You don't resemble

My caricature of you

Because you're lying.

    Chris Witmer - 1/5/2007 1:36:11 AM

The following is a combination of posts Chris made to Doug Wilson’s blog in July of 2006.  I chose this series not because this was his favorite topic but because it was an instance of several posts on the same topic that give an idea of Chris’ theological thinking.

Mark 11:13-21 -- Jesus curses unfaithful (unfruitful) Israel in the form of the fig tree. Note this passage has sandwiched in it the judgment and cleansing of the temple, pointing to the temple’s final destruction in AD 70.

Galatians 1:8-9 -- Paul pronounces the strongest possible curse (eternal damnation) against teachers of false gospels.

Acts 13:10-11 -- Paul rebukes Bar-Jesus (Elymus) and announces that God shall blind him “for a season.” Paul calls him a child of the devil, even though his name is literally “son of Jesus.” cf Deut. 28:28-29. Note that Paul “was filled with the Holy Ghost” when he did this. Note also the principle of lex talonis here.

Acts 8:20-22 -- Peter curses Simon “May your money perish with you!” and then extends the olive branch when there are signs of repentance on Simon’s part. This is in harmony with all the imprecations of the Hebrew scriptures, such as, for example, God’s cursing of Ninevah in the book of Jonah, which God relents of when the people of Ninevah repent. (In fact God then blesses them and the city grows to become the Babylonian empire.) Imprecations and cursing are never set in concrete until the fat lady sings. So in this context, even a “barbaric” verse like Psalm 137:9 cannot be pointed to as “barbarism.”

(Was God barbaric when He dashed the little ones of Sodom against the stones? The fat lady sang for Sodom, but up until the point that she sang, God was willing to spare the city. They brought it upon themselves.)

Revelation 6:10 -- The saints in Heaven, in the context of worship, are shown in imprecatory prayer. Since this worship scene is a textbook for worship (Thy will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven), the clear implication is that imprecatory prayer has a legitimate place in our worship. cf Rev. 16:5-6, 18:20,24, 19:1-2

Revelation 15:3 -- This verse mentions with approval the Song of Moses, which provides the foundation for the theology of divine vengeance, and upon which the martyrs implicitly appeal.

Conclusion: Imprecatory prayer MUST be one part of any faithful Christian’s praxis. Imprecatory prayer cannot be relinquished without distorting the Christian faith as testified to by Christ, the apostles, and all the saints in the Greek scriptures -- a testimony that reaffirms and reinforces the testimony of the Hebrew scriptures.

We don’t call for the cursing of our personal enemies -- people who might be pains in our backside day by day. We call for God to deal especially with HIS enemies, and if we can identify them by name, there is no reason for us not to do so. But it is God who decides whose little ones get dashed against the rock, and when that happens, it is not an indication to us that God has committed an injustice or an atrocity against “innocent” victims. The “problem of evil” is a problem of our minds’ manufacture, not a problem with objective existence in God’s universe. Thus strictly speaking, the biblical narrative does not include a scene of sorrow after the final triumph -- unless perhaps one is talking about the sorrow of those whom God has cursed, whose worm dieth not, and whose fire is not quenched. And it is good that such people feel such sorrow for eternity. As for the rest of us, it is the blessing of the Lord that makes rich, and He adds no sorrow to it. In the end, there is only perfect justice. Why should we feel any ambivalence or sorrow in that?

Further to the point that imprecatory prayer is not simply “we” praying that something bad might happen to “them,” such prayers need to be recognized as a working out of the implications inherent in the model prayer taught to us by Jesus. “Thy kingdom come” is necessarily a call for God to come in judgment of all the earth. Eternal salvation for God’s people necessarily involves the eternal separation of God’s people from God’s enemies, and also a separation of God’s people from our own besetting sins. That’s why judgment begins from the house of God. And since we are aware of that fact, rather than simply praying to God that He might give “champagne to our real friends and real pain to our sham friends,” we pray that God would examine us and purge us of dross at every level from the individual to the global. We pray that God would separate the wheat from the tares, the fruit from the chaff, and the wood/hay/stubble from the gold/silver/jewels, so that ultimately, only universal joyous acknowledgment of Christ’s Lordship would remain. In that sense, the imprecatory prayer is one part of a continuous, seamlessly integrated prayer life, and it cannot be eliminated without damaging everything else.

By the way, most of what I have said above about imprecatory prayer is based on the writings of Dr. John N. Day, pastor of Bellewood Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Bellevue, WA. Anyone wishing to see a fuller treatment of this topic should see his book Crying for Justice (Kregel Academic & Professional), which Peter Leithart calls “the best study of imprecatory prayer available.” Or, see his dissertation published in Bibliotheca Sacra 159 (April-June 2002), “The Imprecatory Psalms and Christian Ethics” (http://tinyurl.com/lj92z).

Not all of Chris’ advice on cheese is worth following:

For the young ladies I recommend a brie or light camembert with rasberry jam on rye bread.

And if you reallywant to challenge your manhood, or womanhood, or humanhood, there's the infamous Sardinian Casu Marzu . . . worm cheese . . . just take sheep's milk, add plenty of sunshine, fresh air, and flies, and wait a few weeks. If the maggots are still alive, it is okay for human consumption, and if the maggots have croaked, you waited too long.

The following is slightly edited, names being cut out.  It is among the last things that Chris wrote. 

Written words can be deceptive. Despite being there in black and white, we lose the benefit of a tone of voice or a facial expression, and writer and reader may see things quite differently. A writer can be surprised to learn how his words communicated, and maybe the reader is just as surprised to learn of the writer's surprise.

My wife sometimes complains when my facial expression or tone of voice communicates irritation; I only became consciously aware of it after she complains. Maybe others do better but I have learned to distrust even my own heart because, thanks to my wife's feedback, I have repeatedly been reminded of my own lack of forthrightness with myself.

We need to cut each other a lot of slack where written sarcasm is concerned. There is always plenty of room for misunderstanding.