I know we are supposed to pray for our enemies and wish good upon them. And I do that. But I sometimes wonder, is it a waste of time because the Lord knows my heart. And in my heart I genuinely dont want good things for that person who steals my car. I want him to crash in that stolen vehicle.
So my question is: should I still pray for that person? This is a hypothetical btw, no one has stolen my car, just making an example.
I have been praying for evil people because the Bible tells me to do so, and as for my genuine feelings, I always put that up as "flesh vs the spirit", my flesh is fighting the spirit. But am I just praying for no reason if I genuinely dont feel love towards that person?
What do you guys say?
There are at least four different kinds of knowing;
1) Propositional knowing - learning to make truth claims about things. That car is mine. My car is yellow. The person who took it is a thief.
2) perspectival knowing - Learning to see the incident of your car being stolen from your own perspective; seeing the disappearance of your car from the thief's perspective; seeing the disappearance of your car from the police complaints officer's perspective; or from your spouse's perspective; or from God's perspective. From birth we begin to see only from our own perspective. As we interact with others we realise that they "know" different things by observing from their own perspective, than we do. They observe details we miss, and vice verse. A more comprehensive and realistic description of reality comes from taking into account and integrating several perspectives on the same situation.
From your perspective - now you need to replace the car which will cost you money and time. You need to find a way to get places until you have sorted insurance and replaced the car.
From the thief's perspective , he has managed chase after the car he saw his child abducted into, or he has the opportunity to make some money tp buy the drugs, or pay the rent, or buy food for his family, or pay for some urgent medical treatment.
From God's perspective He get's to see, and to show you, how much you trust in Him to meet your needs, vs. how much you are trusting in yourself and your possessions for your security. He has an opportunity to be your deliverer, if you will trust Him to deliver you. He sees the emptiness of the thief's life that the thief is trying to fill with thrills, money and things. Maybe He can use the consequences the thief suffers to lead him to change his priorities.
3) Procedural knowing - learning how to do things -
Learning how to lean less in ephemeral things and to seek more for eternal things; Knowing how to forgive those who offend us;; how to bless those who have cursed us; how to deal with the grief of loss.
4) Participatory knowing - learning how to play my own unique role coooperating with others playing different roles, in order to achieve some common goal - like being a pitcher in a baseball game working with all the other players in both teams to help your team score more runs and dismiss the other team with fewer runs while keeping within the rues and being sportsmanly.
Learning how to work with God and agencies and the thief and his acquaintances to foster reconciliation between yourself and the thief, and God and the thief. and to foster change for the better in ourselves and others.
You are asking whether following the rules of the game (God's principles) when you feel like cheating and fouling the opposition because they fouled you, is what the Umpire wants, or He would rather you follow you true feelings and strike out at the player who offended you. The true point of sport is to develop a virtue of sportsmanship, not to win vaingloriously by flouting the rules of the game.
One fruit of the Spirit is self-control. You are developing that fruit by playing within the rules and denying give urge to give vent to feelings of resentment and hate,