instead of the gospel, more fool me.

An impersonal handout?

When someone on the street hands me a flyer, I glance at it. I keep it if it seems interesting, and put it in the trash if it doesn’t. Most of the time that’s exactly what people do with a tract. Most of the tracts you hand out will do nothing. Same as any advertising.

In a Christian-majority country, you’re gonna give a lot of tracts to people who already consider themselves Christian. They’ll throw ’em out because they figure they’re good. The rest of the folks: Most don’t care about religion at all, and don’t care to be converted. A small percentage will actually bother to read your tract. A much smaller percentage might allow themselves to be affected by them.

So lots of folks justify tract-passing for this very reason: If they hand out a thousand tracts, and one person comes to Jesus, it’s worth it. And okay, I can’t disagree with that. One person’s eternal life is worth a billion tracts.

But still: Isn’t there anything we can do to improve these statistics any?

And of course there is: Make it personal. When you stand on the street handing out flyers, engage people. If they’re not trying to rush past you, see if you can stop ’em briefly and say, “Do you have a minute?—can I share something with you?” Then share the tract with them. Read it to them. Or, if you have it memorized, tell them the story as they read the flyer. Give them some actual human contact to associate with your tract. Give ’em an experience they can connect with, rather than just a handout which they may or may not read.

If you find out they’re already Christian, see if you can get ’em to pass the tract forward to someone else. If they’re not interested, then okay they’re not interested; you did your job and shared.

But that’s how you improve a tract’s effectiveness. And improve your effectiveness as an evangelist, for that matter.

Free tract!

If you’re wondering, “What’s an example of a good tract?” here’s one I’ve used quite a lot—and not just ’cause I used to work at the ministry which makes ’em. It’s a pamphlet produced by Barnabas Missions Unlimited called “Our Spiritual Journey Together.”

It’s set up so that you can print it on both sides of a sheet of paper, cut it in half, and fold it. You can download the PDF free, in English or Spanish, put your church’s name on the back, and distribute as many as you like. There are directions on their site on how to present it in greater detail at Barnabas Missions’ website.

Likely you’ve seen other good tracts. Most “Four Spiritual Laws” tracts or “Romans Road” tracts are good; and of course there’s no reason you can’t create your own. In fact, if you have created your own, let me know so I can put it on a resource page.

Angry prayers.

IMPRECATE 'ɪm.prə.keɪt verb. Call down evil upon.

[Imprecation ɪm.prə'keɪ.ʃən noun, imprecatory ɪm'prək.ə.tɔ.ri adjective]

Yep, there’s a whole category of prayer which is all about people letting loose their rage as they pray. Not because they’re angry with God—although sometimes they might be! But commonly they’re furious at other people, at human behavior, or at Satan itself. So they call down God’s wrath, or put curses on people and things, or otherwise condemn ’em.

I started with a definition of the old-timey word Christians use to describe such things: Imprecatory prayer. (Not everyone knows how to pronounce it properly.) It’s a nicer way of saying “angry prayer.”

And lest you think God doesn’t allow, or listen to, angry prayer: Nope, he permits it. Angry prayers are in the bible. There’s a bunch of ’em in Psalms. ’Cause sometimes King David’s enemies would piss him off, so he’d declare God was gonna do all sorts of savage things to ’em. God didn’t necessarily, because God’s under no obligation to answer our prayers like a leprechaun grants wishes; he can easily tell us no, and often will. So any Christian who panics, “Don’t declare such things into the universe!—it might come to pass!” clearly hasn’t read their scriptures.

But yeah, angry prayers are in the bible. Including the New Testament, lest you get the idea it’s solely an Old Testament thing. Paul damned anyone who preaches another gospel than his, Ge 1.8-9 and damned anyone who didn’t love the Lord. 1Co 16.22 Jesus himself damned a fig tree, Mt 21.19 and warned several cities at the rate they were going, they were on the road to hell. Lk 10.13-15

Among those who have read their scriptures, one favorite imprecatory prayer is good ol’ Psalm 109. Many a partisan has joked about how it’s their favorite prayer for certain politicians. “Oh, I pray for the president every day; I pray directly from the scriptures—”

Psalm 109.6-13 KWL

6 Place a wicked person over him, with Satan standing at his right.

7 May those judging him return an evil verdict, and his prayers be offensive.

8 May his days be few, and another ruler supervise him.

9 May his children become fatherless, and his woman a widow.

10 May his children wander, wander, begging, digging through people’s trash.

11 May debt seize everything he owns, and strangers steal his labor.

12 May he never find love; his fatherless children never be given grace.

13 May his generation be the last one, and his family name be wiped out.

And so on. You get the idea. David wrote this because he wanted this guy thoroughly crapped upon, because this enemy and his friends had done likewise to David. David wanted karmic justice—for the evildoer to get what David felt was coming to him.

