For my weekly quiet time this week, I will blog about Psalm 91, which is about God's protection of people from harm.
I
used to know a preacher who liked to tell a story about Psalm 91. He
told me and whomever would listen that he would play Psalm 91 on a
tape-recorder and listen to it over and over again at night. This
preacher was big on people disciplining their thoughts by meditating on
God's word, for he felt that this could lead to a positive attitude,
spiritual power, and even to physical healing. One morning, he said,
after he had listened to Psalm 91 repeatedly the night before, he was in
his garage and there was a fire. The very next moment, he was standing
outside of the garage and watching it burn. In his telling, God had
removed him from the burning garage, protecting him in accordance with
Psalm 91.
I appreciated the preacher's story and his teachings,
for they gave me the hope that reading the Bible could lead me to have a
good life. And yet, as I see life, God does not seem to deliver
everyone from danger. There are still people----even Christians----who
die as a result of automobile accidents, earthquakes, hurricanes,
floods, and sickness. In The Treasury of David, Charles Haddon Spurgeon apparently recognizes this fact, for he says that Psalm 91's point is not
that God will protect everybody (or even every Christian) from harm.
Rather, according to Spurgeon, Psalm 91 is saying that God will protect
those who are especially close to God----those who dwell in the Most
High's secret place.
I suppose that, from a certain point-of-view,
what Spurgeon is saying makes a degree of sense. Wouldn't God, after
all, want to preserve and protect those who are close to him and do good
in the world? But this notion somewhat compromises God's unconditional
love, plus I have doubts that real life consistently works this way.
After all, during plagues throughout history, people were shocked that
those who were the most proactive in ministering to the
sick----Christians----themselves became sick and died. And, although
the preacher I mentioned at the beginning of this post talked at times
about how one could become so spiritual and close to God as to escape
death, he himself passed on.
I can still understand the
psychological appeal of Psalm 91, though. I pray for God's protection
to be on myself, my family, and my friends, even though I wonder why
there are people who die tragically. I suppose that I can try to
comfort myself with the notion that God has a plan. That works for a
lot of people, and perhaps it could work for me. But I wouldn't tell
someone who is suffering that. Rather, I'd just listen and be there for
the person.
My study of the different ideas about the setting of
Psalm 91 was interesting. There is one view that the Psalm relates to
God's protection of the king in battle, as God protected the king's
life, while his enemies fell due to being killed or getting a disease.
Another view is that Psalm 91, like Psalm 90, is by Moses. According to
E.W. Bullinger, whereas Psalm 90 is about the death of the cursed
wilderness generation, Psalm 91 concerns God's preservation of Joshua,
Caleb, and the next generation, the ones who would survive to enter the
Promised Land. Whether or not one accepts this as the setting
for Psalm 90-91, some do maintain that there is a connection between the
two Psalms: Psalm 90 is pessimistic and discusses the brevity of human
life due to God's wrath, whereas Psalm 91 is about how God protects the
faithful from life-threatening harm and gives them a long life.
A
third view is that Psalm 91 was spoken by David to Solomon. The Targum
has this approach, and the Septuagint ascribes Psalm 91 to David.
Moreover, according to Craig Evans, a Qumran document treats Psalm 91 as
a Psalm of exorcism that David gave to Solomon. Evans refers to
Josephus' Antiquities 8:44-45, which presents Solomon as one who was an
expert at expelling demons.
One perhaps can apply Psalm
91----even when bad things happen to good people----by treating it
primarily as a Psalm about God's spiritual protection of people: that
God guards faithful Christians from temptation and Satanic attacks, or
gives them the strength to be faithful amidst attacks. Psalm
91:13, after all, says that the faithful one will tread on a lion, and
Evans refers to I Peter 5:8, which describes the devil as a roaring
lion.
But, when I see how Psalm 91 is handled in the New
Testament, I have my doubts that the early Christians believed that it
concerned spiritual protection alone, while excluding physical
protection. For one, when the devil appeals to the
Psalm in Matthew 4:6 and Luke 4:10-11 in an attempt to convince Jesus to
jump off of a cliff, Jesus does not reply that God doesn't protect
people physically but only spiritually (even though it should be noted
that spiritual protection was probably a relevant concern to Jesus
during his temptation in the wilderness). Rather, Jesus says
that one should not tempt God. I take that to mean that, yes, God
protects the faithful physically when they are in trouble, and yet that
should not encourage us to be reckless or deliberately to put God to the
test.
Second, even spiritual warfare can have concrete, physical
ramifications. In Luke 10:19, Jesus seems to refer to Psalm 91:13 when
he says that his disciples will have the power to tread on serpents and
scorpions. That means that the disciples will have power over
demons. And yet, this had physical ramifications, including healing and
driving demons out of people.
So where does that lead
us? Does God protect or not? Does God especially protect and empower
those with faith, giving them authority over the unclean spirits, which
cause spiritual and physical turmoil? If so, why does God not appear to
do this all of the time, as faithful Christians still suffer and die?