It is just over a year since I left my church. I don’t regret it. I left because a week after the appalling events of October 7th, even before the Israelis began to respond my church was already leading ‘prayers for peace’. It was an act of spiritual sloth, a desire for an unearned peace where we could all go back to our comfortable lives. It was also a refusal to recognise evil. As the psalmist said:
Let those who love the Lord hate evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked.
Psalms 97:10 NIV
How can the Lord deliver us from evil when we refuse to see it? How can we claim to be followers of the Lord when we see evil and do not speak out? Dietrich Bonhoeffer faced exactly this problem as he watched the rise of the Nazis. While the German church snoozed comfortably in the conviction that church was church, and state was state, and church must not interfere with the state, Germany and the world slid toward disaster.
Jesus tells us:
“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”
Matthew 10:16
The world is full of evil. We must recognise evil wherever we see it, which means we must understand evil. We must be as shrewd as serpents as Christ said, but we must not allow evil to touch us. Sin crouches at our door. The Devil offers us every worldly advantage if we will just bow down and worship him, but he is a liar. We know evil, but do not partake of it; we are harmless as doves.
This exhortation of Christ’s is worthy of a whole discussion to itself, but I will save that for another time.
Was I wrong not to pray for peace in Gaza on October 15th 2023? I don’t believe so, and yet isn’t that what Christ tells us to do?
You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Matthew 5:43-48 NIV
There is a similar message in Luke 6:27-28, and Mark 12:18-24, a sure sign of the importance of this message.
So, what does it mean to pray for our enemies? Do we pray for them to succeed? Surely not. Should I have joined the others in praying that after committing rape, torture and murder, the Hamas members and their civilian accomplices return to enjoy peace and security until they decide to do it again?
In dealing with evil, we must be wise as serpents.
Let us return to the rise of Adolph Hitler. For many years we were taught that World War 2 came about because of the humiliating conditions imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. Some modern historians however, among the Victor Davis Hanson, believe that World War 2 was simply a continuation of World War 1. The Armistice failed to resolve the war, leaving many Germans believing that they hadn’t been defeated. The Treaty of Versailles left the Germans humiliated and vowing revenge. Hitler played into this climate of wounded pride. Despite Pastor Bonhoeffer’s heroic and ultimately doomed work, I don’t think Hitler could have been stopped by that time. If it had been possible to conduct a poll of Germans in late 1944, when even the most optimistic must have realised the war was lost, I have no doubt most would still have supported the Nazis.
Today Germany is a good world citizen, that wasn’t the case in 1940, nor I believe would it have been the case if a second armistice could have been negotiated in 1944 leaving Hitler in power.
Peace, like everything of value, must be earned. World War 1 was not allowed to run to its natural conclusion, and a short-sighted desire for peace led to a second and much nastier world war. Dietrich Bonhoeffer did his best to stop it, but his efforts, heroic though they were, were too little too late. It took a war and all the attendant suffering to purge Germany of the Nazis and bring peace to the world. In the Old Testament, God exhorts his people to defeat their enemies. In 1 Kings 20, Ahab makes a treaty with the defeated king Ben-Hadad, but that is not what God wanted him to do. He sends a prophet to Ahab with a story of how a prisoner who had been entrusted to him had escaped.
After Ahab pronounces sentence, the prophet reveals himself.
Then the prophet quickly removed the headband from his eyes, and the king of Israel recognized him as one of the prophets. He said to the king, “This is what the Lord says: ‘You have set free a man I had determined should die. Therefore it is your life for his life, your people for his people.’ ” Sullen and angry, the king of Israel went to his palace in Samaria.
1Kings 20: 41-43
Praying for our enemies means praying for what is best for them, not necessarily what they want. I’m sure that in 1918 many people were praying fervently for peace, unfortunately, peace was not what was needed. Germany could only become a good world citizen after suffering a crushing defeat. Egypt is at peace with Israel only because they suffered defeat in battle and learned that Israel is too strong for them. I pray for the people of Gaza, but I do not pray for peace. I pray that God will remove the stain of hate from their hearts and allow them to live at peace with their brothers the Jews — and with us Christians. Perhaps, like the Germans in 1944, they must suffer a crushing defeat at the hands of the Israelis because only then will they come to accept that Gaza, not Israel.
In time, the Palestinians may be allowed back into Israel to work. Perhaps one day they may even have a state of their own, but that cannot be until they have been purged of the hate that rules their lives, and they have demonstrated that they can be trusted. As so often happens in life, I suspect that the Palestinians will never have their own state until they abandon hope of getting one. God will give them their state, but in his time, not theirs.
The same thing is true in your own life. If someone wrongs you, pray for them. If someone has stolen money from you, pray for them to overcome whatever drove them to it, but that does not mean you are obliged to give them more money. In the Lord’s Prayer we say, “do not lead us into temptation”. Pray that the Lord will remove temptation from our enemies, but why should we undo his work by leading our enemies into temptation? The Lord’s prayer says, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”. If you have escaped a bad relationship, remember that perhaps you too were not an ideal partner. Forgive them their sins against you and pray that they find someone who can be the partner you weren’t.
Our Father in Heaven loves us all, and like any loving father gives us what we need. We may want a pat on the head, but often what we need is a swift clip around the ear or a kick in the backside. God has given me my share of clips and kicks as well as pats and caresses. It may be that your enemy needs to suffer as the Germans suffered in the 1940s, but that is for God to decide, not you. Pray to Him and trust Him to dispense justice when justice is needed and mercy when mercy is warranted.
Pray for your enemies, but in doing so be wise as a serpent. Understand who they are and what makes them the way they are. Pray in love, and in love pray that they receive whatever is best for them. Leave the rest to God
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