“What Gets Your Attention Gets You”
“Be careful, in doing battle with this guy, that you don’t become just like him.” (Advice from my exceedingly wise father-in-law, when I was a young pastor. A man in the church I served was stirring up a lot of dust.)
“Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.” (Words from a wise old hymn)
The first four verses of Psalm 36 focus on the wicked person. It is not a pretty picture. But then, in verses 5-9, the psalmist makes a dramatic pivot. Suddenly, he is no longer focusing on the wicked person. No! Instead, he is focused on the sweet goodness of God.
“Psa. 36:5 Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the clouds.
6 Your righteousness is like the mountains of God;
your judgments are like the great deep;
man and beast you save, O LORD.
Psa. 36:7 How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
8 They feast on the abundance of your house,
and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
9 For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light do we see light.” (Psalm 36: 5-9, English Standard Version)
Someone has said that whatever gets your attention gets you! This could suggest that if we focus on wicked people too much, we become the slaves of those wicked people. Perhaps we also become, in some measure at least, like those wicked people. The possibility is that we become like whatever or whomever we look at for a long time. If this is true—and I suspect that it is—we need to be very careful about our focus. Yes, we need to recognize and admit the wickedness of the wicked. Perhaps we have areas of our lives where we are wicked and don’t really want to change. That needs to be taken seriously.
However, we shouldn’t camp out with wicked people, even when those people is me! We need to move on. The psalmist eventually gets his eyes off the wicked and instead decides to focus on God. And what sort of God does the man see?
Well, for one thing, the psalmist speaks of a God who is loving. Now I hear someone say, “Wait a minute! This is the Old Testament! Isn’t the God of the Old Testament a God of wrath, while the New Testament God is a God of love?”
I would say that I hate to break the news to you, but the truth is that I’m glad to break the news to you: God’s love is all over the pages of the Old Testament. Yes, there is also a lot of violence and wrath, but there is a lot of love too. It all depends on where you look.
Notice that the love of the LORD reaches the heavens. God’s love is high, like the heavens, overarching the world. God’s love is high above the wicked, high above the righteous, high above everyone and everything.
And then, there is God’s faithfulness. It reaches to the clouds. I am writing this meditation on a cloudy day. It is a wonderfully encouraging thing to think on a penetrating, dreary day—the first day of winter—that God’s faithfulness, God’s consistency, reaches so high. It is a wonderful thing that God is loving, but if God’s love is not consistent, such “love” wouldn’t do us much good. We need a God who sticks with us.
And that is the sort of loving and consistent God that we do, in fact, have.
“Follow Your Heart? Well, maybe!”
You have no doubt heard the advice to “follow your heart.” It is good counsel, except when it isn’t. Let me explain.
Some of us, at many times and in many ways, do need to follow our hearts. We have a feeling, a hunch, an intuition, or a dream in our hearts. We need to go with that! Self-doubt may masquerade as humility, but such doubt is not always the best guide.
However, a lot depends on what sort of heart you have, as well as what your heart is telling you at any given moment. Sometimes, I’ve followed my own heart, and caused a great deal of harm to myself and others. Maybe I’m unique in this regard, but I seriously doubt it.
Psalm 36 warns about the danger of following our hearts when they are not in the right place. At least, that is the way I would take the psalm. However, there is a problem in translating verse 1.
Here’s the deal. A literal rendering of verse 1 (verse 2 in Hebrew) would go something like this: “An utterance of rebellion to the wicked in his heart.” There are many problems with translating this verse, and I won’t go into them all here. Both you and your guide could easily get lost, never to be found.
Because it is such a strange and difficult verse, many modern translators try to smooth it out, but to my own way of thinking it seems to be best translated as I have done above. Several things should be noted.
First, the word that I’ve translated “utterance” is a Hebrew word that usually refers to an authoritative speech. Usually, such authoritative speech is said to come from God or a prophet. But, if I am properly interpreting the word in its context in Psalm 36, it means that the wicked person has an authoritative utterance of transgression (or rebellion) emanating from his very heart. An oracle has taken up residence in his very heart. Unfortunately this “authoritative word” is all about rebellion!
Whoa! (Or should I say, “Woe!”)