Now as I said, there are certain Christians who think imprecatory prayers are awful and wrong; that because anger is a work of the flesh, we ought never pray angry. And obviously there are Christians who think otherwise. Generally we’re of three minds:

• All for it. Evildoers need and deserve our condemnation.
• Wholly inappropriate for Christians: We’re ordered to forgive. Mk 11.25 Forgive friends, forgive enemies, forgive everyone, or God won’t bother to forgive our own sins. Mk 11.26 What’re we, of all people, doing calling down curses upon others?
• Only appropriate towards the devil and devilish things, bad behaviors, evil ideas, false thinking, corrupt institutions. We draw the line at fellow human beings. Never ask God to destroy women and men, no matter how bad they get. ’Cause God made them in his image, Jm 3.9 and wants to save everyone, 2Pe 3.9 not destroy ’em. Everybody’s redeemable.

Me, I lean towards the third category. And a fourth: If we’re angry, and we need to calm down and get ahold of ourselves, go ahead and pray while angry—and ask God to help you regain control; to help “gentle” you, as a horse-trainer might say. We need a healthy outlet for anger, and sometimes that outlet is to tell God you’re pissed off. Tell God what you’d really like him to do to all those people who’re frustrating you—and let him take that rage away.

Dark Christians, angry prayers.

In my experience the crowd who’s fondest of imprecatory prayer consists of dark Christians. Of course.

In life, humans get angry. Christians get angry. Yes, even Jesus got angry, Mk 3.5 and no doubt still gets that way. Anger’s a natural emotional reaction when we wanna see things happen a certain way and they don’t. It’s even appropriate when injustice takes place. In itself, anger isn’t necessarily evil. But we certainly use it as an excuse for every kind of evil. And a lifestyle of anger means we’re not following the Holy Spirit, who gives us peace. Angry Christians are fruitless Christians.

Their justification is the prophets prayed such prayers. And the apostles got a little outraged from time to time too. Even Jesus had his “woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” bits in the gospels. Mt 23.13-29 (They don’t realize “woe unto you” means “how sad for you,” not “damnation upon you.” They don’t really care either.) They figure they have a valid precedent for praying likewise.

But here’s the thing: When Jesus condemned cities, he didn’t do it maliciously. He doesn’t wanna destroy anyone! God wants everyone to be saved. 1Ti 2.3-4 Jesus is loving, patient, and kind, and that’s the attitude we have to read into everything he does. Even when he condemns.

We aren’t so loving, patient, and kind. We’re angry, spiteful, and cruel. We bring those attitudes into our prayers, and they’re the wrong ones. God doesn’t care to answer fruitless prayers. If our imprecatory prayers are borne out of anything but the Spirit’s fruit, we really have no business praying them.

Wait, so how do we kindly curse anything?

Really easy: When a loved one is sick, we have all kinds of compassion for the person, right? But none for the ailment. None for the virus. None for the bacteria making ’em puke. We want it out of them and gone. So we can easily condemn the illness: “I rebuke this illness, and demand it come out of you in Jesus’s name.” We never have to lose our heads in doing so.

Now if we can’t do that—if we always lose control of our emotions when we rebuke evil—we’d better hold off on the angry prayers. Maybe for a long time. Ask the Spirit for the self-control we’re clearly missing.

Dark Christians neither understand this, nor care. Like a gun nut who also has no self-control, they just keep indiscriminately firing away—unaware God swapped their ammo for blanks long ago, because he can’t trust them to pray right.

God doesn’t have to agree, y’know.

Now yeah, there’s the crowd who ban angry prayers of all sorts. Not just because Christians should forgive instead of cursing. Ro 12.14 A number of Christians are convinced curses stick; that when we call down evil, we actually have the power to make evil materialize out of thin air. Supposedly one of the ways God made us in his image, was to make us able to create ex nihilo/“out of nothing” like him.

No; God did no such thing. Everything we humans create is made of pre-existing material. Not even our ideas are created from nothing: Most are obviously based on something, and if its influence isn’t obvious to you, it is to the person who last had that idea. We can’t create anything out of thin air, much less evil. Humans need power to fuel our curses, and unless you’re colluding with devils, the power has to come from the Holy Spirit. But if the Spirit has no intention of empowering our angry demands (and he usually doesn’t), nothing’s gonna come of them. We have him under no obligation whatsoever.

Remember Saul of Tarsus? Violent persecutor, enemy of Christ? Ac 8.3, 9.1 Betcha plenty of Christians, at the time, damned Paul to the stinkiest parts of hell for what he was doing to Jesus’s church. Did God agree with any of these vengeful prayers? Absolutely not. Rather than destroy Saul, he flipped him. Jesus appeared to him, commissioned him as his apostle to the gentiles, and made him spend the rest of his life willingly undoing all the evil he originally. Ac 26.14-18 God knows better, and his plans are infinitely better than our curses.

