Can we stop using “I’ll pray for you” as a retort in social media?

I’ll pray for you. How many of you have tweeted or commented that on facebook when you were in a huff over something somebody else said and you wanted to stick it to them in a way that would show that you’re rising above it like a good Christian? I’ve done it before. And it’s time for us to stop doing it, because it mocks God to turn “prayer” into a retort on social media. As Dianna Anderson very astutely observes, “I’ll pray for you” often serves as saccharine Christianese for “F*** you.” If the first phrase is being substituted into a heated conversation where the second phrase would fit, then it doesn’t matter if I can’t see what’s really in your heart, because you’re using the word “prayer” in a way that mocks prayer.

So let’s look at some examples of the disingenuous “I’ll pray for you” in action. I decided to block out the tweeter’s identity to be merciful even though what they wrote is public domain.

What’s wild about this one is the way that 39 people retweeted it and 54 people favorited it. What exactly does it mean for them to do that? I wonder if the person being dissed in the tweet is known to the retweeters or if they’re the mostly anonymous twitter followers that most of us are who are simply retweeting what sounds like a poignant put-down. How magnanimous this person is to pray for a terrible person and then offer her piety to the world as an example.

Again it’s clear that the main point of the tweet is to attack the character of the person being responded to. It sounds like there’s some real hurt on the part of the tweeter which I can sympathize with. I understand and have myself experienced the compulsive need to subtweet a retort when people in real life mistreat me. I don’t think that’s necessarily wrong in itself. Sometimes when we’ve been stepped on, we need the “likes” and “favorites” of our friends who weren’t there to pick us back up again. But leave prayer out of it!

This is exactly what Jesus was talking about when he said not to pray “on the street corner so that you may be seen by others” (Matthew 6:5). And it’s not even prayer. It’s a false declaration that you’re going to pray. I also saw a bunch of tweets from teenagers who used the “I’ll pray for you” in a completely joking way, like “If you think ______ is a great TV show, I’ll pray for you.” So the phrase’s abuse by holier-than-thou Christians has led to it becoming just another meaningless secularized phrase like OMG.

Now there’s a very different thing you can do when you’re having a contentious conversation with someone and it has the opposite effect of saying “I’ll pray for you.” What if you said instead “Please pray for me”? Then you’re not using a sacred act as a scornful retort. Asking someone to pray for you is an act of vulnerability and trust especially if you’re at odds with that person. It’s disarming. If I actually pray for people I’m mad at because they asked me to, then my attitude toward them is going to be very different than if I threaten sarcastically to pray for them.

Jesus does say, “Pray for those who persecute you.” We absolutely should do that as an act of discipline. But there’s no legitimate reason to tell them that’s what we’re doing. So please do pray for me if you feel called to do so. I need all the prayer I can get. But don’t cheapen it by making the threat to pray for me into a patronizing gesture.