Dear Lord, we ask that you take into your presence those who we lost yesterday.
And although you are not a vengeful God, we ask that you send your wrath upon the bastards who did this.
I recommend a massive case of syphilis.
In your name we pray, amen.
So went the invocation offered at the beginning of a regular meeting of the Taliban-ed Cigar Aficionado Club at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. My friend Joe and I smiled grimly as we sat nearby under the bright Afghan sun. We had driven there from our base, Camp Eggers, which was just a half mile or so away through a relatively safe area.
We weren’t really cigar fans like some of the attendees, but it was something to do, and there wasn’t much else going on that Friday afternoon. And it was one of those days when you just had to do something because doing nothing felt awful, and doing nothing alone felt even worse.
The day before, May 16, had begun like many others. I was working in my office, as my team wasn’t scheduled to travel outside of our base that day to advise leaders of the Afghan National Police as we often did. I heard a distant “boom” about five minutes after eight in the morning, the kind of boom I’d heard before and knew was a likely due to an explosion somewhere out in the greater Kabul area.
At 8:33 a.m., I received a text message regarding an improvised explosive device (IED) with the direction for all convoys to go to a safe location. I quickly shared the news with others on our team.
I knew things were especially bad when one of our civilian police training contractors came by to talk. During the past five and a half months, we had become friendly coworkers. Holding back his tears, he told me that first reports indicated that several of his fellow contractors had been killed along with a few military personnel.
One of the civilians, he told me, had just been talking the night before about how excited he was to go home soon for his daughter’s wedding.
Six men died that day when their vehicle convoy was hit by a vehicle-borne IED. They were simply driving from our base to meet with the Afghans they were advising, just like my team and I had been doing every few days and would continue to do for the next six months.
Gallows Humor and Divine Intervention
Given the context, that prayer for our adversaries to contract syphilis was more of an act of cathartic gallows humor than a legitimate petition for divine intervention. It expressed the very human way in which many of us felt in the moment, tapping into the profane desire for revenge that we can experience at times.
Desiring the wrath of God upon those who have wronged us, particularly when those wrongs have been intentionally wrought, might be natural—but that doesn’t make it right. Nor does it constitute a healthy way of thinking or a legitimate way of praying, at least in the faith traditions I know. But this particular incident does make me think more deeply about the practice of asking God for specific outcomes, either for ourselves or for others.
But why might any of this matter? For a few reasons, namely:
We will all experience suffering and perhaps trauma in this life.
Such experiences almost inevitably cause us to wonder why and can send us upon an existential journey or wrestling match with the meaning and purpose of it all.
That journey may include posttraumatic stress (which is bad) or it may include posttraumatic growth (which is good) or a bit of both.
A scientific meta-analysis of 103 studies suggests that religious coping, which includes prayer, is one of the biggest drivers of posttraumatic growth.
From what I can tell, the crowd of people who currently read my work runs the gamut from fellow practicing Catholics to adherents of various other faiths to skeptics to agnostics to atheists. Perhaps what follows might prove thought-provoking in some way for all of you. What I can tell you without a doubt is that going through the adversity I’ve faced (and continue to face) has proven to me the value of various forms of prayer and religious coping.
Yet my relationship with petitionary prayer—prayer in which we ask God for specific outcomes—is complicated. It brings up various big philosophical and theological ideas (like those explored by Eleonore Stump in this article). Beyond those deep matters, it brings up a whole slew of other thoughts and reactions.
In some contexts, petitionary prayer just makes me a bit uncomfortable. I’m not entirely sure why, but here goes.
“But I prayed so hard.”
On the afternoon of Nov. 7, 2020, I rushed to the scene where my son Vincent had been hit by a car. When I got there, my other three children were huddled together next to the sidewalk. My wife was nearby but not right next to them at least in that moment.
The two younger kids were sitting in the grass. And my eldest child, who was 11 years old at the time, was leading them in prayer. “Let’s pray for Vinny,” she said. “Our Father, who art in heaven … .”
The ambulance rushed Vincent to the hospital, and my wife and I followed shortly behind. But some 90 minutes later, I had to face my three surviving children and tell them that their 7-year-old brother had died.
Parts of the next few days and weeks are somewhat blurry in my mind, but I clearly recall my 11-year-old, the one who had prayed with her siblings with such faith and courage, saying to my wife and me, “But I prayed so hard.”
We all did. And yet Vinny died.
That makes petitionary prayer a bit complicated.
It’s especially challenging when I hear people tell stories about how, after intense petitionary prayer, a person recovered from a tremendous health challenge or injury. The stories seem to imply that the person recovered because of the intense petitionary prayer, that the line of causation between those two events was direct, as in prayer done right or enough always results in a desirable outcome.
And those who tell those stories sometimes tell them as a way to illustrate the power of such prayer, suggesting (perhaps unintentionally) that all we need to do is pray hard in order to change the hands of fate.
