War and prayer

  • Ortho­dox blog­gers on the cri­sis between Israel and Lebanon:

    • Glad Huw pointed us to the Anti­ochian res­o­lu­tion:

      … we appeal to the Pres­i­dent of the United States of Amer­ica, Mr. George W. Bush, to use his good office
      1. To bring imme­di­ate ces­sa­tion of hos­til­i­ties on both sides.
      2. To help in the exchang­ing of pris­on­ers of all war­ring par­ties in the region.
      3. And that her Excel­lency, the Sec­re­tary of State, Dr. Rice, be dis­patched to the region to uti­lize her diplo­matic skills to bring about a just and last­ing peace for the entire Mid­dle East.

      And Condi is going there on Mon­day, I believe, so we can check that item off any­way. Do we have the kind of clout to bring about the other two items? Every­one acts like we do. I’m just not sure what Hezbol­lah has to gain (either in Lebanon, in the Arab world, or in the eyes of the “global com­mu­nity” if there is one) by coop­er­at­ing with the Amer­i­cans it has spent so much time vil­i­fy­ing. I guess we’ll see, right?

    • Huw also noticed a lit­tle prob­lem with the num­bers listed in the res­o­lu­tion. Oh, um … oops. I think I’m of the same mind as the com­menters who thought that the “one mil­lion” num­ber was sup­posed to refer to all Ortho­dox, not just Anti­ochian Ortho­dox. But if not, woo hoo, y’know? We rock!
    • Got into an inter­est­ing com­ment thread on Jim’s blog when it came to try­ing to fig­ure out who are the bad guys and who are the good guys. It’s very clear to some — it’s still not to me. Still I should have known that peo­ple com­ment­ing to Orthodixie would do a much bet­ter job of explain­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties of the “blame Israel” approach. My favorite line from the com­ment thread: “This war is fed by two hands.”
    • Erica won­ders what is a proper prayer to say in time of war. The first com­menter sug­gests a psalm, but thereby hangs a dilemma. The psalms are often bit­terly vitu­per­a­tive con­cern­ing their ene­mies, implor­ing God to break out their teeth, wipe them out com­pletely, annil­hi­late them. They don’t square with Christ’s admo­ni­tion to turn the other cheek. And yet we don’t want to edit the psalms or be polit­i­cally cor­rect about it: there are surely evil peo­ple about in time of war as there are in times of peace. (Do you sup­pose some­one should have asked “Who is my enemy?” as the lawyer asked “Who is my brother?”) I tend to pray for the inno­cents, for the wis­dom of those in author­ity, for the lives of the sol­diers (sorry if that strikes some of you wrong, but I’m a GI brat and any­way, your issue isn’t with them) and that the schemes and devices of blood­thirsty men be brought to noth­ing. That’s based on some­thing I heard and liked, and it leaves who’s right or wrong out of it.
      Oh, and when it’s our war, I pray for vic­tory. More polit­i­cal incor­rect­ness, but con­sid­er­ing the famil­iar tropar­ion (“O Lord, save Thy peo­ple and bless their inher­i­tance. Grant vic­to­ries to the Ortho­dox peo­ples over their adver­saries …”), it seems like it’s not, ahem, unorthodox.

    Related posts:

    1. Why I don’t think the war is a failure
    2. The scary Mary prayer
    3. Advice from one pos­si­ble future
    4. Heck­uva speech going on
    5. Bush’s great speech

    July 24th, 2006 | Grace | 1 Comment |

One Response and Counting...

  • Fr Joseph Huneycutt 07.24.2006

    Well, hmmm. Here’s the deal, we aver­age about 500 folks in church on Sun­day. About 200 of those are Pales­tini­ans who con­sider St George their church. When 200 of them are in church, that means about 5 times that many AREN’T on that par­tic­u­lar day.

    I don’t think the AA was say­ing to the US Govt … “we rep­re­sent 1 mil­lion — pledg­ing and/or tithing mem­bers.” (I mean, really.) But, are there that many — of Mid­dle East­ern back­ground — who con­sider the Anti­ochian church their own?

    Just a guess.

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