Unseemly Gloating

Understanding and praying the imprecatory (cursing) Psalms is a continuously challenging conundrum. With so many of them, rarely a day goes by that I am not confronted by discerning what I need to engage or release (5, 6, 11, 12, 35, 37, 40, 52, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 69, 79, 83, 94, 109, 137, 139, 143). They are rarely used in worship or devotional literature. The unsuspecting reader who is accustomed to the pretty Psalms (or pretty excerpts) and sets about to read them all in search of more such inspiration may be dismayed to find the two-thirds of the Psalms (yes 100 out of 150) are complaints and laments. Unprepared readers may cringe at the vivid curses of the imprecatory Psalms and skip over them. Some scholarly commentators even suggest they are inappropriate for Christians. However, taking cues from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eugene Peterson, and Walter Brueggemann, I have found they help me be honest with God about my most uncomfortable reactions to what strike me as unconscionable attitudes, language, and behavior. Having honestly acknowledged my own emotions and attitudes to God, even if my sense of propriety compel me to keep them internal and not speak or act them out, I am then free to relinquish this to God to deal with me and my heart and the people with whom I am troubled. I find some of this same dynamic when I am reminded that Jesus explicitly directed me, as his disciple, to love my enemies (Matthew 5:43-48; Luke 6:27-35, affirmed by Paul in Romans 12:17-21). My tendency is to tell myself that I have no enemies. Then I ponder who might consider me to be their enemy based on my theological or political perspectives. Then I have to recognize that my reactions to any number of people in public life who I don’t know but whose attitudes, language, and behavior I consider unconscionable betray that I am treating them as enemies in my heart.

All of this brings me to Psalm 58:10 which jumped out at me in my Psalm prayers this morning in light of yesterday’s news of the “elimination” of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The righteous will rejoice when they see vengeance done; they will bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked.

Does this give permission, maybe even encouragement, for gloating over the elimination of someone who has caused so much suffering and grief as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi certainly has? His death will be a further setback for ISIS that has been in retreat, but ISIS will not be eliminated, and a new leader will emerge. Bathing feet in blood is gruesome but maybe no more so than collecting exploded body parts of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, his wife, and their children. Some sense of relief is probably appropriate, but who dares to claim to be righteous enough for rejoicing? Does the Psalm have an ironic tone to prompt this sort of ambiguous pondering? Does it truly celebrate vengeance? Or is it a moral mirror that compels us to recognize our own unseemly gloating?

Addendum: Reflecting on this today has reminded me of a related observation I have made since the “war on terrorism” was declared in 2001. Now 18 years later, even what “war on terrorism” means and what it seeks to accomplish remains elusive. It seems to me that terrorism is a method used my many causes for many centuries. It is a tool of both a white supremacist mass shooter and an Islamist suicide bomber. It also seems to me that by attempting to attack the method we are missing the underlying forces that drive terrorism of all sorts. My personal sense is that we will not effectively adddress terrorism, regardless of the cause that deploys it, until we understand why what seems reprehensible to us seems reasonable to those whom we neither know nor comprehend. Labeling someone who uses terrorism as evil or mentally ill may assure us that “we are not like them,” but it is tacit acceptance that nothing can be done to limit terrorism.I am not at all suggesting any approval of any of the causes that give rise to terrorism. Only that as long as we address only the method, we do not deal with what drives people to adopt it.