Today I want to talk about history and the Christian faith, with an eye on the Psalms. For the first time in my life, I feel like I am alive at a truly historic moment—a potential turning point in how we live and move and relate to one another. We haven’t shared in a truly global disruption of life and business-as-usual on the scale of the current pandemic since perhaps the Second World War. And I am beginning to wonder if I have a theology and a faith that will serve well for the present moment. This matters to me because I am convinced that the Christian faith is something that we cannot separate from history without compromising it to the core. Christian faith cannot exist as an abstraction, a collection of eternal principles or other-worldly ideals that stands above or outside of history. Christian faith is always concerned with this world and this moment in particular, and I think the Psalms are a helpful place to turn for insight and power.

What are the Psalms to me today?

I’ll begin with this question: What are the Psalms and what do they mean to me today? I should admit that I normally find it difficult to read the Psalms. I’m not sure I can quite put my finger on why, but it might be related to the fact that a few years ago I tended to treat the Bible mainly as a source of information about God. But the Psalms don’t really seem to fit that description. Instead, what we find is a collection of one-hundred-and-fifty songs, hymns, and poems. The Psalms are an anthology, even an “anthology of anthologies” according to my study-bible (you’ll notice that it contains five “books” of songs). So now I try to approach the Psalms that way, as a collection of ancient Hebrew songs, hymns, and poems.

But how do you interpret an anthology? First of all, I shouldn’t expect the Psalms to tell me what to think directly. Some Psalms do exhort the reader, but normally the Psalms tell me more about the religious experience of the communities that collected, cherished, and transmitted them down to us. If you pick up the Psalms and start reading, you’ll get the sense that it is written from a distinctly human perspective. The text is mainly prayers and songs, and those prayers and songs express how it felt to live in one small corner of the ancient world, yet in the presence of the God of Israel. So I try to think of the Psalms as, at the very least, a time-capsule of religious experience. When I read the Psalms, I get a glimpse of how certain ancient people felt about the world and its troubles, and how they brought those troubles before their God. I read about how they hoped for salvation from their enemies, how they longed to live in a peaceful kingdom, how they became conscious of their own shortcomings, and how they knew their God as someone who forgives, heals, and saves.

In fact, it doesn’t take long to notice that sometimes these ancient Psalms describe my experience today. When I read the Psalms I discover that I’m not the first human to have enemies, to experience hardship, to face disappointment, to struggle with guilt, anger, and even hatred. I am a human, and the Psalms talk about how it feels to be a human person.

There are many things about my life that are actually new to humanity. For instance, I have access to far more information through the Internet, or even cheap books, than my parents and grandparents ever did. In many ways we have greater access to knowledge and learning—and even possibly wisdom—than the ancients ever did. Yet today we still struggle to tell the difference between right and wrong, fact and fiction. We struggle to cling to truth and reject lies, especially when we wish one thing was true and not another. Modern life is almost impossible to separate from our experience of technology and our power to contact nearly anyone, anywhere, anytime. And yet we still struggle to love one another, at a distance or within a household. Loneliness is perhaps as widespread as ever.

So yes, I am a modern person and when I read the Psalms I read the songs of the ancients. But I, like them, live a somewhat precarious life faced with threats on all sides—from nature, from economics, from enemies. Just like the ancients, I know what it means to feel that I fall short of some ideal in how I treat other people. I know what is is to experience guilt and sin, to consider myself a sinner. Of course, I also know what it is to consider myself righteous, to experience self-righteousness. Like the ancients, I am both a victim to some and a source of harm to others. All told, modern and ancient people find common ground in the Psalms in most of the ways that really matter.

The God of the Psalms

Just like the ancients, I am trying to make it in this world. There are many things that I can’t control, and when I reach my limits I look for help from the unseen. But is anyone out there listening? Is there any help available in my time of need? Here is where the Psalms really shine for me—the Psalms usually describe a God who hears and cares for those in need.

The word “God” is extremely ambiguous. As I’ve mentioned before, I learned to reflect on what I mean by “God” during my time spent reading philosopher Paul K. Moser. We need to dig a little bit to know what we mean when we say “God”. The Psalms usually—but not always—point us in the right direction. But we need some guiding light to know what to trust and what to reject in the Psalms. As Paul Moser taught me, I find it helpful to reserve the word “God” for that which is worthy of our worship, worth of our unqualified trust, obedience, and adoration—whatever or whoever that turns out to be in the end. So for me an evil “God” is a contradiction in terms. Evil is manifestly unworthy of worship. So nothing evil could qualify as “God”. In fact, the title of “God” is an extremely high bar to reach. It involves being trustworthy. Any so-called “God” that someone can’t or shouldn’t trust isn’t “God” after all. This means that anything or anyone that turns out to be “God” must be such that, to use a biblical phrase, all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Indeed, as Psalm 145:18 says,

The Lord is near to all who call on him,
    to all who call on him in truth.