I do believe in a loving God who has the power to intervene in human affairs. But describing petitionary prayer in this way makes it sound like such prayer can avert any tragedy, if only it is done with enough sincerity by enough people. That to me is tough to swallow—if nothing else, it makes me immediately think of the moments after the accident that took my son’s life, when we prayed so hard too. It’s an idea that seems to imply that undesirable outcomes only come to those who don’t pray hard enough or in some other way deserve those outcomes due to some fault of their own.
These ideas are not only almost certainly demonstrably false—bad things happen to good people all the time—but they’re also a distortion of what’s at the core of the major theistic religions. Namely, suffering isn’t exactly punishment for the unrighteous (see the Old Testament story of Job), nor does God guarantee an answer to our even most intense and sincere petitions amid our biggest moments of need (see the New Testament account of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane).
For those who don’t believe in prayer or God or anything beyond the strictly material, I wonder: What about hope? I know they’re not the same thing, but they’re related in a way. Without a hopeful imagination, how might any of us have clarity about that which should be? And maybe petitionary prayer in a small sense is a way of clinging to hope, a reminder of the way things ought to be, and a way of connecting our tiny selves with that which is infinitely more significant and more meaningful. In a larger sense, maybe petitionary prayer is much more than that.
And so, I will continue to pray so hard.
The mystery of it all is that even with all of that, I do think we can and should include petitions as one way in which we pray. We can certainly pray for the strength, wisdom, and courage to face that which is before us. From my experience, that works. But we can indeed also pray for specific outcomes, including for the recovery or physical well-being of ourselves and others.
I certainly don’t regret praying for Vincent’s survival, and I’d certainly do it again.
Right now, however, my prayer is for Vincent’s little unborn brother, Dominic. He’s still what we call in our family an “inside baby,” and he’s about 24 weeks old in utero. And he’s facing many challenges.
The full details are here, but what seems relatively clear is that the best case scenario is that he will likely be paralyzed from the waist down and require a kidney transplant at some point in his childhood. Again, that’s the best case scenario as it seems at the moment.
Regardless, Dominic’s life matters. I saw his heart beating at 130 beats per minute last Thursday on an ultrasound. And all life is a cause for joy and wonder, even when it’s full of extra challenges and hardships—and I fully intend to pray hard through all of it.
For Christians, ours is a God who not only intervenes in human affairs, but he became human himself. And that act, among other things, provides us with the ultimate role model of how to suffer well and how to pray amid our suffering. Jesus directly petitioned for himself with full knowledge of the suffering he was to endure up to and including his torture and death. As written in Matthew 26:36-42:
Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.”
He took along Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to feel sorrow and distress.
Then he said to them, “My soul is sorrowful even to death. Remain here and keep watch with me.”
He advanced a little and fell prostrate in prayer, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will.”
When he returned to his disciples he found them asleep. He said to Peter, “So you could not keep watch with me for one hour?
Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Withdrawing a second time, he prayed again, “My Father, if it is not possible that this cup pass without my drinking it, your will be done!”
For Christians, ours is a faith that recognizes the presence of suffering, manifested most notably in the crucifixion of Jesus. It’s not naïve. And it’s also a faith centered on hope.
Part of that hope lies in the belief that we are never alone in our suffering. Another part of that hope lies in something else, something beyond the cross, something beyond this valley of tears.
For above all, our hope lies on the other side of Golgotha. It lies in a promise, the ultimate vision of the way things ought to be.
Our hope lies in not only what we do see but also in what we don’t see.
It lies, ultimately, in the empty tomb.
These are the names of the six people from Camp Eggers who were killed on May 16, 2013. May they, and all who gave their lives in service of the United States and our allies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere around the world rest in peace. Their sacrifices and the enduring loss suffered by those they left behind deserve our memory and deep respect.
Sgt. Eugene M. Aguon, 23, of Mangilao, Guam, Guam Army National Guard
Mr. Michael R. Bradford, 26, of Fort Thomas, Ky., DynCorp International
Mr. Joseph C. Elrod, 33, of Tampa, Fla, DynCorp International
Spc. Dwayne W. Flores, 22, of Sinajana, Guam, Guam Army National Guard
Mr. Robert D. Halsell, 52, of Hatch, N.M., DynCorp International
Mr. Angel Roldan Jr., 62, of Stafford, Va., DynCorp International
All four DynCorp contractors were military veterans; Elrod served in the U.S. Marine Corps and Roldan, Halsell, and Bradford served in the U.S. Army.
References and for further reading
Prati, Gabriele, and Luca Pietrantoni. "Optimism, social support, and coping strategies as factors contributing to posttraumatic growth: A meta-analysis." Journal of Loss and Trauma 14, no. 5 (2009): 364-388. Click here.
Dear Ben, I read all the things you send and am so thankful to God
for the encouragement, struggles,
and strong Faith you share with others. You are a profound gift
to all around you. May God continue to bless, strengthen and
uphold your family in the palm of His hands. Our love and prayers.
Mom