Thoughts and prayers…
A mass shooting happens in a grocery store. “Thoughts and prayers” is the response.
A mass shooting happens in a school. “Thoughts and prayers” is the response.
A mass shooting happens anywhere. “Thoughts and prayers” is the response.
What exactly are we praying? Seriously, what words are we praying in response? Or is the phrase just the expected response and we aren’t actually going to do thoughts and prayers – even those are apparently too much for us to actually do. We just say it like we do when someone asks how we are doing – “fine, and you?” We aren’t fine. And no, we really don’t want to know how you are doing. We just go through the expected social norms that are anything but normal.
Walter Brueggemann, who is one of my favorite theologians, wrote a book called “Peace” in 2001. In a chapter titled, “Our Story Tells Us What To Do,” he wrote the following:
“The tricky demand in all this is that the Bible never settles for a morality that deals simply with individuals. It always asks about social structures, about government and law and social policy, about institutions that can cause exoduses or prevent them. Today that is the part of morality that tears at the church. We are often eager to confine the claim of biblical morality to private questions of right and wrong. We have a long history of thinking that we can privatize morality and settle for personal virtues of purity and honesty. But the deep issues of biblical morality consistently concern the public, social dimensions of exodus. Pharaoh’s problem is not personal impurity, but a state system of institutional tyranny. The prophets condemn Israel for perverted courts (Micah 3:11) and inequitable real estate practices (Micah 2:1-4; 1 Kings 21). Jesus’ quarrel with the establishment of his time, which finally killed him, was that it had substituted private virtue for social concern, and such perverted morality prevents resurrection (Matthew 23:13-28).
“The catch, of course, is that private morality as it is usually defined fits nicely with our vested interests. By contrast, questions of institutional morality often collide with our investments. But it can’t be any other way. Resurrection and exodus are public events that call into question the structure and ordering of society. Thus, they address us at the places in our lives that demand most, and where we frequently resist most.” (Pg. 71)
And that right there is the issue at hand when it comes to mass shootings, assault weapons, a lack of trust in community and society, and more.
What exactly are we thinking and praying?
My prayer is that no only do mass shootings end, but that we become so uncomfortable that we will act. That enough people in society stand up and speak up and question their own vested interests and investments in the way things are that result in the continued death of children and people of color. That we seek justice for all.
And I pray that I have the courage to continue to speak up and do what is necessary to do my part in it all.
Thoughts and prayers should lead to action. Otherwise they are empty.
The Prophet Amos reminds us of this. According to the Lutheran Study Bible, “Amos clearly announces God’s concern for justice. Properly observing worship practices, festivals, and sacrifice has little meaning if the people did not treat others with justice and righteousness.” (Pg. 1477).
Here’s the passage of Scripture that is referred to:
“I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:21-24, NRSV)
I wonder if we rewrote this to fit our time and place it might sound something like this:
I hate, I despise your thoughts, and I take no delight in your solemn prayers. Even though you offer me your thoughts and prayers, I will not accept them; And the offerings of thoughts of your mind I will not look up. Take away from me the noise of your prayers. I will not listen to the words of your prayers. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:21-24, Pr. Matthew New Revised Version)
Justice is related to righteousness. They have the same root to them – right relationship. As I have said before, righteousness can be described as a right relationship between an individual and God. Justice is more communal in nature. It’s more like a right relationship of people within a community. Those are simplistic definitions of these concepts, but they work.
What is our prayer of justice in the face of ongoing, relentless, mass shootings – whether they are motivated by white supremacy, or anger, or fear, or illness, or any other reason. What is our prayer for justice and what does it cause us to do in response?
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Comment
As I think you know ABOUT ME already, I prefer (with little exception) to go to the Bible for guidance. I prefer it to theologians even, though I frequently rely on teachers to help me know God’s word properly. Point being, I rarely, and with reluctance, draw too deeply from “secular” sources to understand God, his creation, and my place in it. However, there are some teachers out there I find worthy at some points, even though I hold their teachings tentatively.
Your post takes me to such a place today. And I offer that whole paragraph just to demonstrate how tentatively I offer this, though I nonetheless find it valuable.
“Thoughts and prayers” has become (if it wasn’t from the start) a cliche. There are so many dimensions to cliche communication, that a single post will never exhaust all the important things to be said. But this cliche is deployed into a political context – a political debate (of sorts). Nothing wrong with that per se, but now the cliche is bandied about as if it holds more meaning than it really does. In fact, ironically, it belittles shootings, and that (I think) is why the cliche has received such resistance.
So, if we accept that in the political context there are two sides dominating the “discussion,” and that (despite exceptions to this observation) one side is largely the self appointed representative of Jesus and the other decidedly NOT. And that the “Jesus” side of this “discussion” appeals to this cliche as a response to the horrific problem, and the decidedly NOT Jesus side calls the bluff on this cliche, that in the end prayer is so very cheapened by the exchange.
“Thoughts and prayers” is a cliche, and this cliche is now stuck to mass shootings. It’s a phrase I might use in other contexts, but at this point, to use it in any context is to call up reverberations of mass shootings in all others. And it is to cheapen the prayer that might sometimes be sincere at least among some of us.
This is not really new. Jesus has thus been cheapened since his crucifixion all along anyway. Not that I just write that off, but I put this in that context too.
At this point, the cliche “Thoughts and prayers” is a cliche I avoid. To say it is to belittle any tragedy, even though in a literal sense, to hold your tragedy in my thoughts and prayers is always a high honor and appreciation of suffering of others.
At any rate, I mention this in the “cliche” sense because I learned so very much as a young man from a secular book by an author by the name of Sidney M. Jourard, the book called The Transparent Self. Jourard makes a very thoughtful case about the “levels” of communication we engage in with others and the value each places on each other. “Cliche communication” is common between strangers especially, but friends too. However, deeper relationships move THROUGH cliche communication to deeper levels quite easily when necessary.
His mapping of the “levels of communication” is not the end-all/be-all of analysis, in my estimation, but it does provide good handles on a complex and esoteric topic which helps us analyze and discuss such matters. (And actually, to my own read of Jourard has led to my own modifications to his thesis.)
For this comment, though, I merely point out that to show up at someone else’s deep suffering and offer your cliches as help is so deeply insensitive as to be disgusting. I would call Christians to avoid this cliche where feasible and to fill it with meaning where avoidance is not. The name of Jesus is honored or taken in vain in such ways.
This is so good. I really appreciate the last three paragraphs. The “thoughts and prayers” things has been bothering me so much and I couldn’t pin point why. But this really helped me identify it. It’s similar to the things that people say at funerals to loved ones who have lost a dear person in their lives. Things like “God much have needed another angel,” Or “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle,” Or so many other statements that are really not about offering comfort to the person, but rather are about easing our own unease in the situation as if we’re supposed to be anything by uneasy in the presence of death. Those statements do nothing for the person who has lost someone. And our response should never be a cliche, but rather be empathetic and be where the person is – which is in pain. There are no words that take it away or make it better. Death just sucks. There is nothing I can say to make it better. Often words fail. Which is why I’m so bothered by the cliche because it ultimately is an effort to just move on, to not be in pain, to turn our face from the pain and from death. Rather, we should be sitting with these folks in their pain. Not to solve it or make it go away, but to really understand the pain they are going through so that we are so moved that we act to prevent further pain from being suffered by others. Only in understanding such horrible pain will we do what is needed to prevent it again. Otherwise, we’ll just move on and suffer longer because we ignore it.