PITTSBURGH — At a worship service held at the Pentagon two Wednesdays ago, the Secretary of Defense prayed for the success of American troops fighting in Iran, and presumably anywhere else he sends the military. “Behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous,” he declared. “Snap the rod of the oppressor, frustrate the wicked plans and break the teeth of the ungodly. By the blast of your anger, let the evil perish. Grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence.”

Pete Hegseth assumed America’s perfect godliness. “Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation,” he continued. “Preserve their lives, sharpen their resolve and let justice be executed swiftly and without remorse, that evil may be driven back and wicked souls delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them.”

In probably the worst line, he asked God to give American soldiers “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” He concluded with a claim that God approves of everything he had said: “We ask these things with bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ, King over all kings and amen.”

Hegseth’s offense

I normally argue from basic humanism, broadly shared (I hope) by most Americans. Not perfectly enacted, of course, but held at least aspirationally. Like, as I argued on Sunday, that we must protect children from profit-making predators.

But this prayer is such an offense to Christianity that as a Catholic I feel bound to respond, especially in Holy Week. To look only at the probably worst line, there is no one, no one at all, who deserves no mercy. God is a God of mercy, shown supremely in the events of Good Friday. Christianity proclaims that Jesus died as much for the Iranian Ayatollah as for the American Secretary of Defense.

I asked my friend Dennis Allan, the co-pastor of Garden City Church on the North Side, for his thoughts on the meaning of mercy for Christians. It’s an evangelical congregation, though a very different kind of evangelicalism than Hegseth’s church’s. Garden City’s website gives as their values being multi-ethnic, inclusive, justice-oriented, empowered, generous and burden-bearing, tying them to what they find in the Scriptures.

Jesus pointed out that people listening to him had been told to love their neighbors and hate their enemies. That’s a rational and even common-sensical way of living. It’s the natural human ethic. Do good to the people on your side and screw everyone else. (Though G.K. Chesterton pointed out a complication: “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”)

Jesus said no to that belief, Dennis explained. He said, “No, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, and when you do it’s evidence you’re a child of God.” As Jesus used it, the word “love” tells you to “keep on loving your enemies regardless of their response or merit.”

God’s love

Loving that way, Dennis said, “involves actively seeking the well-being of one’s enemies. This kind of enemy-love is the human enactment of God’s love for the world. It isn’t just ethical obedience. It doesn’t seek to destroy or damn. This kind of love gives to another what is needed to live and flourish. This kind of love is mercy’s source, motivation, and animating power.”

The prophet Micah told God’s people to be people who love mercy. “Israel’s greatest enemy might not have been their external enemies, but their propensity for internal self-deception. It’s as though they believed that because God had chosen them, He would also endorse their violence. That when they refused to extend mercy, God would agree with their decision.”

A Christian knows that the prophet’s instruction and warning apply entirely to Christianity. We see it in our blood-stained history, including horrific antisemitism. It is what religious people do, especially when they have identified their faith with their nationality.

In America, that identification extends far beyond overt “Christian nationalists.” When America goes to war, even normal Christians seem to imagine Jesus looking down from a cloud holding a beer and chanting, “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

Claiming that some people don’t deserve mercy repudiates Christianity, which is to say, Jesus himself. It justifies hurting your designated enemies in any way you wish. It imposes no restraints, requires no care for the other person. It justifies war crimes.

Jesus, Dennis said, gave us “this clear ethical imperative: ‘Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.’” For Christianity, “there is no person or nation that does not deserve mercy. When we refuse to extend mercy, we deny God as our Father. When we deny mercy, we shout to the world that God is judgmental and quick to anger.”

We lie about God, in other words. He continued: “When our public witness is marked by an almost joyful kind of condemnation, we fail to image God to the world in faithful, transformative, and counter-cultural ways. We are meant to be ambassadors for a God who is rich in mercy.”

A prayer you can’t pray

One may believe that what Christianity teaches about mercy — and what Dennis and I believe across our differences, because it’s basic or mere Christianity — is wrong if not ridiculous. You may believe that it won’t work or will make the world worse, that it’s dangerous naiveté or sentimentality. (That, as Hegseth might say, it lacks the necessary “lethality.”)

Those are plausible claims. You would have evidence for them. But a Christian can’t reject his faith’s central belief that God loves everyone and offers everyone infinite mercy and we must as well.

Asking God to give American soldiers “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy” is not a Christian prayer. It’s a prayer from the pit of hell.

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