Psalm 58

Psalm 58 is a hard one. I know you probably won’t go read it right now just to see what I’m talking about, and it’s too long to quote the whole thing in a blog entry. So I’ll summarize. It starts out like this:

Do you indeed decree what is right, you gods (or mighty lords)?
Do you judge the children of man uprightly?
No, in your hearts you devise wrongs;
Your hands deal out violence on earth.

After this the psalmist launches into a verbal attack on the wicked men who poorly rule and judge. They are like venomous snakes, they speak lies, and they have fangs like young lions. He calls to Yaweh, the covenant God of Israel, to tear out these fangs from their mouths, to let the wicked be like a snail that dissolves into slime or a stillborn baby who never sees the sun. To top it off, the psalmist declares that the righteous will rejoice to see such vengeance and will “bath his feet in the blood of the wicked.”

Yikes.

There are some immediate red flags that go up when we encounter such disturbing imagery in the scriptures. First, we get angry with the arrogant psalmist. “Who is this guy to be thinking of himself as righteous and everyone around him as wicked? Hasn’t he heard of original sin? Doesn’t he know that he is wicked too?” Second, there is the apparent contradiction between the Old and New Testaments. “Jesus says to love and pray for your enemy, but this psalm is basically calling down violent curses and wishing for the death of other people.”

How do we make sense of these kinds of questions? Are they the right questions to ask? Can such a passage possibly speak to us about the God we call to and follow today? Or are we better off to leave it behind and stick with the New Testament and milder Old Testament passages like psalm 23 and psalm 120? Here are a couple observations that can help us understand the place of this psalm and similar ones in the life of the scripture-reading church.

1.The last couple lines. Part of the answer lies in the last lines of the psalm, which (to be fair) I haven’t talked about yet. This is how the psalm finishes:

Mankind will say, “Surely there is a reward for the righteous;
Surely there is a God who judges on earth.”

This assertion forms a kind of bookend. It places God the righteous judge against the present judges and lords who are violent liars. This comparison helps us to see that at the core of all the distracting imagery, the psalmist is calling out and looking forward to a day when Yaweh will work his good judgment on the earth.


2.On earth. This is an important little phrase because it reminds us that the whole Bible tells the story of God’s saving work upon the earth. The widespread idea of salvation as something that happens to an individual’s spirit after he or she dies simply does not fit with the scriptures. Rather, the Lord’s acts of creation, the formation of Israel, and the giving of the Law and the prophets are all part of his work on earth. All of these led up to the incarnation of Christ on earth, and it is in the person of Jesus Christ (his ministry, death, and resurrection) that the God of the scriptures dealt with evil and began his kingdom on earth. Hence, the promise and hope of God’s people in the church age is the full coming of this just kingdom, the bodily resurrection, and communion with the Father on the renewed earth.

Until that time, part of what we do is observe the evil and injustice around us, as the psalmist does, and call out to the Lord. Our crying out demonstrates our belief that he has worked and is working still to bring about salvation and righteous judgment of evil on earth (as opposed to the present flawed judgment exercised by corrupt human lords).

3.One more thing, which is not an observation but a digression. Many people these days find themselves unable to call out to the Lord in earnest as the spirit of this psalm beckons us to do. This is a problem because, regardless of their speech or reasoning, such an incapability or unwillingness reveals unbelief. Young, disenchanted postmoderns observe evil in the world and, rather than calling out to a just, compassionate, and powerful God, they change God into an absentee creator—a watch-maker who wound things up and walked away at the beginning of time. He cannot be reached now, they say, so what would be the point of calling to him? We might as well work for the bettering of the world through our own community-based undertakings, which also happen to be hip and trendy.

On the other hand is a group of people whose over-spiritualized version of Christianity has left God just as impotent. This kind of Christianity (from which many of the disenchanted postmoderns have fled) makes few concrete demands about how its adherents function on the earth because it understands belief God as an individual and subjective matter. God is a spiritual being, they reason, so he mostly cares about what happens in the “spiritual” realm. Of course, such an attitude bars them from even entering into the kind of indignation voiced by the psalmist as he observes the outworking of evil on the earth.

