Posted on 08/28/2025 3:46:49 PM PDT by lightman
Hours after a young man who appeared to identify as a woman and to hate Christians opened fire on Catholic primary school students at Mass on Wednesday, leftist Twitter had identified a culprit: prayer.
“Prayer is not freaking enough. Prayers does not end school shootings,” wrote Jen Psaki, former White House press secretary and an MSNBC host. “Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers.”
“Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying,” lectured Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.
“Forget about thoughts and prayers,” echoed CNN host Dana Bash, describing Frey’s position as one “most people feel.”
Manuel Oliver, whose own son was killed in a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., went on CNN to say “thoughts and prayers this time are out of the picture. I mean, these kids were actually praying … the God they were all praying to, and still they were shot.”
The implied argument is, if prayer didn’t protect these young Christians from being killed, it must be useless or at least insufficient. There’s a transactional undercurrent to these protestations: that these children placed their faith in God and He failed to hold up His end of the bargain.
Every Christian who has ever experienced suffering has wrestled with the question of why God does not prevent every tragedy. I’m sure the parents, siblings, grandparents, and friends of the victims are grasping for answers to those questions now.
But it’s quite another thing to mock and belittle the prayers offered by students at the Annunciation Catholic School Wednesday morning, or the prayers offered by loved ones and strangers mourning the tragedy. Such mockery betrays an arrogant misunderstanding about not just the power but the purpose of prayer.
The primary purpose of prayer is not to have your desires, however good they may be, granted. If it were, God could simply provide the material answers to all your wants; He has no need for you to ask. Rather, prayer exists to sanctify us, to give us tangible opportunities to have our faith strengthened, to give us a deep and personal knowledge of God and His love for us, to conform us to His likeness, to remind us of our reliance on Him, and to bring Him glory. Oswald Chambers described prayer as “the way that the life of God in us is nourished.” Its purpose, he wrote, was not “getting things for ourselves” but “that we may get to know God Himself.”
To reject prayer because it is not answered in the way you hope is to take too small a view of prayer. Christ Himself prayed for outcomes that sovereign God declined to grant.
“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me,” Jesus prayed shortly before His arrest and crucifixion. “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”
The Gospel of Luke adds this: “there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him.”
Sometimes God does not answer prayer by providing the specific solutions the beseeching Christian deems desirable, but by “strengthening him.” Or, as Chambers put it: “To say that ‘prayer changes things’ is not as close to the truth as saying, ‘Prayer changes me.'” Certainly, the children praying at school on Wednesday morning did not believe their prayers would insulate them from every earthly harm, as my former colleague Emily Jashinsky pointed out.
Those manipulating Wednesday’s tragedy to mock the earnest prayers of Christians reveal their own ignorance and selfishness. At its most charitable interpretation, their ridicule admits a transactional view of God, one in which they take it upon themselves to decide whether His provisions are sufficient. At worst, it echoes the mockery of the crowds who looked upon the crucified Christ and dared Him to save Himself. Like Wednesday’s scoffers, they observed an unanswered prayer and mocked what they perceived as a lack of God’s power:
…those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads 40 and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” 41 So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, 42 “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43 He trusts in God; let God deliver him now…”
Contrast that reaction with that of the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15, which Charles Spurgeon used as the basis of an 1861 sermon on prayer. She begged Jesus to heal her daughter, Matthew writes, “but He answered her not a word.” Rather than take offense at His silence, Spurgeon observes, she continued to kneel before Him.
If you know the story, you know Jesus was eventually moved by her faith and granted her request. But Spurgeon used His initial non-answer to encourage Christians who feel their prayers have been ignored, reminding them that Christ has already proven His love and compassion.
“How canst thou think so wickedly of him as to suppose that he, who once died, the Just for the unjust, now that he lives again, has an adamantine heart, and no bowels of compassion?” he asked.
For Christians, including those who lost loved ones on Wednesday, the compassionate mercy of God can provide this comfort, even in the face of unimaginable loss. Those twisting Wednesday’s tragedy to mock God, on the other hand, should swiftly repent. For them, another exhortation of Spurgeon’s is appropriate:
Oh, that some here who never prayed would begin at once! Trust in Jesus, the Intercessor, and let that trust show itself by pleading the merit of his blood in earnest prayer. Oh, that you would now begin that holy life of prayer which shall lead up to the eternal life of praise at the right hand of God.
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While thoughts and prayers are significant I also don’t think they are enough. The demonic trans cult needs to be shut down. Even Europe (once at the forefront of the trans cult movement) is dialing things back and taking a long look at their affirming policies. We are seeing similar inroads in the United States regarding national and state laws.
Minnesota IIRC is a trans-safe state, where even teenagers can come in from other states to “escape” their conservative rules and get affirming transgender treatment.
