Psalms - Understanding Them
From the book "The Bible Jesus Read" by Philip Yancey
Part Three
We shall conclude this study as taken from Philip Yancey's
book "The Bible Jesus Read." All capitalization for emphasis is
by myself.
Quote:
PRAISE CHORDS
On a different note, the psalms also teach how to ADORE and
how to PRAISE, activities that Americans perform with notorious
awkwardness. We have not the tradition of British subjects, who
curtsy to the Queen and never interrupt her. We feel more
comfortable roasting politicians in comedy revues than bowing to
them......
PRAISE takes the instinctive response of SHARED ENJOYMENT
(ever try keeping a great joke to yourself, or the fact that you
just got engaged?) and RAISES it a few notches. "Tell me the
old, old story of unseen things above," says one old gospel song,
and praise is partly that......
Flanney O'Connor once wrote an essay about her PEACOCKS and
the REACTIONS they would get as they unfurled their feathers to
present "a galaxy of gazing, haloed suns."
One truck driver yelled, "Get a load of that!" and braked to
a halt. Most people would fall silent. Her favorite response came
from an old black woman who simply cried, "Amen! Amen!" That
woman understood PRAISE.
In praise, the creature happily acknowledges that everything
good and true and beautiful in the universe comes from the
Creator……
To DEVELOP praise, I have found, it helps to hang around
CHILDREN. They have no problem BURSTING OUT in spontaneous praise
when something impresses them……
Authors of the psalms, especially David, had an advantage in
praise because of their closer ties to the natural world. David
began life outdoors as a shepherd, then spent years hiding from
Saul in the rocky terrain of Israel. Not surprising, a great
love, even reverence, for the natural world shines through as a
whole, with everything upheld by a personal God watching over it.
This message, above all, leaped out at me during my
frustrating attempts to read the psalms in Colorado. I could not
fit together all the contradictory messages I was reading, but
the magnificent wilderness setting at least affirmed the message
of God's grandeur, his WORTHINESS......How could I not offer
praise to the One who dreamed up porcupines and elk, who splashed
bright-green aspen trees across hillsides of grey rock, who
transforms that same landscape into a new work of art with every
blizzard?
According to the psalms, praise need not be sober and
reflective. The psalmists praised God with SENSUOUS ABANDON, and
as a result their worship services may well have resembled a
modern PEP RALLY more than a sedate symphony concert. "Sing for
joy! Shout aloud!" they command.
Musical instruments in those days included CYMBALS,
TAMBOURINES, TRUMPETS, RAMS' HORNS, HARPS, and LYRES.
Sometimes DANCING erupted. The world, in the psalmist's
imagination, cannot contain the DELIGHT God inspires.
A new song breaks out: "Sing for joy to the Lord, all the
earth, burst into jubilant song" (98:4). Nature itself joins in:
"Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together
for joy" (98:8).......
When the ancient Hebrews encountered something BEAUTIFUL or
MAJESTIC, their natural response was not to contemplate the scene
or to analyze it, but rather to PRAISE God for it and maybe write
a poem. Their fingers itched for the harp; their vocal cords
longed for the hymn. Praise, for them, was JOY expressing itself
in song and speech......
"Of all the creatures both in sea and land
Only to Man thou hast made known thy ways,
And put the pen alone in his hand,
And made him Secretary of they praise" - George Herbert
REALIGNMENT
Eugene Peterson, recent translator of Psalms, admits that
only a MINORITY focus on PRAISE and THANKSGIVING; perhaps as many
as SEVENTY PERCENT take the form of LAMENTS. These two
categories, says Peterson, correspond to the TWO LARGE
CONDITIONS in which we find ourselves: DISTRESS and WELL-BEING. I
have never conducted a survey, but I have a hunch that the
average Christian bookstore REVERSES the proportions: at least
seventy percent of the books, plaques, and gift items speak to
our WELL-BEING, while a much smaller percentage speak to our
DISTRESS.
King David SPECIFICALLY ordered that his people be TAUGHT
how to LAMENT (2 Samuel 1:18). The lament in Psalms has little in
common with WHINING or COMPLAINING. We whine about things we have
little control over; we lament what we believe ought to be
changed. Like Job, the psalmists clung to a belief in God's
ultimate goodness, no matter how things appeared at the present,
and cried out for JUSTICE. They lamented that God's will was not
being done on earth as it was in heaven; the resulting poetry
helped realign their eternal beliefs with their daily experience.