The irony is that both of these attitudes are but two sides of the same coin of Enlightenment thought. The Enlightenment is the thought movement that began in Europe after the Reformations and laid the foundation for modernism by removing God from the default worldview the masses. Its voices include people like Voltaire, Hume, and Thomas Jefferson. According to scholar N.T. Wright, the Enlightenment’s basic goal was this: “Kick ‘God’ upstairs, make religion a matter of private piety, and then you can organize the world to your own advantage.”

Such an attitude has survived in various forms for centuries, and in many cases the church simply re-voices this message while mixing it with select passages of scripture.

Continuing with the examples above, the first group says, “God is a distant creator who is not involved in the activities of the world; therefore, I’m not bound to his moral imperatives. I can order my life however I want” (a.k.a pursue social justice through mostly human ends while tipping my hat to ‘God’ and sleeping with whomever I please.)

The second group says, “God is a spiritual being mostly concerned with spiritual happenings; therefore, I will be okay as long as I make a regular appearance at church activities because these are the places where spiritual things are dealt with. Other than that I can order my life however I want” (a.k.a. make war on or otherwise oppress whomever I want in order to maintain the way of life on the earth to which I am accustomed.)

Both of these approaches come quite naturally to many professing Christians today, but they are each a far cry from the kind of faith to which the Lord, through the scriptures, calls his people. If we do not work hard to do business with the Bible as a whole, including difficult passages like psalm 58, our inherited-values will be what truly guide us and shape our view of God, his world, and his desire for his followers.

Disciples and the Shame of the World

Bonhoeffer was a serious dude. I want to be like him. I like what he says here about the role that Jesus’ disciples play in taking on the shame of the world as they follow him. It comes from Cost of Discipleship. (Please forgive all the sexist pronouns, I’m just quoting the guy.)

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”

These men are without possessions or power, these strangers on earth, these sinners, these followers of Jesus, have in their life with him renounced their own dignity, for they are merciful. As if their own needs and their own distress were not enough, they take upon themselves the distress and humiliation and sin of others.

They have an irresistible love for the down-trodden, the sick, the wretched, the wronged, the outcast and all who are tortured with anxiety. They go out and seek all who are enmeshed in the toils of sin and guilt. No distress is too great, no sin too appalling for their pity. If any man falls into disgrace, the merciful will sacrifice their own honour to shield him, and take his shame upon themselves. They will be found consorting with publicans and sinners, careless of the shame they incur thereby.

In order that they may be merciful they cast away the most priceless treasure of human life, their personal dignity and honour. For the only honour and dignity they know is their Lord’s own mercy, to which alone they owe their very lives. He was not ashamed of his disciples, he became the brother of mankind, and bore their shame unto the death of the cross. That is how Jesus, the crucified, was merciful. His followers owe their lives entirely to that mercy. It makes them forget their own honour and dignity, and seek the society of sinners.

They are glad to incur such reproach, for they know that then they are blessed. One day God himself will come down and take upon himself their sin and shame. He will cover them with his own honour and remove their disgrace. It will be his glory to bear the shame of sinners and to clothe them with his honour. Blessed are the merciful, for they have the Merciful for their Lord.

On the El and Thinking

Highways and public transit are
the root system of the business district.
Each day the trains and traffic pulse the same.
Over hundreds of square miles of land,
well beyond the city’s drip line, they stretch
to take in life and make the tower grow.

Years ago Anderson wrote of this giant
who then crept through the nation’s quiet fields
slowly taking hold of our talent, our creativity,
our gifts of heaven. Over time we came to
him with increasing willingness—with progress
in our minds and science
on our side and money to be made.
And we forgot about life.

This morning I dissolve again into
the grey day’s workforce.
I am a brooding nutrient
packed into a stuffy vessel tottering on
elevated tracks toward the tall buildings
at Lake Michigan’s shore.

