Why I’m Not Praying Against Brock Turner

I don’t think it would help to return hate for hate.

I don’t believe that it heals Creation, to ask the Creator for another violent act.

I have been taught, and I have come to believe, that where there is no love, we are to pour in love, if we hope to draw out love. I’m not naive enough to think this works in a perfect one to one ratio; I don’t think loving a person will force them to love me. I don’t think that acting loving in an abusive situation will make the abuse disappear. I don’t believe that loving Brock Turner will force Brock Turner to see the error of his ways, not in the way that a hex and a black candle was meant to force him to suffer. I don’t imagine that every time I’ve stopped myself from cursing my own rapist, that that has somehow benefited her.

I believe that it benefits me. I believe that, if I choose to be love where there is no love, there will, at minimum, be love in me. When I choose to open myself to Christ instead of His enemy, while wearing the human body, the icon of Christ, that there will, at minimum, be Christ in me. And if there is Christ in me, I can walk into the place where there is no love, and remain in love. No matter what the enemy does to me, I can remain in love, and love will be the living water which sustains me. And when there is love in me, somehow, love can heal the place where I am. Love can work against the place where there is no love, like water works against stone, wearing it away until the stone is no more.

Love can provide the opportunity– not the compulsion, but the opportunity– for conversion and repentance and real Justice, the justice that redresses all wrongs. The justice that could provide Brock Turner and everyone like him with a chance for conversion, not without consequences, not without clear understanding and the agony of real horror at their sin– which must be more painful than pine needles in the stomach. The justice that could restore what they destroyed. The justice that brought Christ down to earth and below the earth, into the bowels of Hell, releasing the captives. The justice that draws God to allow Himself to be wounded, so that Men can be healed.

I don’t know how this is possible, but I believe.

I am going to offer my own prayer for Brock Turner, and for my rapist, and for anyone who would hurt a human being in that way. Not because they deserve it. They deserve hexes and pine needles and every curse imaginable. But because Creation deserves it, and because I want to be love. You can pray with me if you like. Maybe we can offer thousands of prayers of love, just as the mass hexing cast thousands of curses. Maybe we can begin right now.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, through the prayers of Mary, have mercy on Brock Turner, a sinner. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, through the prayers of Mary, have mercy on all rapists. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, through the prayers of Mary, have mercy on all of us sinners of which I am the worst. Lord Jesus Christ, through the prayers of Mary, have mercy on us. Amen.

(Image via pixabay)