Dan Allender, A Christian counsellor, asks,
"To whom do you vocalize the most INTENSE, IRRATIONAL -
meaning inchoate, inarticulate - ANGER? Would you do so with
someone who could fire you or cast you out of a cherished
position or relationship? Not likely. You don't trust them -
you don't believe they would endure the depths of your
disappointment,confusion.....the person who hears your
lament and far more bears your lament against them,
paradoxically, is someone you deeply, wildly trust....The
language of lament is oddly the shadow side of faith."
Because many psalms were written by Israel's leaders, the
book offers a unique behind-the-scenes view of a people's
emotional history......In Psalms we can read what a king prayed
after committing adultery and murder, and what he prayed after
escaping an assassination attempt, and after loosing a crucial
battle, and after dedicating a new capital city to God.
I once did an exercise to try to better understand
David……
The seventy-three psalms attributed to David offer a window
into his soul, especially since some of them have introductory
comments revealing the actual circumstances in which they were
written. I decided to read from David's spiritual diary of psalms
first and then, from the evidence of the 'inner' record, try to
imagine that 'outer' events prompted such words. Afterwards I
turned to the historical account in the books of Samuel and
compared my inventions with what had actually taken place.
In Psalm 56 (which includes the famous words, 'In God I
trust') David gratefully credits God for delivering his soul from
death and his feet from stumbling. As I read the psalm, it
sounded to me as if God had MIRACULOUSLY INTERVENED and rescued
David from some predicament. What ACTUALLY happened? I turned to
1 Samuel 21 and read the story of a SCARED prisoner who drooled
spittle and flung himself about like a madman in a desperate
attempt to save his own neck. There was NO MIRACLE, so far
as I could see, just a CANNY renegade with strong survival
instincts. Perhaps David cried out to God in desperation, and in
that moment the IDEA of FAKING INSANITY came to mind - if so, he
gave God ALL the credit and saved none for himself......
Psalm 57 introduces a new tone, of WEAKNESS and TREMBLING.
David's faith must have been wavering when he wrote that psalm, I
surmised. Wrong again, When O looked up the historical account in
1 Samuel 24, I found one of the most EXTRAORDINARY displays of
defiant COURAGE in all of history.
Psalm 18 gives a summary of David's entire military career.
Written when he was undisputed king at last, it recalls in
incandescent detail the many MIRACLES of deliverance from God. If
you just read that psalm, and not the background history, you
would think David lived a CHARMED and SHELTERED life. The psalm
tells NOTHING of the YEARS on the RUN, the all-night battles, the
chase scenes, and the wily escape plots that fill the pages of 1
and 2 Samuel.
In short, if you read the psalms attributed to David and
then try to envision his life, you will fail miserably......What
can explain the disparity between the two Biblical records
of David's INWARD and OUTWARD journeys?
We all experience both an INNER life and an OUTER life
SIMULTANEOUSLY......
David seemed to view life differently. His exploits -
killing wild animals bare- handed, felling Goliath, surviving
Saul's onslaughts, routing the Philistines - surely earned
him a staring role. Nonetheless, as he reflected on those events
and wrote poems about them, he found a way to make Jehovah, God
of Israel, the one on center stage......
David had confidence that he mattered to God. After one
narrow escape he wrote:
"God rescued me because he delighted in me" (Psalm 18:19). When
David felt betrayed by God, he let God know: it was he, after
all, who first said the words, "My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?" He called God into account, insisting that God keep
up his end of their special relationship......
Somehow, David and the other poets managed to make God the
gravitational CENTER of their lives so that everything RELATED to
God.......
I am trying to make the prayers first prayed by the Hebrew
poets authentically MY prayers. The New Testament writers did
this, quoting Psalms MORE than any other book. The Son of God on
earth did likewise.......
The psalmists PANTED for God with their tongues hanging out,
as an exhausted deer pants for water. They lay awake at night
dreaming of "the fair beauty of the Lord." They would rather
spend one day in God's presence than a thousand years elsewhere.
