“Psa. 1:1          Blessed is the man

                        who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,

             nor stands in the way of sinners,

                        nor sits in the seat of scoffers;

2          but his delight is in the law of the LORD,

                        and on his law he meditates day and night.

Psa. 1:3           He is like a tree

                        planted by streams of water

             that yields its fruit in its season,

                        and its leaf does not wither.

             In all that he does, he prospers.

4          The wicked are not so,

                        but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

Psa. 1:5           Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,

                        nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;

6          for the LORD knows the way of the righteous,

                        but the way of the wicked will perish.” (Psalm 1, English Standard Version)

Positivity is a magic word these days. I get that, and frankly, I pretty much agree. However, let me come in with a good word in favor of negativity.

Take, for example, Psalm 1. This psalm starts out positively, by using the word “blessed.”

What does it mean to be blessed? Some translations use the word “happy” to translate the Hebrew word “ʾašrē”, which is not a bad guess. (“Bliss” has also been suggested, but most of us don’t much about bliss, except for some of us who are who recognize Bliss as the name of a coffee.) The Hebrew word contains the idea that someone has to do something. Happiness doesn’t zap anybody. It is a participant sport.

According to the Old Testament, often what a person needs to do in order to experience happiness is positive. There are things we need to do consistently in order to experience happiness. However, sometimes happiness is negative—something or some things that need to be avoided. Verse 1 of Psalm 1 points out this somewhat unwelcome fact.

“Blessed is the man

                        who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,

             nor stands in the way of sinners,

                        nor sits in the seat of scoffers.”

Derek Kidner makes some fine comments on the negative aspects of happiness in his commentary on Psalms. After commenting on the word “blessed”, Kidner writes, “This psalm goes on to show the sober choice that is its basis [that is, the basis of blessedness]. The Sermon on the Mount, using the corresponding word in Greek, will go on to expound it still more radically.

            Counsel, way and seat (or ‘assembly’, or ‘dwelling’) draw attention to the realms of thinking, behaving and belonging, in which a person’s fundamental choice of allegiance is made and carried through; and this is borne out by a hint of decisiveness in the tense of the Hebrew verbs (the perfect). It would be reading too much into these verbs to draw a moral from the apparent process of slowing down from walking to sitting, since the journey was in the wrong direction for a start. Yet certainly the three complete phrases show three aspects, indeed three degrees, of departure from God, by portraying conformity to this world at three different levels: accepting its advice, being party to its ways, and adopting the most fatal of its attitudes – for the scoffers, if not the most scandalous of sinners, are the farthest from repentance (Prov. 3:34).”

So, there are some things to avoid, if we really want to be happy. And really, we all know this. This psalm is not saying anything out of the ordinary. If we want to be happy, we need to avoid things that make us unhappy. This is not rocket science or advanced psychology. Instead, this is life 101. In this sense, blessedness is a negative thing, and negativity is a blessed thing.

May you be blessedly negative today! (And may you come back to read tomorrow’s post, which will speak of delightful positivity!)