Prayers & Images

A video post that never should have been made

By Brad Isbell

Today, my church’s morning worship service opened with a call to worship by an elder and sung congregational praise. Then the pastor offered a prayer of invocation, making it clear who was being worshiped and why the congregation had assembled. At the end of this, the congregation recited what has come to be known as the Lord’s Prayer, though in fact ought to be called the Believer’s Prayer or, even better, the Congregation’s Prayer since it is addressed to “our” Father. It is not a prayer that Jesus could have prayed, since he never sinned and needed no forgiveness.

Any Christian or Christian church can and should pray this prayer; the gathered church is the ideal setting for it, since the church is “the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God.” So, should any Christian offer, speak, or post this prayer for any cause or in any way that seems good? We must say, in agreement with the Westminster Larger Catechism, no. It is required, says the catechism, that God’s word “be holily and reverently used in thought, meditation, word, and writing,” and warns that “misapplying” the Word is a sin. U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s recent social media post using this prayer arguably fails the basic tests of appropriate context, holy and reverent use, and application.

An official Department of War video featured Hegseth reciting the prayer over footage of soldiers, weapons, ships, aircraft, missiles, and explosions. Naturally, the video closed with an image of the President, Vice President, and Hegseth—the martial became the political, a Christian prayer serving both ends.

Context matters in communication. Now, for a few seconds at the beginning of the video, we see Hegseth praying with soldiers gathered outdoors. We don’t know if this was a worship service of and for believing soldiers or some other kind of event, and in the end, this does not matter. What matters is the confusion and irreverence of such a presentation.

In the video, a corporate Christian prayer is repurposed for departments of the Federal Government. In the service of those departments, no doubt, there are a number of Christians, whether a minority or a plurality, none can say. Most of the actions of the armed forces are good and noble, and Christians can serve the U.S. military in good conscience. But can a Christian apply to the military of a specific country a prayer of the Christian church without confounding church with state, and without confusing both believing and unbelieving citizens, whether they be patriotic, disaffected, or undecided?

Just as who Jesus is matters, so does it matter who and what the church is—both the “He” and the “we.” The mission of the church versus the mission of civil government (whose power certainly includes that of the sword) is also confused by the video. What is it that we see and hear in the video? What are we meant to take away? The ministry of the church of Christ, for whom the prayer is intended, is reconciliation between God and man (2 Corinthians 5:18) and to provide a place to grow and protect a worshiping people. It is a spiritual mission, transnational, peaceful, enforcing no law but Christ’s eternal one; the military’s mission is earthly, national, necessarily violent, acting at the will of a shifting and temporary ruler or government. To serve the President as Commander in Chief is not the same as bowing the knee to King Jesus. The church should make this clear; this video does not.

Kingdom confusion can be the only result of such a message conveyed via such a medium. A social media post is, first of all, a social media post. It must be short, visual, and at a level of sophistication and depth comparable to cave drawings, which were literally the first memes. And the very words of Christ deserve more reverence, more context, and more care than what amounts to a recruiting commercial. The gospel is simple, but understanding it, applying it, and living it out is the work of a lifetime. And it’s good news about gracious historical events—the death and resurrection of the sinless, utterly unique God-Man—not the old story of wars and rumors of war, of might too often making right, and of violence and death that prove difficult to justify, ending up many times, in bitter hindsight, with regret, sorrow. and recriminations.

Words matter, but so do pictures. The Second Commandment ought to give Christians pause concerning the use of images, especially for spiritual purposes. Uncritical use of images is one of the chief failings of the modern church; cognitive dissonance—contradictory words or pictures, held or put together thoughtlessly—too often characterizes the ethos of the church. The messages we send about the very word of God and Christ of whom it speaks matter eternally. We can hope that this ephemeral video will be forgotten by next week and that the confusion it engenders will be replaced with gospel clarity from Christians who know who they are and to whom they owe ultimate allegiance.