There he was: a humbled, humiliated man. He’d made some grand mistakes, yes, but did he really deserve this? Sure, he’d completely thumbed his nose at the concept of journalistic integrity in the pursuit of his own career … and maybe he’d stepped on a few little people on the way up … but did Eddie Brock really deserve to be fired and ostracized?
Well … yes.
Nevertheless, like many others before him who found themselves at rock bottom, Eddie turns to God for a solution. He approaches the cathedral with reverence, dipping his fingers into the holy water and genuflecting with all appropriate veneration.
He kneels in the empty cathedral and begins to address God:
“It’s Brock, Sir.” Good start, that. Calling God “Sir” can never hurt.
“Edward Brock, Jr.” Just in case God didn’t know who he was.
“I come before You today,” Eddie says, pausing to choose the right words, the emotional wounds apparent as he struggles to get them out, “humbled … and humiliated … to ask You for one thing.”
This is good. This is a good way to start a prayer: acknowledging your own weakness and God’s strength. Not bad, not bad at all. Ask away, my son.
“I want You to kill Peter Parker.”
You can almost hear the needle scratching across the record. Do what? You don’t have to be a super-Christian to know that Eddie’s heart is totally in the wrong place. Sort of crossing the line there, Eddie.
But what kind of prayer should Eddie have prayed? We find the answer in Matthew 6, in what has come to be known as “the Lord’s Prayer.” In this passage, Jesus was holding forth on a variety of topics, preaching about this and that, and these are His thoughts on the subject of prayer. Let’s start with verses 5-8:
And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
So far, so good. No, Eddie isn’t in his room, but he isn’t on the street corner trying to show off with his prayer; the cathedral he’s in is empty, except for the priest walking around in there (well, and Peter about to start stumbling about in the bell tower). Eddie doesn’t “keep on babbling like pagans,” but keeps his prayer short and sweet. It would appear that he’s on the right track.
Let’s keep going and see what Jesus has to say in verses 9-13:
This, then, is how you should pray: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
Let’s see … Eddie gets the first part sort of right. That “Sir” he throws in at the beginning is at least respectful, even if it’s not an outright “Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We’ll just assume that’s what he means by “Sir.”
We can also assume that Eddie’s concept of “daily bread” is “kill Peter Parker,” which is … not quite right. Revenge isn’t really something you can chow down on, every day. It is something that a lot of people try to feed themselves, but it is never satisfying. Rather, it’s a destructive force that only kills you the more you feed on it. Sort of like trying to quench your thirst with paint thinner.
Moving on, we come to another troublesome part: “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Perhaps Eddie doesn’t really feel like he has any debts that need to be forgiven, and is therefore off the hook when it comes to this particular part of the prayer. Perhaps.
But then, blowing that notion out of the water, Jesus gives us verses 14-15: “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” That’s pretty cut and dried. If you’ve messed up—and Eddie knows that he has messed up—then you’re in need of forgiveness. And if you’re in need of forgiveness, you have to forgive others.
So instead of praying that God will strike down Peter Parker in some sort of grand, Old Testament-style way (perhaps the ground opening up and swallowing him?), Eddie should pray something along the lines of, “It’s Brock, Sir. Edward Brock, Jr. I come before You today … humbled … and humiliated. And I pray that You will help me to forgive Peter Parker for messing up my life so badly.”
Something like that would have been good. Not to let Eddie off the hook, because he flouted the rules of journalistic integrity and needs to be disciplined for it. Peter’s motivations were improper—he was trying to get Eddie fired out of spite and malice—but his actions were correct. Eddie’s deceit needed to be exposed.
But after that happened, Eddie still needs to forgive Peter. Because he needs forgiveness himself. Eddie needs to look to the model prayer Jesus gave us in Matthew 6:5-15 and determine how it applies to his life and situation—before he goes into that cathedral to pray. Because not only does his prayer not get answered while he is in there, but the very thing that had influenced Peter to expose Eddie—the symbiote—attaches itself to him. Eddie becomes what he despised in Peter.
All because of a selfish prayer.
It’s sometimes tempting to twist our prayers to meet our own concerns. To go to God and say, “But they really hurt me, so can You make them pay a little, please?” But that just isn’t the type of prayer that will get heard. When we pray like that, we’re merely exposing our own shortcomings.
Instead, when you pray, use the Lord’s Prayer as your model. And if you have trouble with that, just remember the prayer Jesus offered in the Garden of Gethsemane, moments before He was captured, just hours before He went to the cross: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39). That’s simple enough. State your request, then fall back on this: Not my will, God, but Yours. Here’s what I want, but if that goes against what You want, then I’ll do what You want instead.
That’s the type of prayer God wants to hear. Try it out and see what happens.