<\/p>\n
During the last few days, Psalm 109:8, a Bible verse in the It was, most likely, intended as a joke.\u00a0 <\/span>But it isn’t really very funny.\u00a0 <\/span>Especially since the next verse reads, Thus, the “Prayer for Obama,” does more than anticipate that Psalm 109 belongs to a special category of the psalms known In his marvelous book, Reflections In \u00a0<\/p>\n Lewis suspects that it may be best to leave such psalms The <\/p>\n Lewis refers to these psalms as horrible, devilish, cruel, According then, to the venerable C.S. Lewis, a “Prayer for <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" During the last few days, Psalm 109:8, a Bible verse in the form of a “prayer for Obama,” has topped the Google trends chart:\u00a0 “May his days be few; may another take his office.”\u00a0 Evidently, a bumper sticker emblazoned with this verse has popped up in various parts of the country.\u00a0 It is a sort…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,307,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christians","category-prayer-and-ritual","category-religion-in-the-public-square"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nform of a “prayer for Obama,” has topped the Google trends chart:\u00a0 <\/span>“May his days be few; may another take
\nhis office.”\u00a0 <\/span>Evidently, a bumper
\nsticker emblazoned with this verse has popped up in various parts of the
\ncountry.\u00a0 <\/span>It is a sort of right-wing Christian equivalent to the old “01.20.09” stickers looking forward
\nto the end of the Bush era.<\/p>\n
\n“May his children be orphans, and his wife a widow.”\u00a0 <\/span>The passage goes on the same way–asking God to pulverize this poor
\nfellow–that he lose all his worldly goods, that his orphans be abandoned, that his
\nfather be remembered as a sinner, and finally, that “his memory be cut off from
\nthe earth.”<\/p>\n
\nhe leaves office; it entreats God to destroy the president.<\/p>\n
\nas “imprecatory” prayers–it is a lament in the form of petition to destroy
\none’s enemies.\u00a0 <\/span>It is the personal
\nprayer of an individual, someone who has been dealt an injustice by another–and
\nusually more powerful–person.\u00a0 <\/span>The
\nwords of Psalm 109 are those of deep agony, the longings of a victim for
\nretribution and justice.\u00a0 <\/span>This
\npsalm is considered one of the most difficult of all the psalms–full of violent
\nimages of vengeance and death.\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span>Many a biblical critic has struggled with its words–and not a
\nfew–including Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant theologians–recommend that
\nit not be used in public worship, much less as a bumper-sticker political
\nslogan.<\/p>\n
\non the Psalms,<\/i> C.S. Lewis observed:<\/p>\n
\nsome of the Psalms the spirit of hatred which strikes us in the face is like
\nthe heat from a furnace mouth.\u00a0 <\/span>In
\nothers the same spirit ceases to be frightful only by becoming (to a modern
\nmind) almost comic in its naivety.\u00a0
\n<\/span>Examples can be found all over the Psalter, but perhaps the worst is in
\n109<\/i> (p. 20).<\/p>\n
\nalone.\u00a0 <\/span>But then he says that we
\nmust face “facts squarely.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nhatred is there–festering, gloating, undisguised–and also we should be wicked
\nif we in any way condoned or approved it, or (worse still) used it to justify
\nsimilar passions in ourselves<\/i> (p. 22).<\/p>\n
\nhateful, and evil.\u00a0 <\/span>He believes
\nthat Psalm 109–and the poetry of its kind in the psalter–should point us back
\nto the evil we carry within and teach us each how to behave with goodness,
\nhumility, and love.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n
\nObama” is really a prayer for ourselves to go beyond “festering, gloating,
\nundisguised” hatred. \u00a0<\/span>“If the
\nDivine does not call to make us better, it will make us very much worse,” he
\nreminded his readers,\u00a0 <\/span>“Of all bad men,
\nreligious bad men are the worst.”<\/p>\n