I’m sure you remember dear old Hans “friend zone” Fiene. Well, he’s back and shittier than ever! Apparently, when all those people were shot in a Texas church, that was just god, answering a few prayers!
I’m not making this up and I’m not kidding.
Again, if this isn’t your cup, don’t hit below the jump. If you think you might appreciate this–or your brain is ready–come along!
“Prayers don’t work. We need legislation.” This has been many secular progressives’ mantra in response to recent mass shootings in America. On Sunday, after a gunman murdered more than 20 people during a church service in Sutherland Springs, Texas, some of them found proof of the powerlessness of prayer.
After this, Hans links to some tweets, the very first one being from Wil Wheaton, pointing out that the victims were in a damned church so the whole “sending thoughts and prayers” thing didn’t work. These people were in the house of god, so prayer didn’t do much here.
People of goodwill can certainly disagree over the merits of gun control legislation, just as we can disagree over how long we should wait after a tragedy to discuss its political ramifications. However, we should all recognize that pointing to a couple dozen warm corpses and saying, “Fat lot of good your Jebus-begging did you” is an act of profound ugliness.
Here’s the problem: this is all most politicians will offer. “Thoughts and prayers” but no real action. If you pay attention to the news, you would see that. But then we take a turn into Crazyville:
It’s also an act of profound ignorance. For those with little understanding of and less regard for the Christian faith, there may be no greater image of prayer’s futility than Christians being gunned down mid-supplication. But for those familiar with the Bible’s promises concerning prayer and violence, nothing could be further from the truth. When those saints of First Baptist Church were murdered yesterday, God wasn’t ignoring their prayers. He was answering them.
What? God answered these people’s prayers to not be dead by letting them die? Are we on Bizarro World here?
“Deliver us from evil.” Millions of Christians throughout the world pray these words every Sunday morning. While it doesn’t appear that the Lord’s Prayer is formally a part of the worship services at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, I have no doubt that members of that congregation have prayed these words countless times in their lives.
And that prayer didn’t work, because evil walked into the church and started firing. But I digress.
When we pray these words, we are certainly praying that God would deliver us from evil temporally—that is, in this earthly life. Through these words, we are asking God to send his holy angels to guard us from those who would seek to destroy us with knives and bombs and bullets. It may seem, on the surface, that God was refusing to give such protection to his Texan children. But we are also praying that God would deliver us from evil eternally. Through these same words, we are asking God to deliver us out of this evil world and into his heavenly glory, where no violence, persecution, cruelty, or hatred will ever afflict us again.
So in other words, they’re all in heaven so it’s all good. I literally can’t even right now.
We also pray in the Lord’s Prayer that God’s will be done. Sometimes, his will is done by allowing temporal evil to be the means through which he delivers us from eternal evil. Despite the best (or, more accurately, the worst) intentions of the wicked against his children, God hoists them on their own petard by using their wickedness to give those children his victory, even as the wicked often mock the prayers of their prey.
But this is the same deity that drowned the entire planet because evil was out of hand. Couldn’t he–oh, I don’t know–screw with the gun and make it misfire? Or prevent the bullets from leaving the chamber? Or, well, anything other than letting these poor people die?
It’s a thought or three.
Because of Christ’s saving death and resurrection, death no longer has any power over those who belong to him through faith. So the enemies of the gospel can pour out their murderous rage upon Christians, but all they can truly accomplish is placing us into the arms of our savior.
Actually, most are simply pointing out the screwed up non-logic in your brain farts, Hans. Telling you that you’re not thinking isn’t persecution. It’s telling you that you aren’t frigging thinking. But I freaking digress here.
So when a madman with a rifle sought to persecute the faithful at First Baptist Church on Sunday morning, he failed. Just like those who put Christ to death, and just like those who have brought violence to believers in every generation, this man only succeeded in being the means through which God delivered his children from this evil world into an eternity of righteousness and peace.
Okay, the gunman was involved in a domestic dispute with one of the members of this church. That is the reason why he walked in and started shooting. This had nothing to do with persecution. This was a deranged guy trying to murder to mother-in-law. And those “children”? They’re all dead, full damn stop.
Despite the horror that madman made the saints of First Baptist endure, those who endured it with faith in Christ have received his victory. Although the murderer filled their eyes with terror, God has now filled them with his glory. Although he persecuted them with violence, God seized that violence and has now used it to deliver his faithful into a kingdom of peace. Although this madman brought death to so many, God has used that death to give them the eternal life won for them in the blood of Jesus.
This is little more than a different take on the “Your dog isn’t dead; he’s really on a nice farm in the country”. It sounds great but there’s no real truth to this. These people are dead. If god was all powerful and almighty, he could have prevented this but didn’t.
Those who persecute the church and those who mock Christians for trusting in Almighty God rather than Almighty Government may believe that the bloodshed in Texas proves the futility of prayer. But we believers see the shooting in Texas as proof of something far different—proof that Christ has counted us worthy to suffer dishonor for his name and proof that no amount of dishonor, persecution, or violence can stop him from answering our prayer to deliver us from evil.
Uh, no. Evil walked into the church. Evil pulled out a gun and evil started shooting, then evil fled the scene and shot itself. If god existed, god could have prevented the entire thing from happening. An omnipotent deity could protect the victims. An omnipotent deity could have made sure that the victims were actually safe. But that didn’t happen.
If this truly was the answer to a prayer, then it’s the wrong one. Hans needs to learn that.
Iacon East 