To say that a person has an oracle of rebellion, an authoritatively wicked utterance set up in his heart, is a chilling reminder of how wicked the heart can be. And, of course, such wickedness in the heart has consequences in the outward life. Thus, the wicked person—presumably following the oracle of his heart—goes off the rails. Shoot! He doesn’t even believe that there are any rails! So, Psalm 36 continues as follows:
“Psa. 36:1b there is no fear of God
before his eyes.
Psa. 36:2 For he flatters himself in his own eyes
that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated.
Psa. 36:3 The words of his mouth are trouble and deceit;
he has ceased to act wisely and do good.
Psa. 36:4 He plots trouble while on his bed;
he sets himself in a way that is not good;
he does not reject evil.”
Derek Kidner, in his 1973 commentary on Psalms 1-72 (Tyndale series), writes the following:
“The opening words, lit. ‘An oracle of transgression’, make a startling heading to the portrait of this dedicated sinner. It is as though transgression itself were his god or prophet. . . . While a believer sets his course towards God himself, this man does not take even ‘the terror of the Lord’ into account. This is the culminating symptom of sin in Romans 3:18, a passage which teaches us to see this portrait as that of man (but for the grace of God) rather than of an abnormally wicked type. All men as fallen have these characteristics, latent or developed.”
Kidner goes on to point out that people who have wicked hearts that lead to evil actions also experience “. . . a wholesale reversal of values, leaving good powerless to attract, and evil to repel. Cf. Alexander Pope on a possible series of steps towards this:
‘Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet, seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.[Vol 15: Psa, p. 165]’”
Sounds pretty scary, doesn’t it? If it doesn’t sound scary to you, you should really be scared. If you’re scared, then be sure to guard your heart (Proverbs 4:23)! It is only the guarded heart that should be followed.
“Don’t Want to Know! Might Have to Change!”
Might Have to Change!”
“Know thyself.” (The Delphic Oracle, as quoted by Socrates)
“The way of the wicked is like deep darkness;
they do not know over what they stumble.” (Proverbs 4:19, English Standard Version)
I have a confession: Sometimes, I don’t really want to know. Perhaps I should explain.
I do want to know all kinds of things. How old is Carol Burnett? What does “OG” mean in text-speak? How many people in America have earned Ph Ds? What is the Spanish word for “find”?
On and on my curiosity goes,
and where it stops, nobody knows.
But, in point of fact, I do know where my curiosity stops. I don’t really want to know certain things about myself. The knowledge itself would be unpleasant. And then, the real unpleasantness might begin. Why? Well, I might have to change. There is a psalm about people like me—Psalm 36. I wrote about it in very general terms in yesterday’s blog post. Here is the verse that I especially want to have a look at today:
“For he flatters himself in his own eyes
that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated.” (Proverbs 4:2, English Standard Version)
This verse could be taken in either of two ways. It might mean that the wicked person flatters himself because he has pulled the wool over eyes. He says to himself, “I’ve covered my tracks! No one will ever know!”
On the other hand, the verse could mean that the wicked person thinks so much of his cleverness that he is no longer can detect his own evil. “Who, me?! Never!”
There is no way to be sure, based on the Hebrew, which way to go with this one. Therefore, I’m going to take the pathway that Yogi Berra indicated: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” (Of course, Berra also is reported to have said, “I didn’t really say all the things I said,” so perhaps it was someone else who spoke of taking the fork in the road.)
If this verse means that the wicked person has covered his tracks so carefully that even he can’t detect his wickedness, that raises a chilling thought for me. Am I wicked, and don’t even know it?
But there is an even more disturbing question: What if I don’t even want to know? And the truth is that, often, I really don’t want to know.
And why is that? I might have to change! Who wants to do that?! I am reminded of what Bilbo Baggins said about adventures: “Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!”
It may, in fact, be true that coming to grips with my own wickedness is the ultimate adventure. However, that doesn’t mean that they won’t be nasty disturbing uncomfortable things. And then there’s being late for dinner.
Of course, none of what I’ve written here is new or revolutionary. We all speak of people who have blind spots. Everybody else can see what they can’t. However, there is one person that I know who has no blind spots at all: me!