It was the advanced school of faith these poets were enrolled in,
and often I feel more like a kindergartner. Now that I've started
to read Psalms again, maybe some of it will rub
off.
POSTSCRIPT
Problem Psalms
You don't have to read Psalms before encountering some troubling
passages, FURIOUS OUTBURSTS hidden like landminds in the midst of
SOOTHING pastoral poetry. Some seem on the level of 'I hope you
get hit by a truck!' schoolyard epithets. 'Imprecatory
psalms' these are called, or sometimes 'vindictive psalms,' or,
more bluntly, 'cursing psalms' because of the curses they rain
down on opponents.
The cursing psalms present a major obstacle to most readers.
"How in the world can you read, let alone pray, these ANGRY and
often VIOLENT poems from an ancient warrior culture?" asks
Kathleen Norris. "At a glance, they seem overwhelmingly
patriarchal, ILL-TEMPERED, moralistic, VENGEFUL, and often seem
to reflect what is wrong with our world."
Why are such outbursts lurking in the midst of sacred
Scripture? Readers have proposed various explanations.
1. The cursing psalms express an appropriate 'righteous
anger' over evil.
The late Professor Allan Bloom, author of THE CLOSING OF THE
AMERICAN MIND, told about asking his undergraduate class at the
University of Chicago to identify an EVIL person. NOT ONE student
could do so. 'Evil' simply did not exist as a category in their
minds. The inability to recognize and identify evil, said Bloom,
is a perilous sign in our society,.
I have received great help on this issue from my wife,
Janet, who for several years worked near an inn-city housing
project. She saw PERVASIVE EVIL every day......
One evening Janet came home boiling with anger. A janitor
was tyrannizing the residents of one senior citizens' building.
He would use his master key to enter widows' apartments, then
beat them up and steal their money.......the city housing
authority was stalling on his transfer or dismissal. If Allan
Bloom had asked my wife to describe an evil person that day, he
would have gotten a GRAPHIC description.
It was precisely that kind of structural evil - corrupt
judges, slave owners, robbers, oppressors of the poor, racists,
terrorists - that the psalmists were responding to. Psalm 109
calls down curses on a man who "hounded to death the poor and the
needy and the brokenhearted. He loved to pronounce a curse - may
it come upon him" ......
The 'righteous anger' explanation may illuminate the motives
behind the cursing psalms, but it does not remove ALL the
problems they present. Although furious, Janet did not stalk
around the house muttering threats like, "May his children be
wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes"
(109: 10), or, "Happy is he....who seizes your infants and dashes
them against the rocks" (137:9).
2. The cursing psalms express a spiritual immaturity
corrected by the New Testament.
C.S. Lewis, genuinely chagrined by the cursing psalms,
discussed this approach in his book REFLECTIONS OF THE
PSALMS......"The reaction of the Psalmists to injury,
though profoundly natural, is profoundly wrong," Lewis concluded.
He used words like 'diabolical,' 'contemptible,' 'ferocious,'
'barbaric,' and 'self-pitying' to describe these sentiments......
Certainly Jesus introduced a new spirit ("You have heard it
said....but I say unto you...."). But as Lewis himself notes, the
Bible does not present such a clear-cut progression from the Old
Testament to the New. Commands to love our enemies appear in the
Old Testament as well. To complicate matters even further, New
Testament authors quote approvingly some of the most problematic
of the cursing psalms. For example, Peter applied one of the
curses of Psalm 69 directly to Judas (Acts 1:20); Paul applied
another ("may their eyes be darkened so they cannot see, and
their backs be bent forever") to unbelieving Israel. Cursing
psalms are not so easily dismissed.
In fact, the British scholar Deryck Sheriffs points out that
C.S. Lewis himself changed as he underwent a personal trial late
in life. Read THE PROBLEM OF PAIN and A GRIEF OBSERVED back to
back, and the change is obvious......
I wonder what Lewis would have written about the cursing
psalms after going through that personal ordeal.
