For my weekly quiet time this week, I will blog about Psalm 86. I have four items.
1.
The date of this Psalm is difficult to ascertain. On the one hand,
some have posited that Psalm 86 is late because it brings together into
an artistic tapestry different traditions that made their way into the
Hebrew Bible. It appears to draw from other Psalms, as well as the
description of God's attributes in Numbers 14:18 and other passages. On
the other hand, some say that the Psalm cannot be too late,
for it acknowledges the existence of other gods, whereas monotheism was
arguably characteristic of later theology (i.e., in Second Isaiah, which
was exilic). But Psalm 86 still has a universalistic impulse, for it
forecasts that all nations, which God made, will worship the LORD. That shows that it may be late, but not too
late, for one can argue that earlier theology in the Hebrew Bible
tended to believe that it was acceptable for other nations to worship
their own gods (Deuteronomy 32:8-9; Judges 11:24). Or perhaps this Psalm indeed is
late, and it believes that the gods of the other nations exist but are
not as powerful or worthy of worship as the God of Israel. I
Corinthians 12:10, after all, regards the gods to whom the pagans
sacrifice to be demons, which indicates that there was a notion as late
as New Testament times that the pagan gods were real.
2. Psalm 86
is by someone who identified himself as poor and needy. The Psalm
could be for an individual who is suffering, a king who feels especially
vulnerable to domestic enemies, or the nation of Israel, which was the
victim of foreign empires before, during, and after the exile. I read
an article by W. Eugene March, "Psalm 86: When Love Is Not Enough",
which appeared in the Spring 1990 Austin Seminary Bulletin. This article focused on the Psalmist's status as poor and needy. The following passage especially stood out to me:
"The
issue is the adequacy of God's steadfast love. Is God's love enough?
What is God's love to the homeless or the hopeless? Does the gospel
sound the same to the powerless as to the powerful? The issue is that
life as it is experienced radically challenges the testimony that God's
steadfast love is even pertinent, let alone sufficient. What can God's
steadfast love mean for the marginalized? For the voiceless? For all
those who not only can't make the system 'work' for them but in fact are
'worked over' in the course of life? The issue is one of theodicy: can
there be divine love if there is apparently no justice? These questions
are profound and difficult. Obviously, they will not be answered in the
course of any one essay. But we in the church must attend to them
nonetheless. But how? Where to begin?"
I found this to be a
provocative passage for a variety of reasons: because it highlighted
that it's difficult for some people to work the system in their favor,
which shows (to me) why it's important for there to be advocacy groups;
because it raises the question of how we can believe in a God who
provides when there are so many people who lack; etc. I wonder,
though, if people who actually are the victims of poverty and injustice
have as much difficulty believing in God, as do those who observe their
problems from the outside. I'm sure that there are plenty of victims
who do have such difficulty, but I've also met homeless people and poor
people who affirm to me their belief that God does provide. I'm
emphatically not saying this to make the point that their
suffering is not all that bad and that outsiders believe their problems
are worse than they actually are. When people die of
malnutrition, that is horrible, and there's no way to get around that.
But hope can be a powerful thing for people who look like they should
have no reason to hope.
3. Psalm 86:11 states (in the King James
Version): "Teach me thy way, O Lord; I will walk in thy truth: unite my
heart to fear thy name." Marvin Tate has some interesting thoughts on
this verse in his Word commentary on Psalms 51-100:
"A reverent
and obedient response to God involves a 'united heart' (i.e., 'mind' or
'will') toward God (Jer 32:39-41; Ezek 11:19-20). The uncentered and
divided will toward Yahweh is destructive (cf. Ps 12:3; 1 QH 4.14; James
1:8; 4:8). There is a unity in Yahweh himself (a 'oneness') which is
complemented by a 'oneness' in his people's response to him (cf. Deut
6:4-5; 10:12; Eph 4:1-6)...According to the Letter of James, 'the
double-minded man, unstable in all his ways' will not receive anything
from prayer. Such people must purify their hearts and cleanse their
hands if they are to draw near to God (James 4:8)."