“In pretending to find his own iniquity and hate it: this suggests that he acted in such a way as to make sure he would not find it. Some people make a show of trying to find their iniquity, but they are afraid of finding it, because if they do find it, they will be challenged: ‘Give it up . . . [The sinner] pretends to seek it here, seek it there, but always he is afraid of finding it. His search is a sham.”
Then Charry comments, “One wonders if Augustine is not reflecting on his own struggle to give up sex prior to his baptism.”[1]
[1] Ellen T. Charry, Psalms 1-50, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2015), 191-192.
“Aware of the Wicked, But Focused on the Good God”
Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Do you focus on the positive or the negative? The evil or the good?
Perhaps we should be biblical and focus on both. In fact, there is a psalm that, in just twelve verses, deals with both the wickedness of some people and the goodness of God—Psalm 36. I have been listening to and reading this psalm for the past week or so. The psalm may be short, but what it lacks in size, it more than makes up in depth and power. I plan to spend several days blogging about it. Here is the psalm in its entirety”
“Psa. 36:1 Transgression speaks to the wicked
deep in his heart;
there is no fear of God
before his eyes.
2 For he flatters himself in his own eyes
that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated.
3 The words of his mouth are trouble and deceit;
he has ceased to act wisely and do good.
4 He plots trouble while on his bed;
he sets himself in a way that is not good;
he does not reject evil.
Psa. 36:5 Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the clouds.
6 Your righteousness is like the mountains of God;
your judgments are like the great deep;
man and beast you save, O LORD.
Psa. 36:7 How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
8 They feast on the abundance of your house,
and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
9 For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light do we see light.
Psa. 36:10 Oh, continue your steadfast love to those who know you,
and your righteousness to the upright of heart!
11 Let not the foot of arrogance come upon me,
nor the hand of the wicked drive me away.
12 There the evildoers lie fallen;
they are thrust down, unable to rise.” (Psalm 36:1-12, English Standard Version)
That’s it—the whole thing! So, let’s begin by making some very general comments.
This psalm begins by acknowledging the presence and seriousness of sin. And Psalm 36 makes no bones about it: Wickedness is a serious matter. The psalm acknowledges that there are people who have become so devoted to evil that they have reached the point of no return.
Fortunately, in my judgment, such commitment is rare. Many people really do want to change, but don’t know how. They need a helping hand. I hope that I am one of those people. You probably are too, or you wouldn’t be reading this post. Take heart!
However, the psalmist recognizes that there are people for whom there is very little hope. How can they be identified? Primarily, says the psalmist, they can be identified by the fact that they have become so committed to an evil lifestyle that they don’t even want to change. They are too busy plotting evil to have time to plot a different, better course.
But then, in verse 5, the psalmist abruptly changes his focus. Now, he turns his eyes from the wicked to God. He says certain things about God that, if they are true, would make the most committed atheist want to believe in such a God. I do believe these things about God, but even when I was an atheist, I would have wished that I could believe in a God like the one described here.
Go back over verses 5-9. Read them slowly. Think about what they say about God. If God really is like that, oh my!
It is necessary to acknowledge that there are evil people in the world who really do not want to change. But it is also good to acknowledge that there is a God who is good to the very depth of God’s character, and that God’s goodness leads him to be good to all God’s creation. And such a God probably doesn’t need to change.
So, you want me to take out the word “probably” in the preceding sentence? Okay!
And such a God probably doesn’t need to change. Maybe we are the ones who need to change. We should change our focus from wicked people to the Good God.
“O, Ordinary Night”
DTEB, “O, Ordinary Night”
I like the Christmas song “O Holy Night.” In fact, I like it a lot.
However, I wonder . . .
I wonder if, for most people of that time, it wasn’t just another night. Most people were probably tired. Some were hungry. Some were worried. Some went to bed angry. Some couples were involved with some serious snuggle-bunnying. Others were fussing. Perhaps, if most people on the night of Jesus’ birth had written a song, it would have been entitled “Bah! Another Ordinary Night!”
However, I think that there is something very comforting about thinking of the night of Jesus’ birth as “ordinary.” Now don’t get me wrong. I think Jesus’ birth itself was something Special. Indeed, I believe that his birth was way beyond Special—even “Special” with a capital “S”.
