At times like this, we hear that phrase get tossed around a lot. Especially
after a mass shooting, as at the grocery store in Buffalo or, as I write this,
today at an elementary school in Texas. We hear that phrase tossed about after some
disaster or mass casualty incident, whether caused by nature or a person
dressed in body armor and carrying a gun.
And we’ve heard many people rage in frustration that all our
leaders seem to be able to offer are “thoughts and prayers” but no real
solutions. I have heard many people rightly dismiss that phrase as nothing more
than an empty, distracting platitude. Once, after another mass shooting, a
popular New York daily newspaper shouted in a three-inch front-page headline “Thoughts
and Prayers Aren’t Working!”
The popular mind has a point. It’s not just annoying. The
misuse of “thoughts and prayers” does real harm to both thought and
prayer... not to mention lots of ordinary people in times of real pain and real need.
For one thing, when confronted with traumatic news,
especially when it is repeated over and over again, from every possible angle
on the news, and when it intrudes on us from every which way, the last thing we
want to do is think about it! Which is why, in moments like this, when we say
“you are in my thoughts,” we are sometimes not telling the whole truth.
Because the truth is that we want to keep the trauma as far
away from us as possible in any way we can. So, in order not to feel
overwhelmed by all the news, we put the shooter, all his victims, and how they
died or were injured in mental and emotional box, as far from our thoughts as
possible. It’s easier when we are far away from the event, or when it has not
touched us or someone we care about. On some level, we all know trauma when we
see it; and so, if we can, we reach over and change the channel, if not the
“off” switch.
Don’t feel guilty about that. From our safe distance, we can
turn it off. The actual victims and their loved ones would dearly love to but
cannot!
As for prayers, the truth is that most of us say it, but few
of us do it. Which is not to say that we shouldn’t, it just that it does
neither us, nor the victims, nor their loved ones, nor, for that matter,
prayer, any earthly (or heavenly) good to reduce prayer to “good wishes” or the
well-meaning platitude.
Certainly, we want to wish the victims and their loved ones
well. Right now, my heart is breaking for the parents of the children murdered
today! We certainly want God to embrace, comfort, and strengthen the injured
and bereaved. We grieve the dead and want them to be cared for with dignity;
and, as people of faith, we want them to be embraced by God.
 |
| H/T Bishop Doug Sparks, Northern Indiana |
And if our “thoughts and prayers” are not urging us to act
not only more mercifully, but more firmly towards the end of violence, the
curtailment of easy public access to weapons of mass-murder, then our “thoughts
and prayers” will do us no earthly good.
Our “thoughts and prayers” requires discipline and work if
they are to do any earthly or spiritual good. They must be formed in the
context of a community that takes faith seriously, and which—even on a secular
level—takes seriously the hard work of ethics, accountability, and
relationship.
Without that kind of community, then our “thoughts and
prayers” can become the occasion for evil. Even the Buffalo and Texas gunmen had,
as far as we can tell, their own thoughts and prayers… but they were apparently
tuned for evil. Their thoughts and prayers turned on paranoid fantasies and
were fed on angry diatribes.
A few years back, after the mass shooting by a self-styled
sniper at a concert in Las Vegas, Nevada, an Anglican bishop, now retired and
living in Wales, named Anthony Clavier, noted
“People are trying to diagnose what
was wrong with the Las Vegas killer. His brother says he had no religious or
political opinions. His life centered on beating the odds at the casino and
amassing money, property and weapons. There seems to have been no altruistic
impulse motivating his life. In Christian terms he was open to evil, and had no
built-in responses to counter its malevolence.
“This horrific event should remind
us all that the discipline of daily prayer for the world, the church, the poor,
the suffering, our friends and families, and lastly ourselves, in that order,
is vital if we are to be protected from evil in all its seductive and
self-serving reality.”
If we do not want to feel helpless in the face of that kind
of evil; if we do not want to return that kind of evil when it falls upon us;
then we need to turn our thoughts and prayers into more than a distancing
mechanism. Thoughts and prayers are more than a comfy cocoon. Our thoughts and
our prayers must rise above kindly meant platitudes.
In undertaking the discipline of prayer, we will find ourselves motivated to action.
Our prayer must cause us to stand up to evil, to no longer
accept platitudes, and confront our natural, human (and fallen) impulse to
return evil for evil. We must name and confront those who would exploit our
fears for profit and turn our hapless “thoughts and prayers” into a market for
more and bigger firearms—the sales of which always spike after a mass shooting
such as Buffalo or Uvalde, Texas.
We must resist the temptation to turn “thoughts and prayers”
into an excuse to isolate ourselves from the world and from those who are
different from us or who frighten us. Instead of giving in to our fears, our
thoughts and prayers should open us to the power of God to confront and name
evil, care for the victims of evil, and call upon our society to turn from
platitudes to meaningful action.
Our thoughts and prayers must lead us to act for peace and justice.
Our thoughts and prayers must move us to demand an end to
violence and an end to the propagation of the tools of popular violence for profit.
Our thoughts and prayers must end the hypocrisy of making firearms easy to buy and a prize worth keeping, while at the same time making quality community mental health care hard to obtain and shameful to use.
The critics are right about one thing: If our “thoughts and
prayers” do not lead us out of fear and into action, compassion, and community,
then they are nothing more than empty words.
We do not follow a God of empty words. Jesus is not a savior of platitudes. The Holy Spirit comforts us, yes, and also empowers and directs us. It is once again time for Christians to join with people of good faith everywhere and instead of hiding behind our faith, to allow our faith to empower, strengthen and guide us. If the power of God really overcomes the power of evil, then we must not let our fears… of the ‘other,’ of what people might ‘think,’ or the other practical ways our fear makes us helpless…overpower us.
Instead, we affirm that as baptized people, we follow a God of power, and walk in the way of Jesus in the Spirit’s power, driven by our Creator to the power of love. It is once again time for thoughts and prayers to become the basis for practical care, meaningful action, and demonstrated hope for a world that is broken, hurting, and desperate.
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