Praying for Our Effect on a Violent Culture
This prayer was offered by Rick Barry as part of our July 17 prayer call confronting political violence. You can sign up for future calls at the bottom of this page.
Prince of Peace, we want you to be renowned throughout the land. When your kingdom comes, we want our neighbors to look at it and say it looks familiar because of the way your people behaved here and now.
That means we need your help letting go of the culture of domination and violence that pervades our politics.
We live in a uniquely violent country, compared to countries that are similar to ours. Racially motivated violence and mass shootings are not uncommon in our civic life, and for a decade now we have been enduring an exceptionally violent season in our political life, as well.
This stands in contrast to what you’ve told us about the nature of your kingdom.
Your Son said that the rulers of the gentiles lord their power and authority over others, but it is not to be so with his people. Your Word says that when your Son returns, the only sword he wields will come from his mouth.
But too often in U.S. public life, we resort to violence—or indulge fantasies of violence—or resort to violent imagery and language—for the sake of getting our way, for the sake of making other Americans act the way we want them to act.
As members of the body politic in the US, we are sorry. We have too often conformed to these patterns of the world around us, instead of dying to ourselves and making the difficult sacrifices that following you demands. Sacrificing our satisfaction in a political culture that teaches us to put our needs and wants and ideas first. Sacrificing our sense of control in a political culture that teaches us that life is a competition for power over others. Sacrificing our sense of orientation in a political culture that teaches us to fear things we don’t understand or people who are different from us.
Help us to make these sacrifices, for the sake of standing as witnesses to a better way. Your better way.
When our culture whispers to people like us that we are losing power, losing privilege, losing our identity, or losing our country, and that we need to take violent actions or at least assume violent postures in order to secure a place for ourselves, remind us of the better future you have already secured for us.
You have promised us a place in a kingdom that is just, and fair, and safe, and plentiful. And you raised your son form the dead to prove to us that you can deliver on your promises.
Give us the courage to be people of peace in a violent world. And let our commitment to trusting in the peace of your son function as a signpost pointing the way to your kingdom for the people around us.
It is in the name of your son, the prince of peace, that we pray.
Amen.
Rick Barry is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Center for Christian Civics.
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