3. The CURSING psalms as BEST understood as PRAYERS.
The cursing psalms appear in a considerably different light
when we remember their LITERARY context: we READERS are
'over-hearing' PRAYERS addressed to God. Seen in this way, the
cursing psalms demonstrate what I have called 'spiritual therapy'
taken to its limits. As Dorothy Sayers once remarked, we all have
diabolical thoughts, but there's a world of difference in
responding with WORDS instead of DEEDS, whether, say, we WRITE a
murder mystery or COMMIT murder.
If a person wrongs me unjustly, I have several options. I
can seek personal revenge, a response condemned by the Bible. I
can deny or suppress my feelings of hurt and anger. Or I can take
those feelings to God, entrusting God with the task of that last
option. "It is mine to avenge; I will replay," says the Lord -
prayers like the cursing psalms place vengeance in the proper
hands. Significantly, the cursing psalms express their
outrage to God, not to the enemy.
Kathleen Norris, who struggled with the cursing psalms in
her book THE CLOISTER WALK, came to an accommodation with them in
her later AMAZING GRACE. There she tells of inviting students to
parochial schools to compose their own cursing psalms. Those who
are picked on by their big brothers and sisters have a natural
talent for imprecation, she found:
"One little boy wrote a poem called 'The Monster Who Was
sorry.' He began by admitting that he HATES it when his
father yells at him; his response in the poem is to throw
his sister down the stairs, and then to wreck his room, and
finally to wreck the whole town. The poem concludes: 'Then I
sit in my messy house and say to myself, I shouldn't have
done all that.' "
If that boy had been a religious novice in the
fourth-century monastic desert, adds Norris, his elders might
have judged him well on the way towards REPENTANCE......
End of quotes from Yancey for a moment, while I add some of
my own comments.
As a teen and then a young man, who endeavored to walk with
the Lord in a seriously sincere way, I knew what Jesus had taught
about not even hating someone in your heart. During those years I
had few if any enemies. I tried to get along with everyone, being
patient, helpful, friendly with all, and those that maybe had
been a little "nasty" to me, I just tried to let it fall off me
like water on a ducks' back, taking little if any notice. Well
during those early years nobody was doing much dirt to me that
amounted to very much.
The first time in my life that I encountered someone of a
real deep intent to do me evil, I was 30 years old. I had worked
in the same department with this fellow for about 8 years. He was
on the other side of the wall, and for all those years it was not
close contact in conversation, but friendly enough I thought. He
was 20 or more years my senior. Through the process of time, and
departments merging, with some heads of departments leaving, this
man was made head of three merged section of the company.
Did his true colors now surface as what he felt towards me.
He was out on the war path to make sure I was not promoted or
used to my full skill and abilities (which I had been trained for
over the years by my previous foreman, who had now left the
company).
It was a shock to discover all this. Within a year I knew my
train stop had arrived, and it was time to hop off and catch
another train with another destination. I was also shocked to
discover my inner thoughts and feelings for this man who was out
to do me much evil.
I was praying in my mind that evil would come upon him.
Thoughts of wanting him to fall and break a leg.....I was trying
to do what the New Testament says about bringing every thought
into captivity to Christ, but the frustration of this new
situation to come upon me in my work life that had been very
smooth to this point, just led me out into kind of cursing psalms
(yet mild in comparison to some we read in the book of Psalms,
but then this evil to befall me by a co-worker now my enemy, was
probably of less evil than some who wrote the cursing psalms).
Finally, I did put it all in God's hands, to avenge, or
bring justice. I went my way down another road of secular work,
in another part of the country, a few thousand miles away. It was
many years later, that I heard this man ended up loosing both
legs below the knees to cancer and finally that cancer took his
life.
Then there was the time in my life (for about ten years,
from age 43 to 53) that I was an Apartment House owner, and hence
a Landlord. We had at one point 12 apartments. I had never done
anything like that kind of work or ownership before in my
life. It was all a very new experience to me. And what an
experience it was. I could write a small book on the soap opera
of it all.
No matter how hard and with what means we tried to screen
people (to ensure good respectable tenants we would have) about
40% I would say, turned out to be anything but good. And maybe
20% of the 40% were people who would end up giving you ulcers,
and keeping you awake at night.
