Can Prayers be Malicious?

A reader writes:

Here’s a puzzler for ya, although I imagine you might have thought about it before. By the way, I’m asking a layman because I’m not confident that my local Priest would know any better, and anyway a Priest’s role is not to be a “dispenser” of Catholic answers; if anything, answering such questions is more appropriate for lay apologists like yourself.

So here goes. Is it possible for someone to pray “for” another in a malicious way? I’m thinking of someone who has done and continues to do harm to another, who denies any guilt and scapegoats the other, who then prays “for” the victim to “repent” of sins he/she has not committed.

I assume somehow such prayers would remain “effective” for the intended “beneficiary” in ways unintended; in other words, one can’t “repent” for sins one has not committed, but maybe the “beneficiary” nonetheless receives whatever benefits God decides he really needs. But can prayers be said for sinful intentions such as scapegoating others and rationalising that one is morally superior?

Certainly prayers can be malicious. I have a reader who regularly writes me to say he prays for my death–and a particularly painful death, followed immediately by my damnation to the everlasting fires of hell. Truly malicious prayers always tend to wrap themselves in the flag of Justice or Tough Love or Discipline so that the pray-er doesn’t have to face the fact that s/he is full of malice and spite and is motivated by the devil. No doubt Judas Iscariot prayed fervently that God approve what he was about to do. We have an enormous capacity for lying to ourselves.

Most of our malicious prayers are, I suspect, far more venial than that. As one person has observed, “I’ll pray for you” is often Christianese for “F*** you.” And to be sure, that’s often true (though more often, it’s just an attempt to end a conversation with a jerk charitably by doing what Jesus commands and praying for your enemy.) Still, we Christians have our ways. One favorite one is to expose somebody’s sin and get a large circle of tongues clucking about That Awful Person Over There “so we can pray”. Gossip for Jesus is a particular favorite.

Sometimes what appears to be malicious prayer is simply honesty with God. The psalms are this way when they curse (read Ps 109 for instance). This is good naked anger that we’ve all felt, ranting at God and giving the psalmist (and therefore us) permission to unburden ourselves of the rage we all feel from time to time when somebody really wounds us. Telling God how you feel is no sin. Acting in vengeful malice on that anger is.

I think you are right that God turns such prayers to good in some way. The story of Balaam is sort of the classic illustration with this. God will not be used as a Stepin Fetchit for our distorted desire for power. He is not an Avenging Genie who does evil for us if we tag on the magic words, “in Jesus’ Name.” Certainly we are called to turn such curses to blessing as best we can. “Bless those who curse you” etc.