give heed to my sighing.
Listen to the sound of my cry,
my King and my God,
for to you I pray.
O LORD, in the morning you hear my voice;
in the morning I plead my case to you, and watch.
For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
evil will not sojourn with you.
The boastful will not stand before your eyes;
you hate all evildoers.
You destroy those who speak lies;
the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful.
Psalm 5:1-6
Clearly the author of Psalm 5 is facing some sort of difficulty. No details are given, but presumably those who are evil doers, who are boastful, deceitful, and speak lies, are the people who cause the psalmist to sigh and cry and plead to God. His plea is rooted in his understanding of God’s character as one who will not abide boasting, deceit, and lying.
I’d like to think the psalmist is correct, but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. Lies, boasts, and deceit seem very popular these days, and I’ve seen little indication that God is about to intervene against those who are so fond of them.
Politics has long been a realm of “spin” and stretching the truth, but our current president-elect has taken this to new heights. In one of his latest tweet storms, Mr. Trump insisted that he had never mocked a disabled reporter despite an often shown video of him doing just that. Where is this God who destroys those who speak lies?
It is possible that the psalmist may be asking just such a question. It is not at all unusual to find people in the Bible pleading with God, appealing to God’s character in an attempt to move God to action. Such pleas are not so much statements of fact about God as they are attempts to sway God. “Remember who you are, God, and act accordingly. Remember your promises to uphold the weak and vulnerable. Remember who you are, O God, and save me!” (For a remarkable example of this sort of speech, read how Moses talks God out of destroying the Israelites following the golden calf episode in Exodus 32:1-14.)
If the psalmist is speaking in this manner, demanding that God be true to Godself and take action, I wonder if it worked. Israel suffered through long periods of corrupt and inept leadership without any divine intervention. Despite the words of psalmists and the insistence of prophets, God’s timetable was often excruciatingly slow.
Modern people have often “solved” this problem by relegating God to the spiritual realm. This God is primarily concerned with the disposition of souls after they’ve died and not much interested in the created order. Such a notion is extremely difficult to find in the pages of the Bible, but that has done little to dissuade those who think the primary work of Christian faith is to get one into heaven.
The fact is that living as though God was the destroyer of those who speak lies has always been a minority position. Faithfulness has always been difficult, always been costly, and always been seen as foolish by most people. There are just too many things that are easier to trust than God. There are too many ways of living that are easier and seemingly more rewarding than following the commands of Jesus.
And the Church is often of little help. Like Israel before, it also succumbs to the promises of power and wealth. It ignores the plight of the poor and oppressed if there is any real cost or loss of prestige involved. We prefer being safe and respectable to speaking like psalmists or prophets or Jesus.
Nevertheless, faith has remained all these centuries. Always, it seems, there are a few who take seriously Jesus’ call to deny self and follow him. Like Jesus who goes to the cross despite the obvious foolhardiness of such an act, there are those who take up their crosses. I want to, but oh how I wish God would provide a little more assurance that it’s a good idea.
Click to learn more about the lectionary.
No comments:
Post a Comment