Our local paper carried a story this week about local religious leaders organizing prayer and fasting days from now till Good Friday. They’re being careful to not pitch it as an anti-war effort. “Prayer and fasting are spiritual disciplines that have been with the Christian church since the early times. In times of a national crisis, it’s appropriate to offer those disciplines to be in touch with God and to invite God’s wisdom to the nation and to the individual.” But I imagine that most people who attend will be praying the type of prayer in which they ask God to not let the impending war with Iraq happen. Some will pray to try to affect President Bush’s behavior. Others, Saddam Hussein.
I watched the first half of the movie Gettysburg (based on the novel Killer Angels) this week with a couple of friends — part of our year-long war movie series. The prequel, Gods and Generals, is due out soon.) Several scenes had combatants, especially Robert E. Lee, not only invoking God’s help in winning the battle but in guiding their decisions on how to go about it. Once a decision had been made, it became “God’s will.”
Last week President Bush evidently said at the National Prayer Breakfast: “I believe in prayer. I pray. I pray for strength, I pray for guidance, I pray for forgiveness. And I pray to offer my thanks for a kind and generous Almighty God. In this hour of our country’s history, we stand in the need of prayer. We pray for the families that have known recent loss. We pray for the men and women who serve around the world to defend our freedom. We pray for their families. We pray for wisdom to know and do what is right. And we pray for God’s peace in the affairs of men. May God bless you all.”
Not a bad prayer, really. But it’s pretty clear that if Bush decides to attack Iraq, he, like General Lee, will believe it’s God’s will. And millions of others will believe that he’s gone against God’s will.
The tendency is to admire these men for their faith as they struggle to deal with extremely grave circumstances. But it some ways, it’s ridiculous — not all that different than the prayers for victory offered by opposing football teams. We already have the Presidential Prayer Team racking up the prayers on the sidelines. The Iraqis better get their act together to match this impressive showing because surely God is up there somewhere, observing all this, hands on the war levers, waiting to be influenced, not quite sure what to do.
If war happens, we’ll start praying for the safety of our troops and the Iraqis will start praying for the safety of theirs. We’ll pray to win, and they’ll pray to win. Few will be so honest as the aged stranger in Mark Twain’s War Prayer: “O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells…”
My prayer? Oh Lord, please help us humans learn to quit with these stupid prayers.