A Quite Difficult Prayer

Yesterday's sermon was about aspects of the Bible that are offensive. It helps, from time to time, to say that out loud, or to write it for all to see. Parts of holy writ just don't sit well with me. I won't supply a list of examples here, but I'm sure that if you read holy writ--whether the Christian scriptures or something else--you suffer your own discomfort.

Here's the bit that's irritating me today:

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous."

Jesus of Nazareth said that. And it sounds wonderful and noble and generous, and usually I feel pretty good about these words.

But it occurred to me yesterday that the obvious enemy these days is more atrocious, more persistent, than anything I've heard about before in my life of nearly six decades. ISIS has become the enemy of just about every human on the planet. That's Enemy with a capital E or, perhaps ENEMY. This growing entity is fueled by the worst kind of fundamentalism; it claims to be the most pure form of Islam; its members commit atrocities and call them prayers (the systematic rape of "infidel" girls, for instance).

I am very nearly pacifist, am opposed to military solutions 99 percent of the time. But I have said to my husband recently that it seems the only solution to the ISIS problem is just to kill every last one of them. Yes, I said that. There seems to be no reasoning with such people. This is the type of organization that attracts people who are already imbalanced in some way--many of them are probably pathological to begin with--and there seems to be no rational way to reach them. The whole world is frustrated to the hilt with figuring out how to thwart the evil work of this organization.

Then I read Jesus' words, and I know what I must do, and it really pisses me off. I'm supposed to pray for the people who are involved with ISIS. I'm not obligated to pray for ISIS as an entity. But I must pray for the people within it.

I don't even know where to start with this. Am I a radical enough Christian to pray for the members of ISIS? To ask God to heal their souls and draw them away from their evil? I'd rather pray that God wipe them off the planet. Fortunately, I am not Jesus.

So, who is with me? Shall we actually pray for our enemies? Today? Now?