Response February 2019
As far as the Psalms go, yes they have been a staple of my spiritual journey for nearly 50 years (got started right around our first anniversary). And yes, they are challenging. We tend to use the nice ones (or nice excerpts) in worship and devotions, but fully 100 of the 150 Psalms are laments or complaints, and the imprecatory (cursing) Psalms are especially troubling.
In his little book Psalms: The Prayerbook of the Bible, Dietrich Bonhoeffer addresses this with a strong Christo-centric interpretation. He saw them as the prayers of Christ that reflect God’s anger at evil, especially injustice and suffering that humans inflict on each other. He suggested a way to handle them is to pray in concert with Jesus, who alone had the righteousness to speak in this way. He even suggested that the evils that provoked the curses are actually directed at God, thus the reactions justified. Part of the theology here is that attacks on people made in the image or God are in fact attacks on God. This was the rationale for capital punishment given to Noah in Genesis 9:6. As Bonhoeffer’s explanation unfolds, he suggests that when evil aroused our anger, the Psalms give us a way to honestly express that anger and then release it to Christ who alone can handle it with righteousness and justice.
I do believe that the Psalms give us not only permission but a way to converse with God honestly. You’d be hard put to find a human emotion or experience not reflected in the Psalms somewhere. Psalm 88 is an exquisite expression of clinical depression. Eugene Peterson makes a strong point that an intimate relationship with God requires being honest with God, even when it is not pretty or nice or pious. God is quite able to handle what’s going on in us. Psalm 103:14 “He knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust.” That is a very good thing! Peterson makes that point briefly in this video, which he explores in greater depth in his book Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l40S5e90KY&fbclid=IwAR3Dr24QzSWKY-ZDuQhwOaSLxVlSPRHnmSsnali4J9k7siWzWVMxckCdnQM
Honesty with God is also a key to Walter Brueggemann’s understanding of praying the Psalms in his books, Praying the Psalms and The Message of the Psalms. I think honesty with God is what makes sense out of the Book of Job. We often read Job 42:6 as though now that Job has been encountered by God, he will repent in dust and ashes. However, that’s not the flow of the story. Job has been in dust and ashes all along, and now that he has seen God he can get on with his life. That verse could be translated as well (or better) as “I repent of my dust and ashes.” Job is leaving the dust and ashes behind and going on to live with the God who had met him at his point of deepest need. In fact, God says of Job’s friends, who were saying all the “right things” about God, “You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has done.” (Job 42:8) What has Job said that was right, and not like his friends? It comes to a head in 23:6 “Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? No; but he would give heed to me.”
For me, the imprecatory Psalms and the laments and complaints give me language to honestly articulate to God the most painful and difficult of my human struggles, emotions, observations, experiences that I do not dare to put into my own words. Sometimes I recognize my inclination to tear out someone’s teeth (Psalm 3:7; 58:6). These Psalms allow me to own up to my negative reactions and reorient my perspective to understand them from God viewpoint, or accept that God has a viewpoint that is beyond my understanding. In doing that, I can relinquish them to God in the name of Jesus and find some peace and even joy in trusting God to handle the worst of human evil. That doesn’t mean those emotions go away or every situation is resolved to my liking or that I can blithely go on oblivious to them, but I recognize that I cannot and am not responsible to resolve every human dilemma, even those in my own heart.
As I reflected a bit on this I recognize that the Psalms that give me more pause are the ones where the Psalmists protest their own righteousness as an appeal for God to act in a certain way. I dare not be so presumptuous, but I do find these prompt me to express my aspiration for righteousness to God.
I am not the great Psalm expert, but I have learned from some who know way more than I do. At this point I’m not so much analyzing the Psalms as I am using them as a stimulus for my prayers that I think of more as chats with God. As I mentioned before, I am troubled when the Psalmists protest their righteousness to God. I often use those to express my longing to grow in righteousness. I find more comforting the times the Psalmists ask God to lead and guide them on the path ahead. Here Candy and I are now in our 70s and still finding our way. Personally, I recognize I am in a time of transition. God seems to be guiding me into deeper inner life and being present to Candy. I preached for three churches in January, and recognized that path that has been so much a part of my life in tapering off or even concluding.
One other observation that came to me as I was walking our dog in the midst of writing this (3.7 miles, 1 hour 18 minutes) has to do with how we understand Scripture. I know that in some evangelical circles there is a tendency to see the Bible as almost directly dictated by God with instructions for us to follow. To be sure, I am fully convinced of the inspiration, reliability, and authority of Scripture, but recognize that very little of it is presented in the form of dictated instructions. Rather, God and people are interacting in a wide variety of situations and cultures and the Bible arises from those interactions. When it comes to the Psalms, in contrast with the Lord’s Prayer for example, we are not told this is how to pray but we listen in, if you will, on the prayers of those with whom God has an intimate relationship. Sometimes it is beautiful, glorious love, but other times it is crying out of the darkness when God seems absent. Obviously, it gets much broader and deeper than that, but with this sort of understand of what the Psalms are in the context of what Scripture is, the Psalms nourish my intimacy with God. I pray through the Psalms each month, 5/day, and have done that for almost 50 years, so I am approaching 600 encounters with each Psalm in my personal prayer life (not considering study, preaching, teaching). The formula, which is not original to me, is to start with the date and add 30 four times. That gives five samples across the Psalter every day for 30 days. On the 29th, I skip 119 because it is so long but us it by itself the five times a year of a 31st day. Yes, a few get left out each February. They never get old, and every day something connects with what is going on in my life, in our family, in the church, in the world. They give me ways to get in touch with and express to God what is going on inside of me, especially what I am struggling to resolve. They also speak God’s voice that I need to listen to every day.
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