Can ISIS help us understand the Bible?
Gerald R. McDermott
Sept. 1, 2014
ISIS is one of the most blood-curdling movements on the planet. In their slaughter of thousands of innocents, its soldiers have crucified Christians simply for being Christians, and killed Shi’ites for not being Sunni. Human Rights Watch has shared reports of children being beheaded, and others being buried alive.
Good-willed people all over the world are horrified. They cry out for action against this evil movement, hoping the leaders of the free world will do something.
While we cringe—and pray—we can also learn something. About one of the most difficult parts of the Bible. 
For centuries Jews and Christians have had trouble with the imprecatory psalms—those in which the psalmist asks God to destroy his enemies. Take Psalm 69, for example.
22 Let their own table before them become a snare;
and when they are at peace, let it become a trap.
23 Let their eyes be darkened, so that they cannot see,
and make their loins tremble continually.
24 Pour out your indignation upon them,
and let your burning anger overtake them.
25 May their camp be a desolation;
let no one dwell in their tents.
26 For they persecute him whom you have struck down,
and they recount the pain of those you have wounded.
27 Add to them punishment upon punishment;
may they have no acquittal from you.
28 Let them be blotted out of the book of the living;
let them not be enrolled among the righteous.
Believers have wondered how God could have inspired these lines. Did he really suggest to the psalmist a prayer that divine anger would “overtake” his enemies so that “no one” would “dwell in their tents”—that is, so that no one would survive after their being attacked?
What about Jesus telling us to love and forgive our enemies? Would Jesus join us in prayer that our enemies—his enemies—would be destroyed?
Well, he used this very psalm to speak of those who “hated” him “without cause” (John 15.25), and his disciples thought this psalm referred to the only thing Jesus did which could be considered violent—his turning over the tables of the money changers in the Temple (John 2.17).
Still, turning over tables is a far cry from killing people. So how could Jesus, whom Bonhoeffer and others have said prayed the psalms as his own prayers, have prayed this prayer of imprecation in Psalm 69?
ISIS provides a clue. Its savagery helps us understand how God’s people could pray for the destruction of evil men and their armies.
But it is not only ISIS. In the recent Gaza war Hamas used children as human shields, undoubtedly causing the deaths of little ones. Boko Haram in Africa kidnaps girls and sells them as sex slaves. It saws off the arms of children to punish petty theft. The North Korean regime routinely tortures and kills political dissidents, including those who commit the unspeakable crime of practicing Christian faith.
C.S. Lewis wrote that the imprecatory psalms “serve as a reminder that there is in the world such a thing as wickedness and that . . . is hateful to God.”
Today it is clear that there are powers of wickedness prowling the earth. ISIS, Hamas, Boko Haram, and the North Korean government show us afresh why God’s prophets (the psalmists were prophets) could call for the destruction of the wicked.
Christians are reminded that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against . . . the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph 6.12 ESV). So our battle is not precisely against people, but the forces of evil that drive certain groups of people.
But the bottom line is that there are times when we can pray that God would destroy forces of wickedness, knowing that those forces drive real movements like ISIS. And in those times, the imprecatory psalms can teach us how to pray.
Gerald McDermott is Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion at Roanoke College. The author of many books on Jonathan Edwards, world religions, and Christian theology, his blog site is www.northamptonseminar.com
