Christians and Jews, it is time to take a stand and defend the book of Psalms from a disgusting new trend.

A new slogan is quickly making the rounds on bumper stickers, T-shirts, teddy bears and as an Internet meme. It says: "Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8."

Instead, pray for any item with that slogan to end up in a landfill. Pray, and then confront those who display and distribute the slogan. With compassion and tact, tell them it makes mockery of Judeo-Christian scriptures and values.

It's great to pray for the president. People of all faiths, regardless of political persuasion, should pray that President Barack Obama succeeds in ways that lead to more freedom, peace and prosperity — and less government — for the United States. It's fine to distrust Obama, to dislike his politics and oppose him as a politician while hoping for the best.

What nobody should do is promote the message of Psalm 109:8, in a political context. The psalm says: "Let his days be few: and let another take his office."

Sure, "his days be few" could mean one term, and it's fine to pray for that. But the scripture continues: "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labor. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him; neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out...."

Not much in the Hebrew Bible is cuddly and soft. It's fire and brimstone. Psalm 109 conveys the prayer of an individual who has come under the attack of a wicked enemy without a cause: "In return for my love they are my adversaries; but I am all prayer." — Psalm 109:4. The individual confesses the kind of personal weakness that could lead to such anger: "For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me. I am gone like the shadow when it lengtheneth; I am shaken off as the locust." — Psalm 109:22,23. "Help me O LORD my God; save me according to Thy mercy." — Psalm 109:26.

The psalm paints a dark and maudlin picture of human pain and weakness, manifest in anger, pain, vengeance and surrender. It's not something a person of faith should use out of context, or as a pithy political jab.

One purveyor of Psalm 109 items is CafePress.com, a retailer of avant-garde apparel that features bold slogans: "Jesus was a social activist liberal"; "Jesus saves, but Jews invest wisely"; "What would Jesus do? First, he would be Jewish."

The company briefly discontinued the Psalm 109 items out of concern they advocate violence. The decision was quickly overturned, and a company spokeswoman told ThinkProgress "we have determined that it is fair political commentary."

Legal? Absolutely. Fair commentary? Not really. Idiotic? Absolutely.

It's a message that asks us to pray for the widowing, orphaning and long-term suffering of President Obama's wife and kids. It's appropriate for contemporary political discourse only among savages. Though it probably won't cause violence, it will most certainly cast new aspersions on Christians and Jews and their scriptures.

Americans routinely question why peaceful Muslims do not express more outrage when minority factions of Islam spread hatred and terror. The silence, or perceived silence, of peaceful Muslims harms their culture's reputation.

Christians and Jews who fail to renounce "Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8" will do themselves no favors. It's a scripture of personal desperation in response to horrific suffering. Its misuse as a political statement is nothing less than a message of violence.

Genuinely faithful Christians and Jews should be noticeably disgraced, no matter how much they may want a new president in 2012.

REPRINTED FROM THE COLORADO SPRINGS GAZETTE