BRUCE writes:

The thread on Hitchens made me reflect on several things – one of them is the matter of what we pray for in public prayers. 

In my Church, there is an unfortunate tendency to use the phrase ‘pray for’ in a non-specific fashion in the guided prayers – and indeed most of these prayers may be directed at anti-Christian groups, including enemy nations. (This is almost certain to happen when the subject matter is drawn from whatever is being covered prominently by the BBC that day – the BBC being one of the most powerful forces for political correctness and all its evils.) We pray for them because they are suffering war, famine, natural disasters etc; but we do not pray for anything specific – such as their conversion, or that they may have courage to endure, or that they may heave a change of heart. Implicitly, we are being asked to pray for their bodily comfort in this world and nothing else. 

The end result is mushy worldliness – the subject of the prayers is drawn from the daily news, the prayers ask (if anything) that bad things be undone in this world, but we ask for nothing to do with the souls of humans suffering bad things. In sum, these prayers likely do more harm than good – by corrupting Christianity with the subjects and values of the mass media. 

Same applies to prayers for Hitch, or other famous recently-dead atheists and anti-Christians – we are praying for them merely because they are in the media and for no other reason. Such prayer is an act of solidarity with media values. These prayers are probably actively harmful, because they lead to spiritual pride (we are invited to admire our own compassion – yet compassion is the most harmfully-exaggerated of modern virtues), but impair discernment (which is the most rare and vital of secondary values for modern Christians).

                                              — Comments —

Art writes:

I agree with Bruce to a large extent. I have always taken the statement “pray for” in the context of the spiritual mercies, not just the corporeal ones. I think Bruce is probably showing the general
interpretation of most Christians today, which is to focus on physical problems and worldly suffering to the exclusion of higher things.

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