Well, let’s give this another try from a different angle. I’m concerned about what the religious right, or perhaps more accurately a segment of the religious right is becoming. The latest efforts from the lunatic fringe include bumper stickers and T-shirts saying, “Pray for Obama, Psalm 109:8.”

In case you haven’t memorized all 150 Psalms, I’ll break it down for you beginning in verse 8 and reading into verse 9 – which is certainly part of the Obama reference:

“May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership. May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.”

When Scripture admonishes us to “pray for our leaders,” I don’t think it means to pray that they are assassinated. This rhetoric is far from justifiable regardless of what one’s politics might be!

When the apostle Paul wrote that “the letter kills” (2 Corinthian 3:6) he just might have had in mind the echoes of a religious lunatic fringe that once employed their sacred scriptures to do away with another prominent voice in history – Jesus. The justification for that deed came from the cries of those recorded in John 19:7 as they exclaimed, “We have a law, and by that law he ought to die.”

This sort of reasoning did not come as a surprise for Jesus, who earlier read the corrupt and violent hearts of these religious leaders and said, “You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44).

Religion and violence – it’s a marriage made in hell that’s unfortunately been with humankind since the beginning – and it’s time it ceases.

Jesus looked at the religious elite’s motives and the violence within their hearts and did not mince words. Perhaps it is time for those of us who follow Jesus to stand up and do the same today. Enough is enough.

To read more background on this story, see Frank Schaeffer‘s incisive analysis here.