So I hear that Jimmy Kimmel doesn’t want our prayers.
Well, not exactly. But he did, in a very emotional monologue,
decry politicians who offered their “insufficient” prayers, saying they should
instead pray for forgiveness regarding their inaction on gun control.
On one level, I understand his frustration. Las Vegas is his hometown.
I know from my Columbine experience that when attacks hit close to home, the
horror becomes more real. It feels personal. And Kimmel, like the rest of us,
wants to do something to keep this from ever happening again.
My purpose here isn’t to wade into the gun debate. Rather, I want
look at the prayer side of Kimmel’s monologue. Because I suspect many of us are
feeling the same way. “Our prayers don’t seem to be helping.”
But are they? Is prayer just another failed tactic? If we are
asking, “Have our prayers stopped the violence?” then obviously they haven’t.
It continues.
But making that the only gauge of “successful” prayer misses the
point of who God is.
Of course, I could no more explain God and the mystery of
suffering than I could manufacture a mountain range. But I do know what God has
revealed about Himself to us in Scripture.
I know that He hates evil. He hates the destruction of innocent
life. And the man (or woman) who destroys innocent life will face His judgment.
But He gives us free will, which we can use for good or for evil. And ever
since Adam and Eve used it to defy Him, evil has been let loose into the world.
And the God Who loves us and intervenes in human history does not always
intervene to prevent it. He in fact didn’t prevent the physical evil
perpetrated against His own Son.
Why? We can’t fully know. His ways are above our ways. He sees
this world through the lens of eternity. We are all destined to die, whether in
our beds at a ripe old age or at a Jason Aldean concert in our prime. It is
evil for one man to take the place of God in deciding when another man should
die. But the greatest evil is not the loss of our earthly life. It is the loss
of the eternal life that God desires to share with us. His interventions into
human affairs are, I suspect, most often geared toward guiding us toward our
eternal destiny than toward keeping us safe and comfortable in the here and
now.
Most important, I know that “all things work for good for those
who love Him, and walk according to His ways.” All things. Even the choices of
evil men. If He could use Roman executioners to bring about our salvation, He
can bring good from any evil.
Have our prayers been answered? Yes, even if we can’t know the
extent. Has He thwarted other attacks? Has His hand of protection minimized the
casualties? And, more important, have our prayers impacted the eternal fate of
those whose lives were lost?
I know we see His love in action in the heroism of first
responders and others on the scene. We see it in the outpouring of love and
support from a grieving world. And we know that He is with us as we grieve and
as we search for solutions.
God isn’t a god who protects us from every evil that could befall
us in this life. He is the God of all consolation — the God who knows suffering
because He suffered, who walks with us in our suffering and works it all for
the greatest good, our eternal salvation.
So in this situation, like all others, we need to act. We need to
work toward effective ways of protecting innocent human life. But as we do
that, we also need to pray earnestly and consistently.
All of us. Even politicians. Even Jimmy Kimmel.
Bonacci is a syndicated columnist based in Denver and the
author of We’re On a Mission from God and Real Love.