“The problem with a hymnody that focuses on equilibrium, coherence, and symmetry (as in the psalms of orientation) is that it may deceive and cover over. Life is not like that. Life is also savagely marked by incoherence, a loss of balance, and unrelieved asymmetry. In our time – perhaps in any time – that needs no argument or documentation.
It
is a curious fact that the church has, by and large, continued to
sing songs of orientation in a world increasingly experienced as
disoriented. That may be commendable. It could be that such
relentlessness is an act of bold defiance in which these psalms of
order and reliability are flung in the face of the disorder. In that
way, they insist that nothing shall separate us from the love of God.
Such a “mis-match” between our life experience of
disorientation and our faith speech of orientation could
be a great evangelical “nevertheless.” Such a counter-statement
insists that God does in any case govern, rule, and order, regardless
of how the data seem to appear. And therefore, songs of torah,
wisdom, creations, and retribution speak truly, even if the world is
experienced as otherwise. It is possible that the church uses the
psalms of orientation in this way.
But
at best, this is only partly true. It is my judgement that this
action of the church is less a defiance guided by faith and founded
in the good news, and much more a frightened, numb denial and
deception that does not want to acknowledge or experience the
disorientation of life. The reason for such relentless affirmation of
orientation seems to come, not from faith, but from a wishful
optimism of our culture. Such a denial and cover-up, which I take it
to be, is an odd inclination for passionate Bible users, given the
large number of psalms that are songs of lament, protest, and
complaint about the incoherence that is experienced in the world. At
least it is clear that a chuch that goes on singing “happy songs”
in the face of raw reality is doing something very different from
what the Bible itself does.
I
think that serious religious use of the complaint psalms has been
minimal because we have believed that faith does not mean to
acknowledge and embrace negativity. We have thought that
acknowledgement of negativity was somehow an act of unfaith, as
though the very speech about it conceded too much about God's “loss
of control.”
The
point to be urged here is this: The use of these “psalms of
darkness” may be judged by the world to be acts of unfaith and
failure, but for the trusting community, their use is an
act of bold faith, albeit a transformed faith. It is an act of
bold faith on the one hand, because it insists that the world must be
experienced as it really is and not in some pretend way. On the other
hand, it is bold because it insists that all such experiences of
disorder are a proper subject for discourse with God. Nothing is out
of bounds, nothing precluded or inappopriate. Everything properly
belongs in this conversation of the heart. To withhold parts of life
from that conversation is in fact to withhold parts of life from that
sovereignty of God. Thus these psalms make the important connection:
everything must be brought to speech, and everything brought
to speech must be addressed to God, who is the final reference
for all of life.”
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