But to think of “. . . the night of the dear Savior’s birth” as being ordinary recalibrates my attitude toward my own ordinary days and nights. Am I sure that ordinary days and nights even exist? Perhaps every day and every night are full of God’s glory and that, therefore, all days and nights are therefore holy. This is, in fact, what I believe with growing conviction day by day.
Perhaps the word “ordinary” should be banished from our vocabulary. At the very least, we probably shouldn’t throw it around as much as we do.
Have an extraordinary—and holy—day and night!
“A Good Kind of Laziness”
I am not a mind-reader, but I know what some of you are thinking. If you were paying attention to the title of this post, you’re thinking, “What!?! Laziness isn’t ever a good thing!”
Well, generally I would say “Amen” to that. However, it occurred to me this morning that there is laziness, and then, there is laziness. Let me explain.
We get Kroger fuel points, so when we get gas, I try to take all the gas cans I gather, so that we can get as much bang for our buck, and as much gas for our buck. My wife’s car was almost out of gas, so I went out late last night to put gas in her car out of one of our money-saving gas cans. It was only about 8:00 p.m., but that is late for me. It was cold, the gas cans are heavy, and the joint pain in my hands told me that I needed to power through the pain and the cold and the weight and the lateness of the hour, and just get this done.
There was a catch: I forgot to make sure that the gas cap on the five-gallon can was off. Do you have any idea how hard it is to pour gas out of a can when you haven’t taken off the cap? Short story long, I ended up spilling some gas on my old jeans. All this was the result of hurry and bad laziness.
My wife hates the smell of gas. I’m not all that fond of it myself. So, in spite of my desire to go to bed, I decided to do a load of laundry. But I hated just doing my gas-soaked pants, so I decided to throw in some wash cloths and towels and other hot water things.
You already see where this is going, don’t you? Yep! Bad laziness strikes again! Last night, after the hot-water things had been washed, I threw them in the dryer, turned it on and went to bed.
This morning, I got up and went downstairs to take the dog outside. I decided to be a good scout and fold the nice dry, clean clothes. “My wife will appreciate that,” I told myself. My self-congratulations were exceedingly premature. The clothes were dry alright. It was the clean thing that didn’t turn out well. As I folded the clothes, I discovered that they all smelled like gasoline.
So, I need to do them again as soon as my sweetheart gets up, if not before.
As I put the “clean” clothes back in the washer, I was invited by God’s Holy Spirit to think about what I had done and why. Was it that I like to conserve water and laundry detergent? Well yes, that may have factored in a little. But the bottom line was this: I was inattentive and lazy. The inattentiveness and laziness with the gas can cap had cascaded into laziness doing the laundry.
And then this thought occurred: If I had been productively lazy, none of this would have happened. Good laziness means slowing down, paying attention, and doing things right the first time. That is the best way to be lazy. And it’s a lot less work that my usual form of laziness.
Make it a good lazy day!
“Addicted to the Past”
“ Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.” (English Standard Version)
Addiction comes in many forms. One of the commonest forms is addiction to the past. In fact, it is so common that it isn’t usually recognized as an addiction. (If addictions are common enough, we baptize them and rename them “normal”—but they’re still addictions.)
It doesn’t much matter whether we are looking back with longing or with regret. Too much looking back is not a safe thing to do. I discovered this one time when I looked in my rearview mirror for too long and rear-ended the car in front of me.
What is wrong with looking back? In a sense, nothing. In fact, looking back at the past to learn from it can be very helpful. And sometimes, we all need to take a stroll down memory lane, just for fun.
But, at any age or stage in our lives, we mainly need to focus on the present and lean into the future. Looking back too often or for too long can cause more than automobile accidents. Such addiction to the past can cause life wrecks as well. Most things in the present moment are either enjoyable or endurable. It is when we begin importing the past (“It has always been like this!”) or the future (“It will always be like this!”) that we get into trouble. Such imports come with high tariffs.
The Bible teaches us to learn from the past, but not to spend too much time there. The Bible is mostly concerned with new things that God wants to do in our lives and in our world. God will and does work with addicts, but God refuses to live us in our addiction. Maybe one of the reasons why so many of us miss what God is doing is that we are looking back too much. It is hard to see things when you’re looking in the wrong direction.
