You May Not Like This Answer

(WSJ graphic)

The assassination of Charlie Kirk has prompted a stream of commentary unrivalled by the death of anyone this century. While such commentary has covered a wide range of topics and opinions, WSj columnist Peggy Noonan is one of the few who spent time on the oft-criticized Christian phrase, "thoughts and prayers."

During recent national traumas we’ve heard the side argument over “thoughts and prayers.” Something terrible happens, someone sends thoughts and prayers, someone else snaps, “We don’t need your prayers, we need action.” They denounce the phrase only because they don’t understand it, and give unwitting offense. (I always hope it is unwitting.)

Prayer is action. It’s effort. It takes time. Christians believe God is an actual participant in history. He’s here, every day, in the trenches. He didn’t create the universe and disappear into the mists; his creation is an ongoing event, he is here in the world with you. When something terrible happens and you talk to him—that’s what prayer is, talking to him, communicating with concentration—you are actively asking for help, for intercession. “Please help her suffering, help their children, they are so alone.” “Help me be brave through this.”

It’s active, not passive. Catholics, when they’d pray over and over or with friends, used to call it storming heaven. It isn’t a way of dodging responsibility, it is (if you are really doing it and not just publicly posing) a way of taking it.

So pray now for America. We are in big trouble.

One of the first questions we ask in Sunday School is, why didn't more Jews accept Jesus as the Messiah? After all, love is the answer to everything.

It's only after we have lived life for a while that we understand why comparatively few listened to Jesus. They wanted God to answer their prayers, but on their terms. The ancients understood the Messiah to be the conqueror who would drive out the Romans and be David reincarnated, the mighty King of the Jews. They refused to consider evidence that this wasn't going to happen.

The parallel today is the wish for a strong leader who will remove hundreds of milliohs of firearms from society, thereby solving gun violence. If that's the answer we want God to give us, then we are not really open to listening, nor or we submitting ourselves to His will, and we will mock "thoughts and prayers" as a shibboleth. The human heart was, is, and ever shall be the true battlefield.