Living Wittily

The Psalms and Our Human Capacities for Hate, Vengeance and Violence

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Italy-pieta-michaelangeloThe following is my response to Bob Macdonald's comment on the post about Maria Boulding and the place of the Psalms in our prayers. It's in the comments section but Bob as always raises points that always make me think again and I didn't want it hidden away on the side-bar

Bob, as I say, your comment makes me think again, and I am in complete agreement about the role of the Psalms as spiritual safety valves that allow moral catharsis by bringing our worst thoughts and feelings within the orbit of the mercy, justice and love of God. But if we believe the Psalmists spoke with utter frankness to God, then vengeance and grief, anger and despair would be brought into the acknowledged presence of the Holy One as part of the genuine experience of people of faith facing life's extremities. The collisions of emotional and theological responses within the collection of Psalms is what makes them the prayer book of the human heart, and also enables such prayers to be an honest and authentic cry of faith whether struggling or celebrating, questioning or affirming. Behind such prayers there is the instinct for justice and the longing for some sort of healing and restored wholeness.

But yes, any reading of the Sermon on the Mount, and serious reflection on the pivotal event of God in Christ reconciling the world to himself, making peace by the blood of the cross, requires of us the responses of those who are ministers of reconciliation. I think that's why Boulding acknowledges that certain emotional, moral and psychological responses to injustice, suffering and violence are better out than in – and are better acknowledged before God than nursed in the heart awaiting opportunity. The eucharistic cup, of anguished suffering and suffering love, of shared faith and holy communion, itself holds together the polar extremes of human experience and the infinite range of Divine love and peacemaking.

The picture of Micaelagelo's Pieta sculpture is one of the miracles of Christian art – and a profound meditation on the alternative to vengeance, violence, hatred and murder.

Just some thoughts which arise out of you pushing a bit harder Bob, so thanks and blessings on your own ministry.

Comments

6 responses to “The Psalms and Our Human Capacities for Hate, Vengeance and Violence”

  1. Bob MacDonald avatar
    Bob MacDonald

    “then vengeance and grief, anger and despair would be brought into the acknowledged presence of the Holy One as part of the genuine experience of people of faith facing life’s extremities”
    Would be or must be? It occurred to me yesterday when discussing the sanitization of the BCP with my son-in-law and daughter that the Church leaves out one of her drawing cards. Why do we watch murder mysteries? The violence is cathartic and justice is done. Why then do we fail to sing the Do Not Destroy psalms or the invective of Psalms 109 (and I add) Psalm 69? Violence is a big draw in the films.
    Seriously, though, without the giving over of our full character to the cross, how can we become the compassionate and holy creature that we are called to be? Having prayed for shame on those who seek our hurt and given over the prayer to God, we cannot then take vengeance into our own hands.
    I have drafted (version 176 or so) a 500 page book teasing out this idea and others in the psalms. I wanted this book so I could see and hear the words that are used in the conversation between the Father and the Son in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The process is taking me farther than I could have imagined.

    Reply
  2. Bob MacDonald avatar
    Bob MacDonald

    “then vengeance and grief, anger and despair would be brought into the acknowledged presence of the Holy One as part of the genuine experience of people of faith facing life’s extremities”
    Would be or must be? It occurred to me yesterday when discussing the sanitization of the BCP with my son-in-law and daughter that the Church leaves out one of her drawing cards. Why do we watch murder mysteries? The violence is cathartic and justice is done. Why then do we fail to sing the Do Not Destroy psalms or the invective of Psalms 109 (and I add) Psalm 69? Violence is a big draw in the films.
    Seriously, though, without the giving over of our full character to the cross, how can we become the compassionate and holy creature that we are called to be? Having prayed for shame on those who seek our hurt and given over the prayer to God, we cannot then take vengeance into our own hands.
    I have drafted (version 176 or so) a 500 page book teasing out this idea and others in the psalms. I wanted this book so I could see and hear the words that are used in the conversation between the Father and the Son in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The process is taking me farther than I could have imagined.

