WEAPONIZED PRAYER [W, 2-16-22]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

We have started watching “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window.” {Yes, that’s its name.} The woman in that house is emotionally distraught from a close personal loss and acts erratically. She overhears a friend saying unkind things about her and confronts her. They have a set-to and the friend says, “I used to pray for you, but I’m not going to anymore.” It’s an interesting approach to intercession—weaponized prayer.

The reverse of that sort of weaponized prayer was in a Young Sheldon TV show. His super-pious mother has a set-to with a neighbor and says angrily, “I’ll pray for you.” Meemaw, her mother, is embarrassed and says to the neighbor, “She doesn’t mean that.”

You can threaten people either with praying for them or with not praying for them. I can understand why some people dislike the whole idea of intercessory prayer.

I ran afoul of The Intervarsity Christian Fellowship [IVCF] when I was a college student, but I didn’t realize it at first. I knew they were upset about my “liberal” tendencies, such as using “reason” when reading the Bible. “Reason” was always said with a sneer. But when they told me that I was on their prayer list, well, that sounded nice. Who can’t use more prayer?

Except it was kind of embarrassing. One of the methods of “evangelism” by cultic religious groups is to “confront” the mark in public. On campus, that means learning their routes between classes in order to show up and “encourage” them. In my case, this meant calling to me, “We’re praying for you.” I’d be walking along with some guys from my dorm or with a girl from one of my classes, and here would be these people yelling, “We’re praying for you.” My friends would look at me like, “What have you done that you need that much prayer?”

So I went to Loyd Bates, the Methodist campus minister at The Wesley Foundation building. Loyd was always surprised at my naiveite. “Their prayer list,” he informed me, “is their excrement list.” [Not his exact words]

There are folks who weaponize prayer without the side-door tactics of IVCF. They don’t threaten, either to withhold prayer or to put you on the list. They just pray outright for destruction.

Rachel Held Evans told of a woman in her home town in Tennessee who would warble “Amazing Grace” at the Sunday night hymn sing at the McDonald’s there and follow it up with a fervent prayer for the death of President Obama.

Does intercession, either for good or for ill, work? Larry Dossey, MD, the author of Healing Words, says that if we hold, as he does, that positive prayers for people can do them good, then it might be possible that negative prayers for their harm, voodoo prayers, might work, too.

Who knows for sure? Regardless, I’m going to keep praying for you, the same prayer I pray for Donald Trump: “Oh, Lord, may all that he says and does be pleasing in your sight.”

Of course, the problem is, if you really don’t want to do what is pleasing in God’s sight, I guess that a prayer for you to please God IS a reverse prayer, a voodoo prayer, a destruction prayer.

Sam Asamoah came from Ghana to Eastern IL U to do graduate work. He was smart and funny and a great addition to our church. But he got some mysterious disease the doctors could not figure out. I called on him in the hospital and prayed for him.

The next day he was out of the hospital and showed up at my office with a gift for me, a beautiful dashiki, which I still have. “Your prayer cured me,” he said.

I like prayers that are weapons that destroy disease.

John Robert McFarland