What does prayer have to do with not getting shot by a demon possessed shooter?
What I find most notable about this is the dim record regarding crime in general of which we have decades and decades of. Like they are the ones who are going to prevent and reduce it. Yeah right.
“The anti-Christian left revealed its true ugliness yesterday.”
I’m almost 70 and I’ve always sensed and as I got older,
then known, that leftists were evil.
Funny thing is that of all religions only Christians are taught to Love your enemies.
That doesn’t mean you let your enemies butcher you.
Aye, and many a first through fourth century Christian Martyr smashed the Idols-—directly leading to their receiving the Crown.
Yup, continuing to reject God.
Doubling down on their eternal fate.
God WILL give them what they want, an eternity without Him. But I doubt they’ll like it very much.
Because in the end EVERY knee WILL bow, either willingly or unwillingly. He’s giving us the choice to do it willingly now.
Later is too late.
Pray Without Cessing...
Is the Way.
.
Corrie Ten Boome said;
“There’s No Pit that God’s
Reach is Not Deeper”
.
Prayers are Mortal speech
Reaching for The Immortal.
.
We are in a Spiritual War.
The assumption is that the children were praying at the time. The Left is mocking prayer and God for allowing the kids to be shot.
“The anti-Christian left revealed its true ugliness yesterday.”
Is there any other kind of left? They believe that by adopting laws they can solve all problems and reach perfection. They are gods in their eyes.
On the Two Comings of Christ*
Cyril of Jerusalem
We do not preach only one coming of Christ, but a second as well, much more glorious than the first. The first coming was marked by patience; the second will bring the crown of a divine kingdom.
In general, whatever relates to our Lord Jesus Christ has two aspects. There is a birth** from God before the ages, and a birth from a virgin at the fullness of time. There is a hidden coming, like that of rain on fleece, and a coming before all eyes, still in the future.
At the first coming he was wrapped in swaddling clothes in a manger. At his second coming he will be clothed in light as in a garment. In the first coming he endured the cross, despising the shame; in the second coming he will be in glory, escorted by an army of angels.
We look then beyond the first coming and await the second. At the first coming we said: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. At the second we shall say it again; we shall go out with the angels to meet the Lord and cry out in adoration: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. The Savior will not come to be judged again, but to judge those by whom he was judged. At his own judgement he was silent; then he will address those who committed the outrages against him when they crucified him and will remind them: You did these things, and I was silent.
His first coming was to fulfil his plan of love, to teach men by gentle persuasion. This time, whether men like it or not, they will be subjects of his kingdom by necessity.
The prophet Malachi speaks of the two comings. And the Lord whom you seek will come suddenly to his temple: that is one coming. Again he says of another coming: Look, the Lord almighty will come, and who will endure the day of his entry, or who will stand in his sight? Because he comes like a refiner’s fire, a fuller’s herb, and he will sit refining and cleansing.
These two comings are also referred to by Paul in writing to Titus: The grace of God the Saviour has appeared to all men, instructing us to put aside impiety and worldly desires and live temperately, uprightly, and religiously in this present age, waiting for the joyful hope, the appearance of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Notice how he speaks of a first coming for which he gives thanks, and a second, the one we still await.
That is why the faith we profess has been handed on to you in these words: He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
Our Lord Jesus Christ will therefore come from heaven. He will come at the end of the world, in glory, at the last day. For there will be an end to this world, and the created world will be made new.”
– The Catechism, circa AD 360.
White liberal ‘elites’ want ‘action’?
Fine. Here’s my thoughts and prayers...
Thought: when a trans goes nuts and wants to kill innocent children, they should consider killing the doctor who sexually mutilated them instead of killing innocent children. Would God condemn an innocent young victim who killed Joseph Mengele?
Of course NOT killing anyone is the best thought... not killing ‘the doctor’ included...
And my prayer? That before killing anyone, if the plan is to kill themselves AFTER the slaughter of innocents, my prayer is that the trans kills himself/herself FIRST - - BEFORE. NOT AFTER. Or better?
Better? Better that the trans seeks help before any deaths and evil and pain - that’s ‘thoughts and prayers’...
And other action? More security for Christian and Jewish schools...
Jen psaki
God does not control men who are evil. Man is completely evil as this kid proved.
Agree. I was posting the mayor’s belief
Really.
What would happen if an angry relative of someone killed by one of these freaks were to hunt down and kill everyone who affirmed their pathology beginning with the parents, then move onto the doctors, counselors and politicians....
Yep.
AMEN.
“The anti-Christian left revealed its true ugliness yesterday.”
____________________________________________________________
Perhaps, but the knee-jerk response of “thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families” is nothing more than a lazy canard. God gave us intelligence to use in solving human problems.
“Thoughts and prayers” is a big show of doing nothing.
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