When Stephen prayed for those who were stoning him to death, that God not lay this sin to their charge, that prayer was answered in the conversion of Saul of Tarsus who was in the crowd that was stoning him.
I've admired for years those who actually live that way. You'd think that would be enough to change me but alas I'm a hard case. I'm thinking of Pastor Josef Tson who was persecuted for his faith in Ceaucescu's Romania, his precious library destroyed, and he himself beaten at periodic interrogations. He asked his wife to make tea for those who were destroying his library, and he prayed for the interrogator who had him beaten.
Another wonderful example was Corrie Ten Boom's sister when they were in the concentration camp because they had protected Jews from the Nazis in their home, and the sister -- Betsy? -- I'm not sure of her name, was sick and weak and the Nazi who had charge over the work they were commanded to do was harsh with her for her weakness in doing the work, and I don't remember exactly what she said but it was something that blamed herself for her weakness and more or less apologized to her tormentor. She died in the camp soon after that. And after the war when Corrie was speaking somewhere that Nazi who had tormented her sister came up to her aftgerward to say he'd been saved. Corrie at first didn't even want to shake his hjand but then realized it was what God would have wanted. The man was saved, and very likely because of the Christian witness of her sister.
And another favorite example is the stpry of the young KGB officer who was assigned to break up Christian house meetings in the sixties and seventies, and during one raid a woman prayed out loud that the Lord would forgive him, to which he reacted with rage and lifted his club to hit her, at which point he felt a hand grip his uplifed arm and prevent him from striking her. There was noone there, just an invisible hand. He panicked and fled the house, but that was the beginning of his conversion. He had a torn piece of one of the gospels that did the converting. (Some years later he made a dramatic escape off a Russian ship on which he was an officer, swam through icy water to the west coast of Canada and for some time lived among Christians there until the KGB caught up to him)_
So here's the ideal. It can only be built on a deep love of Christ and we need to pray for that first. But when the Inquisition puts us on the rack we are to pray for our torturers. When they put us in the iron maiden we are to pray for our torturers. When they starve us to death we are to pray for our torturers. When they raise the scimitar to behead us we are to pray for our torturers. .
So when they censor us today we are to pray for them. When they lie and call us racists and white sepremacists we are to pray for them. That doesn't mean we stop working against their evil policies of course, seeking jjustice, it just means we are to forgive them presonally, as individuals, for they know not what they do.
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