You would try and be as Christian as you could towards them,
being gentle, kind, understanding, and patient, but with that 20%
it was to no avail or they just took advantage of your Christian
attitude. One family got behind in their rent, and I sat down
with the husband and kindly told him how we could work it all
out. He finally just looked me in the eye and said, "I ain't
doin' nothing until the judge tells me." We had no choice but to
take him to court and have the judge tell them to leave or find
the Sheriff putting their things on the street.
I had another fellow with two small children, really nice
little girls, who had problems with paying his rent after a
while. But that was not the main trouble. He with his brother
(who already had a police record for assault, as he would get
drunk and start to literally punch people), would want to have
drunken parties and disturb the other tenants. I came to quiet
them down one late Saturday night and out come this brother,
drunk, and punched me on the jaw.
Well we got this fellow out by making a deal that he would
leave if I did not press assault charges on his brother, because
with him having at least one other similar charge, it would mean
definate jail for him.
Oh, some of the problems and emotional abuse you would have
to take at times from these troubled tenants and how they would
take it out on the Landlord, would curl your hair, if not turn it
white in a week. Again, to my relatively calm tranquil Christian
mind, I was shocked to discover the kind of cursing psalms that I
could have racing through my mind at times. I was certainly
praying that God's justice and revenge would come crashing down
on their heads, and I would be delivered from their evil words
and actions.
I never did hear if anything physically harmful ever came
upon these hurtful tenants as they left and moved along to other
places. After ten years I gave it all up and moved along myself
out of the Landlord business.
But, one more incident and experience in my life, that was
more serious than all before it because it was encased within the
Christian church I was associating with at the time, had me leave
off even asking the Lord for justice and for Him to avenge. His
answer to my request for justice was so swift and so horrific,
I've decided not to request it again.
In 1990 my wife and I went to live for a number of months
(turned out to be 8, longer than we planned) months in Florida
(away from the winter months of Canada). The first Sabbath there
we entered a Church of God. To our shock and disappointment they
held after services, a meeting. It was clear that there were two
political and spiritual divisions. One smaller than the other but
the smaller one had a more vocal voice and had it "in" for the
local minister who had just left the area. The scene was "bad" to
put it mildly.
So bad was it that the head office of this church
organization decided to send that minister back the next Sabbath
to see if he could straighten out the huge problem that has risen
up.
I remember that Sabbath and service very well, and the
meeting which took place following the service. Again, it was
anything but friendly. I remember saying to my wife that nothing
had really been accomplished towards unity and peace.
Within a month it was also very clear that the smaller vocal
group led by a deacon and his wife were fully against myself and
my wife. They all knew I was an ordained minister but not
officially part of their organization. My wife and I won the
friendship and trust of the majority of the congregation and even
the only other minister of that organization in another county of
Florida.
It was as clear as a cloudless day to my wife and myself
which group of people were in the "evil" wrong throughout this
political and spiritual tug of war going on for power control in
this local church. The evil spun at us like a spider slowly
spins his web for destruction, the slander thrown out to
discredit what good we might have brought and were trying to
bring to that congregation, was grave and nasty indeed.
I sat down and wrote personally to this deacon and his wife
concerning the matter, as outlined in Matthew 18. It was mainly
to no avail.
I did not allow cursing psalms to ripen or evolve in my
mind. Maybe the years already with troublesome tenants (we were
still owners of one rental property in Canada) had exhausted
those kinds of psalms from my mind. Yet, I did have a final
prayer on the matter with the Lord. I told Him we would continue
to be kind, loving, and helpful Christians within this
congregation until we left for Canada, and I would have to ask
Him to take this spiritually rotten situation and bring justice
and avenge the wrongs done to my wife and myself and others by
the leaders of this small but very carnal and disruptive group.
We did leave for Canada, June 1991 (after 8 months with that
congregation in Florida).
We returned for a two week winter holiday in December of
1991. The first Sabbath there we immediately went to attend
services with this same congregation (we had gained many friends
from the 8 months with them before). What a different spirit of
attitude, co-operation, love, and unity there was. It was a
different atmosphere altogether, you could feel it as you walked
in. What had happened?