Each time the train car stops it reveals
the frightening silence of working people
on their lonesome way. A few times
I dare to look the other human beings
in the eye. Without speaking we
ask one another, “If we are all
doing our part to help something live,
why do we feel so dead?”

Inspiration From a Smiling Child

This evening a little girl sitting in a grocery cart smiled at me. She was probably one and a half, with dark hair hanging in curls beside her dark eyes. Her mother was deliberating between boxes of cereal as I strolled past with my plastic basket full of groceries, my hand gripping my shopping list scribbled on a note card. The girl watched me. Her stare, curious and innocent, and the freedom with which she moved brought tears to my eyes for just a second after I passed by.

What made the moment poetic? I think it was her simplicity. A child knows very few things. Chief among these are her own hunger and thirst and the safety that accompanies familiar or friendly people. She does not know about budgets, sale prices, the four food groups. Her mind does not grow weary analyzing the ethics behind or her diet or guessing at the thoughts in the minds of strangers. She has not yet learned the fear instilled by the governing forces of a society or the shrewd art of dealing with people. In short, she knows and believes in goodness, and from this simple belief all of her actions flow.

It takes a long time to regain the kind of faith we had as children. For those who have not embraced the promise and truth of Christ, restored trust in Goodness and the restful and free life that grows from it may never come. And of course, we who are reborn in faith still face continual hardships that batter down our hope in the goodness of God. The weight of getting on in the world descends and divides us so that few of our actions are linked to a clear motivation or a single, deep conviction.

Nonetheless, to have the simple trust of children is part of the Christian hope. The Lord draws us to rest in himself. He heals us over and over from the wounds inflicted since our memories began, and through it we hold to the truth of the good Father and the coming good Kingdom. Even through the stings of suffering and the drudgery of living, our lives can resemble the beauty of children at play. They can inspire the same kind of startling wonder as the little girl who smiled at me in the grocery store.

A Psalm for "Nones"

Recently I spoke with some friends about the destiny of disillusioned, church-raised twenty-somethings. A few of us were visiting with a college friend who now lives in the Pacific Northwest, and the conversation started something like this, “So I heard you don’t go to church anymore either.” I found it particularly telling of the Generation Y experience.

Though I am a member of the local church where I was raised, I feel that I best fit into this allegedly growing demographic that some culture monitors call the “nones.” These are people who claim no official ties to a denomination or congregation yet consider themselves people of active Christian faith.

I get lost in the terminology—postmodern, emergent, neo-monastic, anarcho-primitivist, house church, intentional community, missional community, ect. The books, websites, and seminars where this language is born serve as both public representations and facilitators of cultural movements. At the most basic level, the jargon reflects different limbs of the Church asking the same questions about how to practice life in Christ.

My own study, prayer, and practice have certainly taken shape under the influence of larger thought patterns. After all, we are all individual actors living within complex systems of influence that shift with the ages. It is precisely for this reason, in fact, that we must wed ourselves to the treasure and truth of the Scriptures, allowing the story of God’s saving action in the world to form our identity and guide our lives. To this end, I have found myself reflecting often on Psalm 131, which is a fitting prayer for a generation of restless skeptics. Here it is:

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up;
My eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
Too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,

Like a weaned child with its mother;
Like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, hope in the LORD
From this time forth and forever more.

Hebrew scholar Robert Alter describes the first four lines of this psalm as “images of reaching beyond.” How fittingly this describes the striving and stirring of many believing young adults. We move from place to place and group to group, looking for a sense of belonging. We promote our ideas and ministries hoping to gain a feeling of satisfaction. We debate with others and perpetually question ourselves, waiting for validation or peace of mind. Much of this behavior flows from our legitimate effort, as individuals and as a body, to understand the faith we have inherited and how it relates to our experiences.

