Psalm 14 - I Refuse

Right now, it is really easy to choose to hate. There are people currently who are acitvely making choices that will do lasting harm to large groups of people both in the United States and across the globe. Their choices are not only affecting those whose names I’ll never know but also affecting people who are dear to me, including many whose gender and sexual identities are actively being erased as if they never existed. The deep fear and anger that is felt is very very real. Whole groups and nationalities of people are being told that their rights and their lives do not matter.

So with all of this, it is really easy to give a big ol AMEN to this Psalm and its statement on humanity seen partially in these verses (Fischer’s version)

You (God) gaze down from the highest
Upon humankind in the middle
To see if there is one person with eyes
One with understanding
One capable of seeing your seeing
But they are all gone bad
All turned sour and blind
There is none who knows good
Not one

But even as I want to lift up that AMEN in a bold, defiant shout, I remember the prophetic words of Dr. King who shared this in a fictional letter from St. Paul to American Christians:

May I say just a word to those of you who are struggling against this evil. Always be sure that you struggle with Christian methods and Christian weapons. Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter. As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. Always avoid violence. If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.

In your struggle for justice, let your oppressor know that you are not attempting to defeat or humiliate him, or even to pay him back for injustices that he has heaped upon you. Let him know that you are merely seeking justice for him as well as yourself.¹

Let no person pull you so low as to hate them.

I’m not going to lie. With some people right now, that’s really hard. That’s really hard when the actions that they are taking are actively causing great harm across the world that will take a long time to undo. That’s really hard when these actions are causing fear in the lives of people I love dearly. That’s really hard when rhetoric used can actively spark violence. It is really hard.

But the love that King wrote about is hard. I don’t have to like what others are doing and I don’t have to accept what others are doing and love doesn’t compel me to be silent. But it does mean that I have to love and not succumb to hate. The Jesus way that I try to follow has one who asked forgiveness for those who had persecuted and were actively executing him. The Jesus way spoke truth to power yet also sat at the tables of those who had criticized him. The Jesus way saw the image of God in each person, even those who hated, attacked, and lied about him.

Let no person pull you so low as to hate them.

My ordination is rooted in one of the Christian traditions that affirmed something known as total depravity. I think of total depravity in moments like this and with a Psalm like this that seems to say that no one has any goodness in them. Total depravity It is the idea that sin has made it that there is nothing redeemable in humanity apart from Jesus. Edwin Palmer in his book, The Five Points of Calvinism defines it as:

To be totally depraved, however, does not mean that a person is as intensively evil as possible, but as extensively evil as possible. It is not that he cannot commit a worse crime; rather, it is that nothing that he does is good. Evil pervades every faculty of his soul and every sphere of his life. He is unable to do a single thing that is good.²

But I also remember the story in the opening words of the Bible that give our faith ancestors’ concept of how everything came into being. In it they describe a God who goes about creating each and every thing and pronouncing each one (water, sky, trees, animals, fish, birds, plants, flowers, and humans) ... good. But when all is completed, God looks at all of it and says that it is very good. So even if there is sin in humanity (and I do believe there is), underneath it all there is the goodness that God saw in it all.

I have to keep remembering that truth when I get pulled toward hate. I have to remember that I am a part of that good creation just as every other is. I have to remember that there is something of the image of God in others just as there is in me. I have to remember that I fall short, I cause pain, I have hurt others. I cannot look at others without looking at myself. I have to try to love as Jesus showed us how to do.

Again, that doesn’t mean that I will be silent when it comes to injustice and to the pain that others are inflicting. But it is a reminder and a conviction to me that love still needs to be at the center of how I respond.

I received a reminder of this while walking the prayer labyrinth near my house this morning. As I walked and prayed with this Psalm in my mind and a heavy heart I saw a few sticks in the middle of the path. I don’t know if they were placed there intentionally but it spoke to me of keeping my heart, mind, body, and spirit centered on trying to follow the way of love...the way of just-ness / justice... the way of Jesus.

I refuse to succumb to hate. God, I want to love as Jesus loved. Help me to walk in your path.

And…I saw this little piece of art on my way walking home.

Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed

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1. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/pauls-letter-american-christians-sermon-delivered-dexter-avenue-baptist-church

2. Palmer, The Five Points of Calvinism, p 9