July 4thPsalm 37 (1)
The meek shall inherit the earth
‘The wicked watch for the righteous, and seek to kill them.’ (37.32)
‘But the meek shall inherit the land.’ (37.11)
‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’ (Jesus, Matthew 5.3)
Ta Nehesi Coates, an African-American writer and activist, tells of sitting in the chapel of Howard University at a memorial service for his classmate, Prince Jones, who was killed by a police officer. Coates confesses, ‘I have always felt great distance from the grieving rituals of my people.’ Coates attributes his inability to connect with the ritual due to his rejection of Christian understandings of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not something he is able to offer. ‘The need to forgive the officer who killed my friend did not move me. I knew that Prince was not killed by a single officer so much as he was murdered by his country and all the fears that have marked it from birth.’ And then he writes these powerful words: ‘I don’t believe the arc of the universe bends toward justice. I don’t even believe there is an arc. I believe in chaos. If anything good will be done, it will be done by humans. I think that those of us who reject Divinity, who understand there is no order, there is no arc, that we are night travellers on a great tundra…that the only work that will matter will be the work done by us.’ [Christian Century, May 5, 2021], p.23.
Psalm 37, along with Psalm 49,73, and the book of Job, is often labelled a theodicy – a meditation on evil and the justice of God. It implies the question, How can God be just while there is so much evil in the world? The word justice occurs three times (v.6,28,30) but if God loves justice and will bring justice to light, why are the wicked able to prosper?
(This week I will consider three theological responses to the question of evil; next week we will consider a fourth response and illustrate it with some stories).
The psalmist stoutly asserts that the righteous will be rewarded and the wicked punished, but in Hebrew the tense allows for a future sense. According to the text, the wicked will…
- The wicked will wither and fade (v.2);
- The wicked will be cut off (v.9);
- Their bows shall be broken (v.15);
- The wicked will vanish like smoke (v. 20).
But in the meantime, they are in the prime of health; they possess the land, and they are armed and dangerous.
The audience for whom this psalm is written are the righteous but they are in a time of distress: they fret (used three times), are envious, and angry. Security has not yet come to them.
Suffering is an assault upon the heart, but it is also a threat to the mind of faith. How do we face it and proclaim God’s presence in the midst of it? Three writers, one Jewish and two Christian offer some clues.
Kushner – ‘When bad things happen to good people’ by rabbi Harold Kushner has been a hugely popular and often helpful resource for sufferers.
The personal tragedy that gave rise to the book was the death of Kushner’s son, Aaron, who died at age fourteen due to progeria (the condition of "rapid aging"). Kushner and his wife had thought of themselves as relatively good people and, in terms of religion, more committed than most. But because of his son's death, and for the first time in his life, Kushner began to question the faith of his childhood, the confidence that God is an all-wise and loving parent. No theoretical descriptions of the place of human suffering could satisfy him.
The entire book is well worth reading but I name only the conclusion to which Kushner came. Kushner describes the classical ‘theodicy problem’ as a theological puzzle composed of four seemingly contradictory claims.
- God exists.
- God is omnipotent or all-powerful.
- God is morally perfect – good, just, and fair.
- Innocent people suffer.
These cannot all be true at once, thus Kushner comes to the conclusion that while he affirms #1,3,4 he cannot affirm #2 –an all-powerful God. "I can worship a God who hates suffering but cannot eliminate it, more easily than I can worship a God who chooses to make innocent children suffer and die, for whatever exalted reason."
Kushner is helpful in naming the problem but in the end his solution is unsatisfying for a Christian. So we turn to two thinkers in the early church who also reflected deeply on this problem.
Augustine – for Augustine the problem of evil arises from the free will given us by God. In the beginning all was perfect but then angels and humans rebelled and we are all under the spell of sin. It is important to note that Augustine does not point to the immediate and actual sins of individuals, but rather to the original sin of the human race. Joined in community to Adam's crime, no human, even an infant, is technically innocent, but people suffer not in proportion to their individual sin, but rather as a consequence of the fallen creation. Suffering, thus, is unequally borne.
Irenaeus – Augustine’s explanation assumes that a good God would choose to construct a world of perfect pleasure, but what if that is not God's goal? What if God rather wished to create not a world where the temperature is always perfect and the food always tastes good, but rather where souls can be made, where people through their own moral choices can be fashioned into the willing children of God? It just may be that such a world is the one - full of ambiguity and paradoxical suffering - that we have been given.
Instead of the doctrine that humans were created finitely perfect but then destroyed their own perfection and plunged into sin and misery, Irenaeus suggests that humans were created as imperfect, immature creatures who were to undergo moral development and growth and finally be brought to the perfection intended by their Maker.
FOR REFLECTION
Read the psalm carefully. Underline those verses where the wicked seem to prosper.
What do you think of Coates’ statement that, ‘I don’t believe the arc of the universe bends toward justice. I don’t even believe there is an arc. I believe in chaos.’
How do you understand the presence of evil in our lives and our world?
Which of the three explanations are helpful to you?
What evil are you praying will be overcome this week?