Often in these efforts, however, we do not realize that we are reaching beyond the source. This is where the psalmist introduces the image of a weaned baby. A weaned child no longer receives the nourishment she craves. Milk no longer flows at her desire, so she fusses and cries. She does not understand. But eventually she learns to rest against the source itself. Calmed and quite, she knows the presence, goodness, and love of her mother, even if her belly still hungers.The psalm’s closing line admonishes Israel to hope in (or wait for) the Lord with contentment, trust, and intimate familiarity with Yahweh.

My prayer for myself and my generation is the same. We are skeptical that our questions can be answered, but hopefully this attitude will lead us deeper into the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge. Like babies, we fuss and squirm and start smoking and quit going to church, but hopefully older generations will bear with us and be for us the patient presence of the One who is truth and provides rest. Because of injustice and systemic evils, we pout with God and try to recreate him to our liking; but hopefully we will find the humble clarity to see our blunders and trust his goodness.

Hopefully we will learn not to lift our eyes to lofty doctrines or new philosophies for comfort. Instead may we lean against our Father. From beneath the verbiage of our age, he invites to know him and hope in him even when he withholds from us the answers and direction we desire.

Scripture as Story

Do we best approach the Scriptures as a directive for holy living or as a true story to which we belong? Recently I have been thinking about all the reasons that the latter is more appropriate. Here are a few words of explanation.

We have to recognize, first of all, that there are always strong societal forces telling us who we are, what is true, and how to act. For example, the modern economy to which are all bound ascribes value to people based on how they contribute to it; thus, the resulting American tendency to let our work identify us and justify our existence.* We are also told over and over again that we need to be able to buy certain things in order to live respectably. The default path to achieve this (these days) is to go into debt for a degree, then find a full-time job so that you can pay off the degree and earn what you need to pay for everything else. Also, our culture continually impresses upon us the concept of individual rights, the importance of self-sufficiency, and the prerogative of well-being ensured by man-made powers. These are some of the gods of our age.

I recognize that it is foolish to descend into fruitless critiques of society. As a twenty something reared in postmodernism, I am careful to avoid being infected with the disease of thankless cynicism in this regard. However, it is important to assess the value system into which we are born, understand how it effects the way we practice our faith, and make adjustments accordingly.

Certainly, we are no less bombarded by the untruth of idols than the ancient Israelites were in their day. Warning and punishment for idolatry permeates the Old Testament. To exist among the pagans often brought Israel into very practical situations that boiled down to a simple decision.**

For example, when drought threatened their crops, they had a choice: call on Yahweh or call on Baal. In picking one or the other, they proclaimed who gave them truth. Yahweh reminded them through the Law, the Feasts, the Psalms, and the Prophets that He chose them, created them as his people, and therefore merits their obedience. But they believed that they belonged to the false stories of the pagan gods and found their identity there. Through the same means of grace, Yahweh also assured them that his covenant and his promises are true, but they embraced instead the truth handed to them by their environment.

Accordingly, their practice flowed from their beliefs. As the story of the Old Testament goes, over and over the Israelites’ feet carried them not to the tabernacle but to pagan shrines. Their routines brought them not to the reminding rituals of Sabbath, Jubilee, and the reading of the Law, but to pagan fertility cults.

The point of God’s revelation to humankind has never been to tell us what to do and what not to do. After all, Paul describes the Law as something given by God to lead his people to himself, incarnated in Jesus Christ (Gal. 3:24).

In a day where our society’s forces speak to us just as powerfully as the pagan powers beckoned the Israelites, we need to be reminded who we belong to. This is ultimately the point of Christian rituals like teaching from the Scriptures, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, celebrating communion, baptizing, gathering for fellowship, and using certain greetings. Even in the daily routines of the home, such practices should serve to remind us that we are not a people of the world. Our behavior is not guided by the gods of self-sufficiency and individual rights; rather, it flows from our knowledge of the One to whom we belong. His call, to believe in the death and resurrection of Christ and follow him in suffering, will lead us to places quite different than the call of our culture.