A God who can’t or won’t save is no God. And a God who seeks to save some and destroy others is also no God. Such a so-called “God” would not be trustworthy toward those marked for destruction. So a God of the elect only, of Israel only, of the rich only, of the healthy only, of the righteous only—such a so-called “God” is unworthy of worship, at least to those left out. Some might disagree with me here, but that just means they use the word “God” to describe something lesser than I do. All told, you are free to call whoever or whatever you choose “God”. But for me, “God” is whoever or whatever we should actually trust, worship, and obey in this precarious world of ours. “God” is that which saves us, if anything does.

Here is where the Psalms both shine and falter for me. You will probably have a hard time finding a page where the Lord, the God of Israel, is not described as someone who saves—particularly as someone who lifts up those in need. Here are a few examples:

Psalm 12:5 “Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan, I will now rise up,” says the Lord; “I will place them in the safety for which they long.”

Psalm 34:18

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.

Psalm 35:10

All my bones shall say, “O Lord, who is like you? You deliver the weak from those too strong for them, the weak and needy from those who despoil them.”

One remarkable pattern that I notice is that these Psalms often call for a this-worldly salvation, because

Psalm 6:4-5 Turn, O Lord, save my life; deliver me for the sake of your steadfast love. For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who can give you praise?

Again,

Psalm 88:10-12

10 Do you work wonders for the dead?
    Do the shades rise up to praise you?
11 Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,
    or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
12 Are your wonders known in the darkness,
    or your saving help in the land of forgetfulness?

And again,

Psalm 104:33

I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;
    I will sing praise to my God while I have being.

Once more,

Psalm 113:25-26 (115:17-18)

The dead will not praise you, O Lord,
	nor will all who go down to Hades.
But we that are alive will bless the Lord,
	from now one and forevermore.

The God of the Psalms is manifestly the God of the living, a conviction that Jesus shares about his Father. There is a pattern or theme—save us that we might worship you, the one who is worthy of worship. And only those that live or remain can worship.

Psalm 106:47

Save us, O Lord our God,
    and gather us from among the nations,
that we may give thanks to your holy name
    and glory in your praise.

But the Psalms also give voice to crushing disappointment, incredible naiveté, and disturbing hatred. These are all parts of the human experience that the Psalms do not ignore or hide from us. For instance, Psalm 22 opens with the words chosen by Jesus upon the cross to express his anguish:

Psalm 22:1-2 1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? 2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.

And elsewhere we find a jarringly privileged yet incompatible perspective:

Psalm 37:25 I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.

This may seem like an inspirational or uplifting verse, but it reflects a dumbfounding blindness to the moral quality of suffering in the world—the idea that God is pleased with the successful, and therefore not pleased with those who suffer. Taken this way, it is an unchristian perspective. And yet, it contains a kernel of hope that God will save some people at least.

To be quite honest, I am vexed by the perspective of many Psalms towards outsiders. Many Psalms call for God to destroy those the Psalmist considers to be sinners, or project the hatred of the Psalmist onto God, or otherwise describe God as with us and against them. Sometimes these are called “imprecatory Psalms”. They curse rather than bless. So we can’t wholeheartedly embrace the Psalms if we want to worship a God who is actually worthy of worship. We need to recognize that we are often reading words that tell us more about the pain of the Psalmist, perhaps written in the wake of the collapse of Israel at the hands of Babylon, than the true character of God. For example, Psalm 136 shows us how devastating it felt to live in exile in Babylon. The Psalmist feels so powerless and angry that they literally curse the Babylonians, calling happy any who would kill Babylonian children. This, I am certain, is not the will of God. As we read the Psalms we need to remember that God is worthy of worship, and therefore not evil or vindictive.

The Living God who Hears and Speaks and Acts

The Psalms contrast God and idols, and the contrast is striking. Given what I mean by the word “God”, as whoever is actually worthy of our worship, I define an “idol” as anything that we worship but that is actually unworthy of that worship. Often what we treat as God is actually an idol. Here’s what the Psalms have to say about God and idols.

Psalm 115:2-8

2 Why should the nations say,
    “Where is their God?”	
3 Our God is in the heavens;
    he does whatever he pleases.
4 Their idols are silver and gold,
    the work of human hands.
5 They have mouths, but do not speak;
    eyes, but do not see.
6 They have ears, but do not hear;
    noses, but do not smell.
7 They have hands, but do not feel;
    feet, but do not walk;
    they make no sound in their throats.
8 Those who make them are like them;
    so are all who trust in them.

This is a remarkable passage. It tells me that the Psalmist considers speaking, seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, and walking to be necessary for worthiness of worship. We read roughly the same thing in another chapter,

Psalm 135:14-15

14 For the Lord will vindicate his people,
    and have compassion on his servants.
15 The idols of the nations are silver and gold,
    the work of human hands.
16 They have mouths, but they do not speak;
    they have eyes, but they do not see;
17 they have ears, but they do not hear,
    and there is no breath in their mouths.
18 Those who make them
    and all who trust them
    shall become like them.

