I am one of the people who called Cafe Press and expressed outrage when they reinstated the sale of the Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8 items.
I am one of the people who believes those shirts are a lame attempt at an "inside joke" about wishing Obama would be assassinated.
Cafe Press is hiding behind the correct observation that Psalm 109 verse 8 is relatively benign:
May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership.
But Psalm 109 verse 9 says
May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
Psalm 109 goes on to ask that no one take pity on his fatherless children, and even throws in a dig at his mother: may the sin of his mother may never be blotted out.
Now I am not a violent person by nature, and not the kind of person who tolerates advocating violence, but I abhor hypocrisy, and I have thought of a hypothetical situation that would quickly expose the IOKIYAR double standard about these t-shirts.
Suppose someone created a t-shirt that said:
Pray for Sarah Palin: Psalm 137:8
Would Cafe Press (or anyone else) allow the sale of those products?
After all, according to the logic they used when they decided to sell the Obama merchandise, the actual verse cited on this hypothetical t-shirt falls under the umbrella of harsh but acceptable anti-candidate speech, since Psalm 137 verse 8 reads:
O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us
However, Psalm 137 verse 9 reads:
[happy is] he who seizes your infants/little ones
and dashes them against the rocks.
I predict that within a matter of hours this news would be ALL OVER the corporate owned media as an example of "attacking" Sarah Palin, and attacking her children, not because of the actual verse on the shirts/mugs/bumper stickers/baby bibs, but because of the clearly expressed threat in the verse that immediately follows.
And that is the exactly the same reason so many of us are complaining about the Obama Psalm 109:8 shirts. It is all about CONTEXT.
Modern people are so used to seeing bibles with numbered verses that we sometimes forget that the numbers were added pretty late in the game, especially when it comes to the First Testament. To quote the beginning of a section is sometimes considered shorthand for quoting a longer section. That certainly used to be the way the Psalms were treated--reading the first verse was the same as referencing a Psalm in its entirety. Separating verses that are right next to each other is the scriptural equivalent of splitting hairs.
Cafe Press and anyone else who does not acknowledge the wider context in this Psalm 109 anti-Obama merchandise has their fingers in their ears singing la la la I can't hear you.
Meanwhile Pox News, Lonesome Rhodes Beck, Caribou Barbie herself and their ilk are just pretending that they don't know what that reference is really meant to signify for the population that is buying and wearing and using that merchandise.
You can bet those fingers would come out pretty fast, their tune would change, and their attitude would turn on a Reagan dime (!) if Pray for Palin Psalm 137:8 items were being sold anywhere. They would not let us hide behind calling it a "joke". Whenever they saw someone wearing or displaying Pray for Palin Psalm 137:8 they would go into their righteous fury at full blast.
And every single person reading this blog knows I am right about that!
LBNL, as a liberal who knows the Bible better than 99% of all the wingnuts I have ever met, the thing that pisses me off the most is the idea that someone thought this was going to be their little inside joke. Someone assumed that "liberal heathens" don't know scripture (and can't even use teh Google) so they could wear their Psalm 109:8 stuff right in front of us and we would not never catch the reference to assassination.
I swear it is at times like these that I wish most desperately that progressive Christians like me had a bigger megaphone. Then "Christ-free Christian" wingnuts would know better than to throw this kind of insult at my President thinking that I wouldn't notice... thinking they could have their nasty "joke" and laugh at it and laugh at me for not getting their nasty "joke".
I get their God-damned [sic] "joke" and I have the knowledge to throw something just as bad back at them. But I'm not that kind of person. They have not moved me to that level of vindictiveness. Although some days it takes all the spiritual strength I have to keep from hating them and throwing back on them the slime they have thrown at us multiplied a hundredfold.
But because I take scripture seriously and I take Jesus seriously, I cannot hate them because I have been called to love my enemies. No matter how hard it is. I prayed for GWB and Cheney and all those guys for the entire eight years of that God-awful [sic] administration. I prayed for their hearts to be turned toward true justice and honest leadership and genuine compassion for their fellow man. Evidently my prayers must not have too much pull up there, but at least I saved my own soul from being consumed with hate.
If these so-called Christians really wanted to follow the Jesus they claim to serve, and if these same folk think Obama is their enemy, then they should love him. They should do their best to keep from hating him and stirring up others to hate him.
Otherwise they are serving another master: the master of deception who comes to hate and kill and destroy.
Otherwise they are proving the old adage that the Devil can cite scripture for his own purpose.
Even though most of them don't know that adage is taken from Shakespeare, not the Bible.
In the meantime, I actually am praying for my President using this prayer adapted from the Beatitudes, Matthew 5:11-12:
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you falsely because of me.
Rejoice and be glad, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who came before you.