* Sherwood Anderson sheds light on the role of work in the modern American psyche in his novel Poor White. Set in the late 1800s, the story follows the life of a lonely Missourian who moves to Ohio. Longing for a sense of belonging, he starts inventing farm machinery and views his work as a portal of entry into the small town’s community. Though he becomes a successful and famous inventor, his inner-person remains unknown as he searches for companionship.

**In The Prophetic Imagination Walter Brueggemann describes the Exodus as an event where God redefined truth and the source of knowledge for his people by showing that the Egyptian gods and their dogmas were false.

Journaling, May 2010

What will Salina township be like in 20 years? How many more people will live in these 36 square miles? How many of the gravel roads will be paved? How many of the fields will have been sold off and turned into housing developments? Will Warner Bridge road be an interstate bypass lined with gas stations, shopping centers, and fast food restaurants?

If so, all those things will only be the continuation of the prairie's “development,” a process that started in this area in the 1830s. More layers of laws and ordinances. The expansion of habitation onto new ground, creating new pockets of producers and consumers that further link the land itself to a complex economy.

For example, the place where I'm trespassing (I mean sitting) right now—some acreage with woods, field, and old farm buildings whose owner lives in the Chicago suburbs. Part of this land is farmed, the produce sold to the food industry and the profits split between the farmers and the owner. The wooded grove where the farmhouse used to be, all this land does is sit here. The owner pays property taxes on it. Grass and trees and flowers grow on it. Deer and squirrels and raccoons and birds live on it. A farmer stores some equipment in the old shed. That's it.

If someday they turn it into another wooded rural subdivision, like Timberline a mile to the southeast, there will be x number of lots on which people will build homes. The homes will be connected to Exelon through power lines. They will have gas tanks filled by Kinder Morgan or Nicor or whoever. They will be filled with people whose income comes from some professional field or industry and who live off of commodities purchased from giant companies. They will use fossil fuels to work and go to school and go to church and mow their yards. They will form a home-owners association that says the grass cannot be over a certain length. They will expand the duties of their educational and postal district. And so on, and so on.

All of those things are true of my own home and family, more or less. We settled down on the corner of 4000 and 8000 roads in 1987 and starting doing all of those things. And we were only following my great great grandparents, Abraham and Amelia, who brought their own share of progress to Kankakee County from Pennsylvania in the 1850s. The place, and the forces which guide the patterns of life for those living here, have changed loads since the days when they passed Sunday afternoons sitting on the porch, like my folks and I did today. And it will change, I think, with frightening rapidity in the coming generation.

The sights and sounds and smells that I have enjoyed growing up here are changing and will continue to change. Another bridge will span the river. Bourbonnais, Limestone, Manteno, and Kankakee will expand and join together (Just like Kanakakee, Bourbonnais, and Bradley, first called North Kankakee, used to be geographically separate.) The sound of cars will come closer, drowning out the birdsongs. Aging farmers and property owners will die and their children will sell the land to developers. None of that is new; it's been happening my whole lifetime and my parent's whole lifetimes, at least.

All of this is not necessarily bad, either. To a degree, it's just that: necessary. Population is growing, and people have to live somewhere. But with the coming of new things, old things are lost. That's the story of the Midwest, and it is of course how history in general works. One tribe makes war on another and then occupies their land. Indians are removed, and the land that once was hunted is cultivated by new animals and new people planting new crops. Those people die or sell their land because they cannot keep up with the demands of the changing market, and it is farmed by new people with new machines and new methods. Next it passes to the hands of developers and then is lived upon by people whose means of living lies elsewhere—commuters.

The hope should be that people move this whole process forward in a way that somehow recognizes and values the things that are lost. In so doing, we can ensure that those things are not completely lost. And this is important because it reminds us that creation (including people themselves) has value beyond the monetary value ascribed to it by the modern economy. It has value because people and creatures have lived upon it and called it home. People call this nostalgia, but hopefully I've made a case that there is more to it than that.