We can curse a person up, down, and sideways, and add “In the name of Christ Jesus” as much as we wish. But if Jesus doesn’t approve, nothing’s gonna happen. Our imprecatory prayers come to nothing… for they don’t actually conform to God’s will. His will be done, remember? Lk 11.2

For there’s no fruit of the Spirit in angry prayer. There’s no love nor compassion; no kindness, forgiveness, grace, nor mercy. Take another look at Psalm 109: Regardless of the horrible things David’s enemy might’ve done to him, what business did David have in wishing horrible things upon his enemy’s children? What kind of twisted prayer demands that God make the innocent suffer? Obviously David’s prayer doesn’t reflect God’s mind at all.

Okay, so what’s it even doing in the bible? Well, it’s not to teach us it’s okay to wish evil upon the innocent. It’s to teach us it’s okay to vent to God. It’s okay to tell God how we honestly feel: We feel like being harsh, unforgiving, unyielding, loveless, and savage. None of this comes as any surprise to God, of course. He knows our hearts. (He’s heard way worse.) And it’s far better we express these sentiments to God, than ever act on them.

Learn from the angry psalms.

Seriously, some of the angry psalms are messed up. Some poet actually sat down, wrote these lines, set it to music, and for the past 25 centuries Christians and Jews have recited and sang these prayers. Sometimes several times a year.

Yes sang. Scottish Presbyterians, because they originally wouldn’t sing anything that didn’t come directly from the bible, translated the psalms and set ’em to music. And sometimes they’d sing this.

Psalm 137.7-9, Scottish metrical psalms

7 Remember Edom’s children, LORD, who in Jerus’lem’s day,

“E’en unto its foundation raze, raze it quite,” did say.

8 Oh daughter thou of Babylon, near to destructión:

Blessed shall be he that thee rewards, as thou to us hast done.

9 Yea, happy surely shall he be thy tender little ones,

Who shall lay hold upon, and them shall dash against the stones.

Pretty sick.

When we’re not frighteningly taking these passages out of context, Christians tend to treat ’em like we’d treat an embarrassing racist grandmother: We pretend she didn’t just say horribly offensive things. We blame it on her being old, out of touch, out of date. We don’t stand up to her. Not even sure we should, ’cause aren’t we supposed to respect our elders?

Same deal with the imprecatory psalms. We tend to skip ’em and pretend they’re not there. Or we admit they’re there… but just in this one case, we’re gonna borrow the Dispensationalist idea which figures they don’t count anymore: They’re from a past era, but God works all different nowadays. Even though we should know better than to nullify parts of the bible, solely because they make us uncomfortable.

Instead we need to take serious looks at these prayers. Understand where the author was coming from: Her homeland was just conquered by a horde of filthy, violent pagans. Her homeland was burnt to the ground. Possibly her kids and husband killed in front of her; possibly she was raped; now she was getting dragged to Babylon to become a slave. And the Edomites, their cousins who were supposed to be allies, supposed to be fellow worshipers of the LORD God: They rejoiced at Jerusalem’s destruction.

Along the way her captors, for sport, ordered her to sing a few Jerusalem worship songs for their entertainment. Ps 137.3 So how would you feel? More than likely, you’d want to compose a really sarcastic song in response—take advantage of their unfamiliarity with Hebrew—just to get back at them a little.

Well, here’s that song. “God, do vile things to the Edomites. Do nauseating things to the Babylonians.” The smashing-kids-on-rocks bit? Betcha the Babylonians had done it to her. And she wanted life for life, Dt 19.21 which seemed only fair.

Should she have forgiven the Babylonians? Well duh; of course she should have. The rage would eat her up inside if she didn’t. But here, we get to see how she, and the other survivors of Jerusalem, really felt. These were the emotions boiling in her, which she didn’t bother to hide from God. It’d be stupid to try.

That’s the point of these psalms. Total honesty with God. He wants this kind of integrity from us: What’s in our minds, oughta be in our prayers. He knows us inside and out, whether we admit this stuff or not. But if we can’t be honest with God, of all people, our relationship with him is simply gonna suck.

If we’re this kind of angry—if we want our enemies to burn in hell forever and ever—let’s just be honest and say so. Let God minister to our anger. Let him help us get beyond it.

Anger vented.

One thing you’re gonna notice in most of the angry psalms: By the end of it, the psalmist finishes by praising God. The anger’s gone. It was dealt with, and done with.

True of us too. Once we confess our anger to God, and put it in his hands, he tends to dissolve it. We give this emotion to God, and he casts it away. We vent, and he purges us.

But if we don’t do this—if we stamp our rage down, and pray only holy-sounding things which don’t truly reflect our state of mind—it damages us in two different ways. I already mentioned how our relationship with God’s gonna suck, ’cause we’re embracing hypocrisy instead of authenticity. But there’s also the fact that when we hold onto our anger it grows, and corrodes us. Turns into other evil things, like revenge, bitterness, joylessness, hatred, prejudice, argumentativeness, and violence.

We’ve all encountered angry Christians. They’re awful, aren’t they? They do such damage to everyone around them, and drive people away from Jesus. Let’s never unthinkingly become one ourselves. Give these emotions to God, and tell him, “God, I’m furious; help me.” Trust him with it. He can take it, and will. Submit to him, and let him free you.