    Reply
  3. Jim Gordon avatar
    Jim Gordon

    Hello again Bob – I fully agree that we must give over our whole character to Christ, and that discipleship because it is cruciform must always be realistic about what goes on in our own hearts. Neither I nor Boulding is suggesting we don’t use all the Psalms in our praying – indeed the lengthy quotation from her offers I think a profoundly Christian way of doing precisely what you plead for, the non sanitising of an astringent text.
    There is I think a difference between praying the emotions of the Psalms and actually assenting and acting on those same emotions. (Brueggemann makes this important point in his Praying the Psalms. The very praying of such anger, despair, bewilderment and faith losing its bearings is what you are pleading for – a handing over of destructive reactions and responses to the one who absorbs in atoning love the sins of the world. Taking vengeance into our own hands is the precise opposite of what I (and I think Boulding) mean by allowing such authentic experience to be caught up into the reality of who Christ is, crucified and risen.
    For me it isn’t the murder mystery that best fits the anger, outrage and bewilderment of the Psalms in question – gratuitous cruelty, the atrocities of the powerful against the vulberable, military brutality are themes also covered by contemporary film and they touch those deeper wells of emotion out of which desire for vengeance and the will to retaliatory violence comes.
    I think we are both arguing for an honest and unedited indeed unexpurgated Psalter as the prayer book of the Church. For myself, it is precisely the imprecatory psalms, and the psalms of invective and shame, that give language to our prayers so that we say Thy will be done insxtead of my will be done. And it requires the transforming grace of the living Christ, the cleansing fire of the Holy Spirit, and the forgiving love of the Father of mercies for such a spiritual aclhemy to take place, so that vengeance becomes conciliation and peace displaces violence.
    But this is a good discussion and I’m happy to keep it open for a bit yet.

    Reply
  4. Jim Gordon avatar
    Jim Gordon

    Hello again Bob – I fully agree that we must give over our whole character to Christ, and that discipleship because it is cruciform must always be realistic about what goes on in our own hearts. Neither I nor Boulding is suggesting we don’t use all the Psalms in our praying – indeed the lengthy quotation from her offers I think a profoundly Christian way of doing precisely what you plead for, the non sanitising of an astringent text.
    There is I think a difference between praying the emotions of the Psalms and actually assenting and acting on those same emotions. (Brueggemann makes this important point in his Praying the Psalms. The very praying of such anger, despair, bewilderment and faith losing its bearings is what you are pleading for – a handing over of destructive reactions and responses to the one who absorbs in atoning love the sins of the world. Taking vengeance into our own hands is the precise opposite of what I (and I think Boulding) mean by allowing such authentic experience to be caught up into the reality of who Christ is, crucified and risen.
    For me it isn’t the murder mystery that best fits the anger, outrage and bewilderment of the Psalms in question – gratuitous cruelty, the atrocities of the powerful against the vulberable, military brutality are themes also covered by contemporary film and they touch those deeper wells of emotion out of which desire for vengeance and the will to retaliatory violence comes.
    I think we are both arguing for an honest and unedited indeed unexpurgated Psalter as the prayer book of the Church. For myself, it is precisely the imprecatory psalms, and the psalms of invective and shame, that give language to our prayers so that we say Thy will be done insxtead of my will be done. And it requires the transforming grace of the living Christ, the cleansing fire of the Holy Spirit, and the forgiving love of the Father of mercies for such a spiritual aclhemy to take place, so that vengeance becomes conciliation and peace displaces violence.
    But this is a good discussion and I’m happy to keep it open for a bit yet.

    Reply
  5. Bob MacDonald avatar
    Bob MacDonald

    Thank you Jim for the opportunity to express this thesis. I love your phrase ‘spiritual alchemy’. For somehow he does change lead into gold, our darkness into light. (Not finished yet of course, but prepared. O God my heart is ready – Ps 45.)

    Reply
  6. Bob MacDonald avatar
    Bob MacDonald

    Thank you Jim for the opportunity to express this thesis. I love your phrase ‘spiritual alchemy’. For somehow he does change lead into gold, our darkness into light. (Not finished yet of course, but prepared. O God my heart is ready – Ps 45.)

    Reply

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