The Psalms are the prayer book of Israel the prayer book of the Church. They offer what we might call a "school for prayer", training ground for relating to God, often in blunt, honest ways. We can be confident that Jesus Himself prayed the psalms both in public and in private prayer. It was the way of His people.
It is easy enough to imagine Jesus praying some, even many, of the psalms:
"The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want" (Ps 23.1) falls easily from his lips. But what about other passages? What do we do with these?
"Rise up, Lord, rescue me, my God
Break their jaws. Smash their teeth.
Favor your people, Lord." (Ps 3.7)
"God, break their teeth in their mouths.
May they drain away like water running to waste,
Like a slug that melts into slime, like a miscarriage
That never sees the sun" (Ps 58.6--9)
"Babylon, destroyer,
A blessing on anyone who treats you
As you treated us. A blessing on anyone
Who takes your babies smashes them against the rocks." (Ps 137.8-9)
These are psalms, are prayers that embarrass us so that we edit them out of our public worship, sometimes even out of our personal prayer. My nephew’s wife, Angie, is an evangelical Christian who takes the Bible very seriously. Some time ago Angie e-mailed me because she was so uncomfortable with the "cursing" psalms. She loves the Bible as God’s Word, but how can she pray some awful words. As a Christian, how can she say such hateful and outrageous things?
While this is certainly not the last word or the only approach to Angie’s question, this is how I responded to her.
Our relationship with God is a relationship of absolute freedom. We can - and we must - be who we really are in our relationship with God. We are free to be our true selves before God and can express to God whatever is in our hearts and minds about ourselves, about others, about the world, about God Himself. This does not mean that God approves our human desire to fight back or defend ourselves, that God blesses our insecurity or our need for vengeance or our fears. What it does mean is that God knows and understands our feelings. God loves us and accepts even when we feel the most frightful and desperate things. God can absorb our anger.
The real issue here is intimacy. At the bottom line prayer is about growing in intimacy with God. When we express our anger with God to God, when we express our negative feelings, even the basest feelings about others, to God, this does not disrespect God. Rather, this kind of prayer takes God seriously. To trust God with our real, honest feelings is to take God seriously. To be real in God’s presence, even when that reality is awkward, embarrassing, even shameful, even when we aren’t very proud of ourselves, is real trust. God is, after all, the One who created us and knows us. We can trust Him; we are free to take of our masks; we can be fully vulnerable in Gods presence without fear. And when we begin to expose and invite God into the deepest, often the darkest and most difficult aspects of our lives, then we open up the possibility of finding ourselves transformed by God’s redeeming love.
Most of the time, if we dig deeper and look beneath the anger, negativity, hatred, vengeance, we are likely to discover that these feelings are defenses that cover a deep vulnerability. If we look beyond the surface, we will likely learn that all this tough language is a way of telling God that we hurt, that we are afraid, that we’ve been wounded or betrayed. If we could confront the reality of our deep desires, it is likely that more than wanting to hurt or harm others, still less, to hurt God, we want to be noticed, cared for, protected and healed. We want wrongs made right again.
This is true of our anger - and the "cursing psalms" give us permission to let that negativity out and surrender it to God. It is also true of other, presumably, negative thoughts and feelings. We may find ourselves filled with greed or jealousy, lust or pride and any of a host of feelings and attitudes that we find awkward and embarrassing. Do we really think that God is not aware of who and what we are? Honest prayer is coming to God as we are, not as we hope to be or think we should be. We come, as they say, "warts and all", hurting and needy, opening ourselves to God’s healing presence.
Prayer is not primarily utilitarian. We don’t pray to get something done or to convince God to love us. God loves us - God knows our needs and desires. Prayer is about relationship about intimacy and trust. With the One who loves us, we are free to be hurt, weak, scared; we can be indignant, angry, confused. And, yes, we can be grateful, overwhelmed by awe, filled with faith, hope and love.
The fact that the prayer book of the Bible, the Psalms, embraces the full array of human emotion and life tells us it is well and good to open our whole selves up to God. Thank God for those terrible cursing psalms. They open up a way to Divine Love.
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