Faithlab has this interesting snippet about a fundamentalist in California who is openly “praying” for the death of President Obama. They observe (I think correctly) that this is contrary to Jesus’ own example.

What is “prayer”? If we accept that it is that dialogue we have with God throughout the day – then is it not reasonable to expect that the lanuage of our prayer best reflects our aspiration to faithfulness to the teaching of the Gospel?

Paul reminds us to pray for what we need – rather than what we desire. There is I think wisdom here – sometimes we want something, it has caught our attention, or captivated our interest, but rather than contributing to our well being, it is a distraction, even destructive. Our sense of “desire” can be fuelled by ill concieved ideas, half formed thoughts, envy, competition with others . . . you get the idea. If we prayed for what we “desired” and found that those desires were fulfilled – we might later regret having asked for it! In this light then – can any faithful Christian truly believe that praying for the death of another human being (or any being for that matter) does not fall into this category?

But it got me thinking – are there instances of prayers in our liturgies that do not best reflect the gospel ethos? I’m not talking here of instituting a campaign of political correctness – as many regulars already know I find PC language to more often than not be more offensive and distorting than the original texts – rather I’m wondering out-loud if some of the historic “traditional” prayers might need a bit of editing for the sake of faithfulness to the teaching of the Gospel.