How Should We Pray After The Virginia Tech Massacre?

"About eight years ago, my younger son, my wife and I were all at Wednesday night services at our church when a very mentally-ill man walked into our church buildings and opened fire. In 10 minutes, seven dear saints lay dead and seven others were wounded and hundreds were terrorized and their lives were changed forever."

~Walter

I have heard the expression "keep them in your prayers" uttered many times since the carnage of April 16th at Virginia Tech.  How do we keep this from becoming a mere platitude?  How exactly should we pray?  What do you say to God after 32 people lay dead?

I recently read a remarkable post (link unavailable) from someone who is uniquely qualified to answer the question, what should you pray for?

His name is Walter.  He is a Centurion.  He was at a Wednesday night church service when a gunmen walked in and opened fire.  In God's grace, Walter and his family survived and are still healing from the emotional scars of that day. 

"I learned more about God's grace in my life in that single experience than I had ever learned prior to that. I learned that I had to quit wishing for a return to the balance of my life prior to the shooting and simply accept its reality in my life.   And, though I have known that God never wastes a single experience in my life, I realized anew that even in this tragedy, His grace was working a triumph for His glory. Through it all, the Lord has opened door after door of ministry to comfort and aid those who are suffering great and tragic loss.

In keeping with that ministry of comfort and aid, Walter shares ten specific and meaningful ways for us to pray for those whose lives were changed forever on April 16th, 2007.

1. Everyone there and many around the country will know someone there. Pray that God will increase compassion and identity in believers with the victims so they respond as the Lord gives opportunity.
2. Wounded persons will need physical, emotional, and spiritual healing.
3. Families of the dead will need grace in their grief.
4. Everyone there will feel the huge loss of security and fear will reign in their lives. Pray for freedom from fear for them.
5. Some Christians will experience doubt because they have mistakenly believed that if they just believe in Jesus, nothing bad will ever happen to them. The death of that misconception is hard.
6. Some will experience the treasure of life. We should pray that they continue to value life as a precious gift and not to take it for granted. That realization is a gift in itself and we should pray that it not pass from consciousness too quickly.
7. Many Christians will step up to minister. Pray that they will response with sensitivity, truth, and grace. No pat answers. Lots of love and listening.
8. Many administrators, first responders, and emergency personnel will experience the "but what if I had . . ." which will bring about guilt and anguish. Pray for persons to be able to see reality and to experience forgiveness if it is needed.
9. Many will experience survivor guilt: Why wasn't I taken? Pray that they will be freed from that and turn that anxiety toward understanding their purpose and calling in life.
10. Pray for emergency workers, first responders and the press. Many of them will be traumatized by what they see. Pray a hedge around them. Pray the gospel will reach those who need it in this tender moment in their lives.

Comments

[Paul]

I'm a little confused - my understanding was that if you believe in Jesus (in fact even if you don't) nothing bad will happen to you, because everything happens according to God's will, and God's will is by definition good. Do you mean that they had hoped not to perceive these things as bad?

[Mr. Dawntreader]

God's will ... among other things ... is that ...

20:1 And God spoke all these words, saying,

2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

3 “You shall have no other gods before [1] me.

4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands [2] of those who love me and keep my commandments.

7 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

13 “You shall not murder. [3]

14 “You shall not commit adultery.

15 “You shall not steal.

16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

17 “You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.”

... which is nicely summarized by Jesus here ....

34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Clearly, God's will is violated all day long every day. It is called sin.

What Walter is referring to in prayer item #5, is the misguided teaching that God's job in life is to pour out "blessings" (which is a code word for wealth, health and happiness) on those who trust in Jesus. Though this is a popular message to preach to today's world, it doesn't exist in the Bible. One need look no further than the life of the apostle Paul to get a glimpse of what the life of a committed follower of Christ looks like : Paul endured beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger (2 Cor 6:5) ... for which he considered it all worth it (Phil 3:8)

[Paul]

I'm sorry, I might have chosen the wrong word when I said 'will'. What I was meaning is that God is both omnipotent, and omniscient. He knew from the second of creation that Cho would kill the people at VT, had the ability to change things so that he did not, yet chose not to. Hence I assume that either God didn't care whether this happened (which, as I understand your faith, is not an option), or for some reason He felt this to be necessary. And if God felt it to be necessary, i.e. He wanted it to happen, then it must by definition be good.

I'd like to clarify here - first I think the VT shootings were absolutely terrible. And second, I'm not trying to be argumentative, this is a real question. At the moment of creation God effectively mapped out the whole of history, to the minutest detail, and with complete control over every detail. And this, all of it, is exactly what he chose.

[Mr. Dawntreader]

Paul,

I agree that God could have intervened 100 different ways and did not. There is a morally sufficient reason for why He did not.

One day we may see exactly what that morally sufficient reason was ... but, there are no guarantees that we will know why.

We have clear examples of God's glory and mercy shining through the most unjust and horrible of events -- the supreme example of injustice being the false conviction, torture and execution of the world's only truly and completely innocent and sinless man: Jesus Christ of Nazareth on a Roman cross outside of Jerusalem around 33 A.D.

Only God is capable of redeeming the worst of events and making them further evidence of his mercy, grace and glory. As of today, April 30th, 2007, I cannot yet tell you about how He will do that with Cho's sinful acts.

[Paul]

So given that there is a 'morally sufficient' (interesting phrase) reason why God didn't intervene, then doesn't that mean that this is a 'good' thing, in the grand scheme of things? And thus as I originally tried to suggest, faith in God does mean that nothing bad will happen to you, or more specifically, that you can understand that the same things that would have happened to you anyway aren't actually bad?

[Mr. Dawntreader]

"God didn't intervene, then doesn't that mean that this is a 'good' thing, in the grand scheme of things?"

Nope. The crucifixion of Jesus was a bad thing. What Cho did was also bad.

Being a Christian does not mean you put on a happy face and pretend that bad things are good things. Sin is sin. Evil is evil.

What we do have, though, are promises ... like Romans 8:28.

28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

Things 'work together for good' ... that doesn't mean that evil is an illusion and is really good in disguise ... it means that God uses circumstances as a platform for producing Christ-like character in the hearts of those who are called to follow Christ. Read the book of Job sometime. Were the things that happened to Job good? Of course not. Did Job come to a greater understanding and enjoy a deeper relationship with his Creator when it was all said and done? Yes. Does that mean bad = good? No. That is an absurdity. What logically follows is that God is redemptive.

[Paul]

Interesting example in Job. So when God afflicted Job with his many sufferings, or rather when he turned Job over to Satan, you're saying that it was a bad thing? But I thought God couldn't do bad things? I can readily see that it was uncomfortable, and painful, and trying for Job, but I'm stuck on how he could view it as bad.

I can understand from a purely human standpoint how these things might look bad, not least because in my absence of religious faith to me they actually are bad. But if I know that God has chosen to afflict me with boils (because everything that happens is through God's choice) then I don't know how I could view that as bad. Mysterious, perhaps, but not bad.

I'm constantly aware that this discussion might appear to reflect some indifference to the suffering of the people affected by the VT shootings, so if you do wish to continue it (and I hope you will) then I'd be happy for you to start a new post about whether bad things can truly happen under Christ, and to marshall your arguments in a single essay.