Several years ago, I picked up a business card at the cash register of a Christian bookstore in Gallatin, Tennessee that said "Pray for Clinton, Psalms 108:8-10". My first thought was that this was an encouragement and a reminder to Christians to keep the President, regardless of who he was or what party with which he was affiliated, in our prayers. So as I was shopping, I picked up one of the Bibles off the shelf and looked up the reference.
May his days be few; may another take his office. May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. May his children wander about and beg, seeking food from the ruins they inhabit. Psalm 108:8-10, ESV
Wordlessly, I put the basket of items I had planned to purchase on the counter, laid the card down so the clerk could see, pointed to it, and walked out of the store. First of all, whether that was some kind of inside joke or an intentional slam, for Christians who believe the Bible is a sacred text to take it completely out of its context and use it that way is sinful behavior. There's also implied disobedience because Christians are called to pray for their leaders, regardless of their spiritual condition or their political affiliation. Paul and Peter asked those to whom they wrote letters to pray for the Roman leadership. It was inexcusable for a Christian book store to put something like that in front of their customers.
These verses are not a model prayer to pray about anyone. To do so would be to take this passage completely out of its context. Psalm 108 is a psalm of David and it is a lament and a cry for God's help. In these specific verses, David is articulating the thoughts of his enemies and their accusations against him. He imagines them, in their criticism of his leadership, uttering these words about himself, and he includes them in this psalm as a cry for help from God to protect him from them.
Taking it out of its context to apply it for use as a prayer against the sitting President of the United States is the kind of misuse of scripture that most Evangelicals consider to be blasphemy of the inerrant, infallible written word of God. So for a sitting Republican member of Congress (whom I will not promote by mentioning her name as a representative from Colorado) to suggest its use it as a prayer against President Biden is blasphemy. And the lack of respect it shows toward the elected President of the United States, regardless of political differences, is an indication of this representative's lack of fitness to serve. That is misuse of scripture, and shame on the Evangelical Christians who have enjoyed it as some kind of joke, or took it seriously. It's characteristically and categorically anti-Christian.
But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your father who is in heaven. Jesus, the Christ, Matthew 5:44 ESV
President Biden would never say something like that about even his worst enemy in the Republican party. And in that regard, his integrity and character stand out in sharp contrast to his shrill critics on the far right who don't know the difference between political debate and calculated insults.
This misuse of the Bible occurred as the Representative was making a campaign speech in a church auditorium, which makes it even more of an affront to true Christian faith. It characterizes the speaker's ideology as being something other than Christian. Aside from all of that, churches are not political theaters or political action committees and if that's how they behave, then they're not churches.
It would be just as wrong to insert a Republican politician's name in the blank, and call these same verses a prayer for them. During the four years of the Trump administration, I frequently prayed that God would change his mind, protect us from his incompetence and ineptness, keep the country safe, give wisdom to those around him so that they would have the courage to keep him from ruining the country, minimize his extremism and prevent him from being elected again. There were a lot of prayers being said during the insurrection, and I continue to pray for justice to be done. But I would never pray that harm would come to anyone because I disagree with their politics.
The public promotion of this use of Psalm 108, and the manner in which it was used against the President stands in contrast to his integrity and character, and demonstrates her clear lack of both. It is, along with a whole resume of similar words and deeds, clear evidence that she is neither a spokesperson for Christian faith, nor qualified to serve in the Congress of the United States.
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