Friday, July 02, 2010

Praying for Christopher Hitchens...

So a LCMS pastor friend of mine (yes that CAN happen, although just to be safe, we routinely anathematize each other :) ) posted on his blog today that Christopher Hitchens has announced that he has cancer. Given my posts against his work, I found Charlie's post to be spot on. You can read his whole post here.

To summarize though, Charlie reminds us of our calling to pray for our enemies. I would add also, that this situation is not a time either to use Paul's image of heaping coals upon our enemies by our acts of kindness toward them. I find that Christians tend to use that in a rather back-handed and vindictive way. Something along the lines of "HA! We are so much better than you cause we are being nice to you!" which of course seems to be totally against the spirit of the injunction to pray for our enemies.

Pray for Mr. Hitchens' well-being AND for his conversion.

1 comment:

Matt said...

I am reminded that the same word in the Greek New Testament is used for "healing" and "salvation." I pray for both.