The Psalms:
The book of Psalms comprises a sampling of spiritual journals, much like personal letters to God.
I must read them as an over-the-shoulder reader since the intended audience was not other people, but God. Even the psalms intended for public use were designed as corporate prayers: from them too God represented the primary audience.
I had been trying to subconsciously fit the psalms into the scriptural grid established by the apostle Paul.
The psalms are however not pronouncements from on high delivered with full apostolic authority on matters of faith and practice. They are personal prayers in the form of poetry, written by a variety of people – peasants, kings, professional musicians, rank amateurs – in wildly fluctuating moods.
Job and Deuteronomy offer the extraordinary cases of two renowned, righteous men trying to relate to God through difficult times. Psalms gives examples of ‘ordinary’ people struggling mightily to align what they believe about God with what they actually experience. Sometimes the authors are vindictive, sometimes self-righteous, sometimes paranoid, sometimes petty.
The psalms are not so much representing God to the people as the people representing themselves to God.
Psalms do not theologize. One reason for this is that the psalms are poetry, and poetry’s function is not to explain but to offer images and stories that resonate with our lives.’ Kathleem Norris
Neal Plantiga on Psalm 91 (protection psalm) ‘Oh? What about Christians arrested by the Nazis in World War II, orr by hostile Muslim governments today? How must the psalm sound as they read it on the eve of execution? The psalms’ sweeping promises of safety seem patently untrue.
Plantiga ‘What Psalm 91 does is express one – one of the loveliest, one of the most reassured - but just one of the moods of faith. It’s a mood of exuberant confidence in the sheltering providence of God. Probably the psalmist has been protected by God in some dangerous incident, and he is celebrating. On other days and in other moods – in other darker seasons of his life – this same psalmist might have called to God out of despair and a sense of abandonment… you need another psalm or two to fill in the picture, to cry out that under those same wings bad things sometimes happen to good people.
I come to psalms not as a student wanting to acquire knowledge but rather as a fellow pilgrim wanting to acquire relationship.
The seemingly random ordering of the 150 psalms {is explained by} the seesaw cycle of intimacy and abandonment {that} most people experience in their relationship with God.
I have learned to appreciate psalms because it does encompass both points of view, often adjoined with no calming transition. Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not his benefits,’ says psalm 103. The author of its nearest neighbour is desperately trying to recall God’s benefits, no easy task in his condition, bones burning like glowing embers, on a diet of ashes and tears.
It may seem strange for sacred writings to include such scenes of spiritual failure, but actually their inclusion reflects an important principle in therapy. A marriage therapist will often warn new clients, ‘your relationship may get worse before it gets better.’ Grudges and resentments that have been buried for years may resurface. Misunderstandings must be nakedly exposed before true understandings can begin to flourish. Indeed the psalms, like psychoanalysis, may help uncover neurotic elements in us.
The 150 psalms present a mosaic of spiritual therapy in process. Doubt, paranoia, giddiness, meanness, delight, hatred, joy, praise, vengefulness, betrayal – you can find it all in the psalms.
‘psalms of disorientation’ – Walter Bruggemann to describe the psalms that express confusion, confession and doubt.
They wrestled with God over every facet of their lives, and in the end it was the very act of wrestling that proved their faith.
Praise:
Somerset Maugham had a devout relative who went through the Book of common prayer and crossed out everything on praise. People are uncomfortable with compliments to their face, he reasoned, so surely God would not want them either.
We might best imagine praise by thinking of our instinctive response to a great work of art or a symphony or extraordinary beauty in any form. The natural response is, first, to pause and enjoy the surpassing beauty – almost knealing before it- and then to announce it to others.
Lament:
Eugene Peterson comments: 'only a minority focus on praise and thanksgiving; perhaps as many as seventy percent take the form of laments. These two categories correspond to the two large conditions in which we find ourselves: distress and well-being.'
King David specifically ordered that his people be taught how to lament (2 Sam. 1:18)
Dan Allender, Christian counselor:
"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 mroe bears your lament against them, paradoxically, is someone you deeply, wildly trust... The language of lament is oddly the shadow side of faith."
Cursing:
The cursing psalms are best understood as prayers... Seen this way they demonstrate what i have called 'spiritual therapy'.
Dorothy Sayer remarks: 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.
What would be gossip when addressed to anyone else is petition when addressed to God.
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