I think that all of us have divided hearts in some capacity. There
are Christians who say, "We all sin, but you can tell that someone is a
true believer if she hates her sin and does not want to do it", but I
find this statement to be problematic, for why would a person sin if he
or she did not want to do so, on some level? So everyone wants
to sin, and I'm sure there are plenty who both want to sin and also
desire to be free from sin, which means that their desires are in
conflict. But how much does a person have to hate sin before she can
assure herself that she is truly a Christian or that God will hear and
answer her prayers?
Personally, at this stage of my spiritual journey, I don't play that kind of game.
I mean, what exactly is the point? Rather, I come before God just as I
am, with all of my flaws, and I leave the ball in God's court when it
comes to whether or not God will hear and answer my prayer. At the same
time, I agree with Tate that wholeness and a centered life should be
part of the equation. An important aspect of my spiritual life is my
belief that God does want to make me into a better person----more
loving, kind, and at peace, and less harsh and impatient. I view that
as a destination, but I also view it as something that can be
immediately applicable to my life, as I ask God each day to give me the
strength to be good. I don't believe that I have to be good in
order to have a relationship with God, but I do maintain that being good
is an important part of a spiritual life.
In Psalm 86,
we do see the Psalmist's desire that God will unify his heart, and
perhaps the Psalmist desired that because he felt that him becoming good
would incline God to save him from his enemies. At the same
time, there are other elements of Psalm 86: God's mercy, faithfulness,
and forgiveness, as well as the idea that God must teach the Psalmist,
which (to me) implies that goodness is not something that one
immediately attains but is a journey in which God teaches us.
Maybe the Psalmist's point is that he's not just praying to God so that
he can be physically safe from his enemies, but that he also desires to
be good and to walk in God's ways.
4. Psalm 86:16 states: "O turn
unto me, and have mercy upon me; give thy strength unto thy servant,
and save the son of thine handmaid."
Some make a big deal about
the Psalmist calling himself the son of God's handmaid. Jimmy Swaggart
regards the handmaid as the virgin Mary, but what I want to highlight is
what the Orthodox Jewish Artscroll commentary says in describing
Rashi's interpretation:
"One must relate to God not only as an
acquired servant, who may harbor some residual feelings of independence,
but as a slave born into servitude, who is completely devoted to his
master." Some make the point that the slave born into slavery is more a
part of the household than a slave who is bought. And then there are
those who contend that there really is no great significance in the
Psalmist's reference to himself as a son of God's handmaid, for that is
simply parallel to "thy servant" in the verse (cp. Psalm 116:16).
Personally-speaking,
I would like some degree of independence. I like what John MacArthur
wrote (if my memory is correct) about identifying the will of God: we
fulfill the instructions that God laid out for us, and (in other areas)
we do what we want. The implication seems to be that God has given us a
degree of freedom and latitude.
But I can see value in being a
servant of God----one who works to make this world as God would like it
to be, which entails loving people, especially those in hard
situations. That gives life meaning, and it's also vital for the people
who need help. At a school that I attended, there was a debate about
whether we work for God or with God. I think
that debate is pointless and meaningless (though there were
conservatives who preferred "for God" because that implied that we were
under God's authority). In my opinion, what's important is doing our
part to help this world to be more in accordance with God's standard of
justice, love, and righteousness.
But do we do so as servants?
There appears to be a degree of complexity about this in the Bible.
Jesus in John 15:15 says that he calls his disciples friends rather than
servants, for servants do not know what their master is doing. At the
same time, Jesus likens his followers to servants in such passages as
Luke 17:10 and Luke 12:47-48. Paul in Romans 8:15 affirms that the
spirit has made us sons of God rather than servants who fear. (UPDATE: Many translations, though, say that the point of Romans 8:15 is that we are not servants TO fear.) But Paul
did not hesitate to identify himself as a servant of Jesus Christ. Maybe the idea is that we're servants, and yet we're more than that. Essentially, we're God's children, with a job to do.