Or, as my wife once said when I was reminiscing too much, “Honey, the past is a nice place to visit, but you can’t live there!”
“On Refusing to Make God’s Violent Language My Own”
I heard a paper presented at the annual Society of Biblical Language that made me profoundly uncomfortable. That does not make it a bad paper. Sometimes a body needs to be profoundly uncomfortable.
The basic thesis of the paper was that the violent language about God’s punishment of Judah in the Book of Jeremiah is profoundly disturbing. Such language can be—has been—used to justify violence in contemporary domestic relationships. This language participates in the very common practice of “victim-blaming.”
I checked out of the paper early. I couldn’t listen anymore. I can only handle so much truth at one time.
Of course, there are other ways of reading Jeremiah’s words. Jeremiah and other parts of the Bible can be read, not as God’s deepest intentions for Judah or the human race. Rather, these violent words can be read as the horrible consequences of our own decisions and behaviors.
Furthermore, I believe that it is always questionable to take the words of God, and use them to justify our own thoughts, words, and actions. God is God, if there is a God at all. We are not God. It might be wise to keep that in mind.
Two more observations might help (a little) with the violent language of God.
- The human race is violent. If God is to communicate with us at all, God must use language that we understand. Unfortunately, we are all fluent in the language of violence.
- Neither Judah, nor I, nor you, nor anyone are altogether innocent victims. Violence begets violence. Perhaps it isn’t that God’s violence begets ours, but that our violence gives birth to the violence of God.
When I was an atheist, I was violent. Now that I am a believer, I still struggle with violent thoughts and words. Especially on the highway, I struggle with my violent tendencies. The violence with which I need to wrestle is my own violence.
“Compassionate? Then Do Something!”
“Jesus was moved with compassion . . .” (Matthew 9:36, 14:14; and elsewhere)
“Having sympathy and compassion for all who are in temptation, a condition which we are sometimes in, we have a responsibility towards them. Sympathy always includes responsibility. Pity is useless because it does not have a remedy for the need. But wherever our sympathy goes, our responsibility goes too. When we are moved with compassion, we should go to the one in need and bind up his wounds as best we can.” (From Twenty-Four Hours a Day © 1975 by Hazelden Foundation.)
My brother used to say, “I feel for you, but I can’t reach you.” But a pity, or sympathy, or compassion, or empathy that doesn’t do something, doesn’t amount to anything. Whether you make a distinction between pity, sympathy, compassion, and empathy, what really makes the difference is acting. Love not only reaches; love reaches out.
God felt for his people who were slaves in Egypt. I’m sure of that. But God didn’t stop with his feelings. He did something: He freed them from slavery. Moses was God’s hand reaching out to God’s people.
Jesus felt compassion, but he didn’t stop there. He healed, he taught, he cast out demons, he fed the hungry. Jesus reached and he reached out.
Do I feel badly about racism in our society and in my heart? Then I need to do something about it! Am I grieved by sexism, Covid-19, hunger, war? That’s nice. Now, I need to do something about it!
What can I do today to embody my compassion for others? That is the question. My answer is either action, or my answer means nothing.
“Jesus Thinks of Everything!”
“Give her something to eat.” (Mark 5:43)
Jesus was and is incredibly down to earth. Mark 5:22-43 tells the story of Jesus raising a young girl from the dead. He had brought her back to life by saying two words, “Talitha Koum”—“Little girl, get up!”
But then, Jesus gives her mom and dad two commands. The first was a strict command not to tell anyone what had happened. That is strange! Why would Jesus not want such a wonderful miracle to be generally known? Jesus often tried to keep his miracles under wraps. The reason is not usually spelled out, but it seems as if Jesus did not want his miracles to be people’s main focus.
But Jesus’ second command to the parents of the formerly dead girl seems strange too. “Give her something to eat.” What?!? Did Jesus really need to tell them that?!
Well, yes, perhaps he did. If the little girl had been sick for several days, she had probably not been eating much, if anything. She needed to eat.
Then too, in the midst of strange reversals—whether the reversals are joyous or tragic—it is good to eat. There is a reason why there are meals at both weddings and funerals. Perhaps the parents needed to be told to do something simple and life affirming just to cope with such an amazing thing as having their daughter back with them, alive and whole.
Jesus thinks of everything!
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