I was asked, upon taking but a few steps into the building,
if we had heard the news. I said, "No, what news." It was then
related to me that during the months we had been away (about 6
months) the troublesome deacon had come down with painful cancer
from the tip of his toes to the crown of his head. It had been
impossible to treat by any medical means and he was DEAD. His
troublesome wife (who had been a loud outspoken woman backing up
her husband) was now one of the most quiet, in the background
person, in the whole congregation.
As if this was not enough. It was related to us that one of
the other persons at the root of all the trouble during those
infamous 8 months we had fellowshipped with them, was ALSO dead.
It was hard to recognize this congregation as the same one
we had recently been a part of for eight months, like as they
say, night and day.
Well, since then I have never even asked the Lord to perform
"justice" or hand out "vengeance."
Back to the words and thoughts on this matter of the
"cursing psalms" from Philip Yancey. Quote:
Instinctively, we want to 'clean up' our feelings in our
prayers, but perhaps we have it all backwards. Perhaps we should
strive to take all our worst feelings to God. After all, what
would be gossip when addressed to anyone else is petition when
addressed to God.......
I have made it a weekly practice, on a long walk on the hill
behind my home, to present to God my ANGER against people who
have wronged me. I recount all my reasons for feeling UNFAIRLY
treated or misunderstood, forcing myself to open up deep
feelings to God (does God not know them anyway?). I can testify
that the outpouring itself has a THERAPEUTIC effect. Usually I
come away feeling as if I have just released a huge burden. The
UNFAIRNESS no longer sticks like a thorn inside me, as it once
did; I have expressed it aloud to someone - to God. Sometimes I
find that in the process of expression, I grow in compassion.
God's Spirit speaks to me of my own SELFISHNESS, my JUDGMENTAL
spirit, my own FLAWS that others have treated with GRACE and
FORGIVENESS, my pitifully LIMITED viewpoint.
Miroslav Volf - a native Croatian who taught theology there
during the war in the former Yugoslavia and who learned to
identify with the cursing psalms very personally - explains in
EXCLUSION AND EMBRACE how those psalms may in fact lead towards
FORGIVENESS:
"For the followers of the crucified Messiah, the main
message of the imprecator Psalms is this: rage belongs
before God.....This is no mere cathartic discharge of
pent up aggression before the Almighty who ought to care.
Much more significantly, by placing unattended rage before
God we place both our unjust enemy and our own vengeful self
face to face with a God who loves and does justice. Hidden
in the dark chambers of our hearts and nourished by the
system of darkness, hate grows and seeks to infest
everything with its hellish will to exclusion. In the light
of the justice and love of God, however, hate recedes and
the seed is planted for the miracle of forgiveness."
Gradually, my weekly practice has expanded from a focus on
myself to a sensitivity to others around me. Some weeks, I have
no surface feelings of vengeance or resentment. Can I, though,
use these psalms as insights into others who are suffering?
What of countries that just got hit by hurricanes, floods, or
droughts? What of my friends battling cancer? A woman living with
an abusive husband? An alcoholic who cannot quite triumph? Can
the difficult psalms help me enter into their struggles and
perhaps pray the prayer on their behalf?
One reason I lean towards this way of understanding the
cursing psalms is that I have read the end of the story in the
book of Revelation. In that book we see a preview of a time when
the most extreme of the cursing psalms will come true. Even the
most notorious, Psalm 137, finds fulfillment: "With such violence
the great city of Babylon will be thrown down, never to be found
again" (Revelation 18:21). Justice will reign absolutely someday,
and accomplishing that will require a time of cataclysmic
violence against evil.
I see the cursing psalms as an important MODEL as to how to
DEAL with EVIL and injustice.
I should NOT try to SUPPRESS my reaction of horror and
OUTRAGE at evil. Nor should I try to take justice into my own
hands. Rather, I should DELIVER THOSE FEELINGS, STRIPPED BARE, to
God.
As the books of Job, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk clearly show,
God has a high threshold of TOLERANCE for what is APPROPRIATE to
say in a PRAYER. God can 'handle' my unsuppressed RAGE. I may
well find that my vindictive feelings to God will have that
opportunity for CORRECTION and HEALING.
End of quotes from "Psalms: Spirituality in Every Key" - taken
from the book "The Bible Jesus Read" by Philip Yancey.
...................................
Written and compiled October 2001
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