Prayer (and Love) Don’t Discriminate
“Pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44)
Several months back, a cherished high school friend of mine, Lynn — a loving and generous woman who was instrumental in helping nurture my own Christian faith when my teen years were not happy ones — wrote on her Facebook page: "The Bible, God's inspired Word for believers, is not a cafeteria of ideas for us to pick and choose what we believe." I responded that I agreed... provided that so-called believers couldn't condemn me as a gay man with Leviticus 20:13 while skipping over Leviticus 20:10 when it came to our president's repeated adultery. (Hint: both verses suggest stoning the offenders.)
She took my comment off her social media post. That's her right... but sad that someone's view of God is so small. Or that anyone’s idea of God only conforms to what they believe.
Queer and progressive friends are sometime surprised by my genuine Christian faith. The challenge for them — and often for me — is that many godly believers here in the U.S. have such a narrow, small-minded view of God, worshiping a false idol that they have created that reflects their values: white, middle class, xenophobic, sexist, racist. That a God who so loved the WORLD cares for America more than other countries, and that our country should shun the rest of the globe, putting itself first. That a savior who was a homeless Middle Eastern refugee in Egypt would have us turn our backs on other brown-skinned refugees. That the love I have for one solitary man is condemned, but the repeated and flagrant sexual immorality of their anointed president — not to mention the duplicity and corruption of his administration and campaign — gets a 'mulligan.'
Fortunately, I have an Eastertide faith that believes in grace; that believes in pursuing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly before my God. Indeed only in remembering grace — the sheer unearned mercy and privilege I enjoy — can someone as fault-filled, hard-hearted, and broken as me recognize that I should be mindful of the stones I throw, even if they’re only verbal ones.
Yet it is often hard to pray for the so-called believers who worship a god different from the God I know from my own spiritual walk. To pray for the Sarah Huckabee Sanders of the world who lie with the same mouth six days a week that prays like a good Baptist preacher's daughter on the seventh; the Mike Pences who seek to privilege their understanding of God over others, with a hypocritical smile and a smooth double-edged tongue; the Franklin Grahams of the world who say that God anointed one (white) president but never even prayed for the previous (African-American) one; the Jerry Falwell, Jr.s on television who condemn the sexual depravity of the LGBTQ+ community publicly while pursuing their own licentious pleasures in private.
And it is often difficult to pray for those I do not know but who I know by their actions. In the Episcopal liturgical prayer cycle, in which the faithful are called to remember global churches, there can be a whole stretch of weeks in which I’m exhorted to pray for the church in Sudan, in Zambia, in Uganda, in Zimbabwe… All countries in which I could be summarily killed — even by supposedly God-fearing Anglicans — simply for who I am. And there are fourteen Anglican dioceses in Nigeria, a country that regularly tops the list of the most homophobic and dangerous in the world for queer people, so the incessant weekly litany of ecclesiastical Nigerian provinces can sometimes serve as a personal trauma trigger in the middle of a Sunday service, when I think of the violence the church has routinely done against people like me.
Yet as a Christian I am called to pray for others, regardless of their political beliefs. I am called to love others as much as I love myself, even if their own actions may not reflect my understanding of love. And I pray and love with the hope that when we all stand before God's judgement seat, which is also a place of mercy, all of our eyes will be opened to see God's love fully.
Love is merciful, and so, too, is prayer. And neither love nor prayer discriminate. And so I pray with the hope that when someone in Lagos is exhorted to remember the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire in their Sunday prayers, they don’t refuse to do so because of our country’s failure in confronting its systemic racism or our diocese’s decision to elect an openly gay bishop in 2004. I pray with the hope that even from Nigeria, they also bow their heads with sincerity and send a positive thought my way.