The one we worship, the Psalmist tells us, is the one who hears our prayers. We don’t pray to an iron sky, to an unfeeling power, or to the work of our hands—a strictly human construct. If we pray with the Psalmist we pray to the living God, a God who hears us. Not only does God hear—God speaks! The 119th Psalm is the longest chapter in the Bible and it is more or less an ode to the conviction that God speaks, and that humans flourish when they listen to that voice. Psalm 95 implores the reader to hear that voice and respond:

Psalm 95:7-9 O that today you would listen to his voice! 8 Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, 9 when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.

These Psalms also insist that people become like that which they worship. They can become blind and deaf to injustice like their idols or they can become sensitive to the love of God at work around them, even a love that extends to surprising places such as a love of enemies.

Jesus interpreted the Psalms in light of his own experience of the God of Israel, who he calls Father. Despite all the hostility toward enemies in the Psalms, Jesus says,

Matthew 5:43-45

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.

We have an opportunity to become like that which we worship, to become like our Father in heaven, who loves all people, who makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. I don’t know about you, but the contrast with certain Psalmist perspectives and Jesus is stark enough to leave us with a choice. And the Psalms themselves implore us to not harden our hearts when we hear his voice.

God and History

The second Psalm paints a striking picture of God and history, with history seen as the story of the nations as they strive for dominance and threaten the possibility of a peaceful kingdom for Israel. It’s worth reading in full, especially since Christians have re-interpreted this Psalm as a Psalm about Jesus.

Psalm 2

1 Why do the nations conspire,
    and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves,
    and the rulers take counsel together,
    against the Lord and his anointed, saying,
3 “Let us burst their bonds asunder,
    and cast their cords from us.”
4 He who sits in the heavens laughs;
    the Lord has them in derision.
5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
    and terrify them in his fury, saying,
6 “I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.”
7 I will tell of the decree of the Lord:
He said to me, “You are my son;
    today I have begotten you.
8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
    and the ends of the earth your possession.
9 You shall break them with a rod of iron,
    and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
10 Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
    be warned, O rulers of the earth.
11 Serve the Lord with fear,
    with trembling 12 kiss his feet,
or he will be angry, and you will perish in the way;
    for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Happy are all who take refuge in him.

What I see here is a conviction that the living God, the God who hears and speaks and acts, stands above the strivings and struggles of the nations as they poster for power and dominance. It isn’t that God doesn’t care—God cares deeply about the people who suffer under well entrenched seemingly immovable systems of domination, both ancient and modern. There’s no way you can read the Psalms and miss God’s concern for the poor and needy. Rather, God is not vulnerable to final defeat at the hands of human powers. Despite the odds, God will establish a king and a kingdom on earth that serves God’s saving purposes. For the Psalmist this was likely interpreted David and his lineage. For Christians today reading Psalm 2 we tend to believe that God’s purposes in the world are embodied in Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was of little consequence and potential by all standards of worldly power. As the nations conspire and plot in vain, God enters history on God’s terms, first through the politically insignificant ancient nation of Israel—by no means a great world power—and then through Jesus Christ.

One of my favorite theologians, named Hugh Ross Mackintosh, wrote that “History is such that salvation may come by way of it.” He continues, “Creation was built on lines such as to admit of the influx of vast redemptive forces one day to be liberated by the divine love.” The salvation that we need corresponds to the predicament we find ourselves in, and while the nations sought their salvation through greater and increasing strife and exploitation, God chose to act in the world through Jesus Christ. His obedience unto death manifests the severity of the love of God in history, and the worthiness of his God and Father. The Christian doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus means for us that God has vindicated Jesus. When the world powers crushed Jesus, they actually broke themselves like waves upon a rock. The God of history is the God manifest in this crucified man, the lowest of the low. And somehow the human predicament finds its solution in this one man and his ever-present Spirit today.

Today we face tremendous problems on a global scale, comparable to or greater than any that humanity has ever known. Are we the people of a God who saves or are we the people of an idol? Do we embrace a passivity corresponding to the worship of an idol-god who saves a privileged few? Do we embrace a complacency toward and complicity in modern systems of domination corresponding to the worship of an idol-god who is with the strong and not the weak? Or do we cooperate with the Spirit of Jesus, the unlikely yet chosen instrument of God’s purposes in history, the one who manifests the love of a holy God who hears and speaks and acts and empowers us to do the same?

In this period of physical separation from one another I am reminded of the apostle Paul’s greeting in First Corinthians:

1 Corinthians 1:2-3

2 To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:
3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Whatever else we are as a scattered church, we are those in every place who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We share this one thing even as we do not share the same physical space—Jesus Christ is both mine and yours, and we are his. He belongs to all who embrace him, without exception. He manifests what it means to become like our Father in heaven, to find peace in the midst of the turbulence of history, to be an agent of love amidst it, to manifest the power made perfect in weakness characteristic of this God we worship. A God who is worthy of worship always saves a people to worship, drawing them together in a shared experience of salvation. We don’t have a blueprint or a plan for every circumstance we might face. We certainly don’t have a complete catalog of precedents to follow, and it is naive to treat the Bible that way. Instead, we have the Spirit of Jesus and the responsibility to act in his name, as the children of his Father—the God who saves of the Psalms.