Ben Sternke

Field notes on life and mission with God after Christendom

Psalms

Should we pray the imprecatory psalms?

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This morning in my normal cycle of prayer, Psalm 54 came up, and I prayed these words,

Hear my prayer, O God;
give ear to the words of my mouth.

For the arrogant have risen up against me,
and the ruthless have sought my life,
those who have no regard for God.

Behold, God is my helper;
it is the Lord who sustains my life.

Render evil to those who spy on me;
in your faithfulness, destroy them.

It used to be that I couldn’t really relate to psalms like these. This isn’t nearly as “imprecatory” as other psalms, but there it is: a prayer for God to “render evil to” and “destroy” these arrogant people who have “risen up against me.”

In the past it’s always felt strange to me to pray these kinds of psalms, because:

  1. I don’t really have any personal enemies who act like this, and
  2. Is it OK to pray that God “renders evil to” and “destroys” people?

But I realized this morning that I’ve grown into being able to connect with and pray these psalms. In two ways:

1. I’m more connected to my heart for justice

In the past few years, as I’ve heard stories in the news of systemic injustice and intentional exploitation of the poor, I’ve realized that they really upset me. Nothing makes me more angry, it seems, than people callously hoarding wealth at the expense of others in need, or creating policies that consolidate power among a few in perpetuity (two things that are very much really happening right now).

I used to try and ignore these feelings, because they were uncomfortable, and of course I’m all tangled up in the problem in many ways. I’m wearing mostly inexpensive clothes that were likely sewn together by something close to slave labor in Indonesia or Thailand.

But as I’ve learned to simply pay attention to my anger at these injustices, I’ve found I connect more with the imprecatory psalms. I have someone to think about when I think about “the arrogant” who have “risen up against me,” because these arrogant people who have “no regard for God” have truly risen up against me, and everyone else who isn’t part of their elite club!

The system of wealth through exploitation that they’ve intentionally created has truly “sought my life” The people who created and maintain this system of oppression and injustice have no regard for God, and it really, really bothers me. So I pray that God brings justice.

Which brings me to my second point:

2. I realize what imprecatory psalms are for

I wasn’t sure if it was OK to pray that God “renders evil to” and “destroys” people, because of course Jesus reveals what God is actually like, and how we are to treat our enemies: pray for them, bless them, love them.

So how can I learn to love an enemy I’m praying God will smite? I actually think that praying the imprecatory psalms helps us love our enemies, because we can turn our feelings of hatred and anger over to God.

Praying for God to do what we genuinely wish he would do to the arrogant who have risen up against us is a way of exorcising our vengeance so we don’t end up exercising our vengeance.

Praying the imprecatory psalms is a way of refusing to take matters into our own hands. It’s a way of “filing a complaint” with God. We fill out our complaint: who we are angry with and why, and we put in a few suggestions for God as well… if you could “destroy” them, that’d be great. Oh and publicly shame them! And kill their whole family so no one remembers them ever!

But then we put our complaint on God’s desk and leave it there. The point is that we don’t act on these impulses. We leave them safely with God, trusting that he will sort out what is truly good and just for us and everyone else involved. I leave the outcomes to God.

The imprecatory psalms don’t fuel our desires for revenge, instead they turn those desires over to God so we are more free to pray for and bless and love our enemies, and act in truly prophetic ways (not just angry ways – the best prophets don’t act in anger), trusting God to bring justice in his time and in his way.

One Thing I Ask: A Meditation

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Most mornings, right after getting the coffee started, I do some stretching and pray Psalm 27:4.

One thing I ask from the Lord,
    this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
    all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
    and to seek him in his temple.

A few weeks ago I was drinking my coffee and meditating on this little Psalm section, and I jotted down a few overlapping thoughts that came to mind as I prayed.

[Read more…] about One Thing I Ask: A Meditation

Praying the Psalms

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A few years ago I started trying to pray the Psalms regularly. I’ve had varying degrees of “success,” with many periods of drought, but the effort and intention has been well worth the effort.

I think I first got the idea from Eugene Peterson. He said in one of his books that anyone who wanted to learn how to pray ought to be reading through the Psalms regularly. Or something like that. It struck a chord with me, and I thought I’d give it a try.

It wasn’t like I’d never read the Psalms, of course. I was familiar with the more popular ones. But as I started reading some of the other Psalms, I was was a little taken aback. There’s a lot of raw emotion in there! I was kind of embarrassed to be saying those kinds of things to God. “Why don’t you wake up, God?”  “Has your ‘unfailing’ love vanished forever?” This is our prayer book?

But I have found that those “rough” Psalms actually give articulation to my walk with God. I tend to push thoughts like that down because it doesn’t feel like I’m “supposed” to feel that way. But sometimes I do feel abandoned by God, and praying the Psalms helps me bring me bring that to him, instead of piously repeating things I think I’m supposed to be feeling.

Praying the Psalms helps me bring my “real” self before God. I realize that he’s not shocked by my anger. He is not threatened by my railing. He takes it in stride and we have a conversation. We can’t have a conversation until I get “real,” and the Psalms help me stay “real” when I’m with God in prayer.

Recently I saw a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer that articulates why praying the Psalms is so important for learning to pray:

“The child learns to speak because the parent speaks to the child.  The child learns the language of the parent. So we learn to speak to God because God has spoken and speaks to us.  In the language of the Father in heaven God’s children learn to speak with God.  Repeating God’s own words, we begin to pray to God.  We ought to speak to God, and God wishes to hear us, not in the false and confused language our heart but in the clear and pure language that God has spoken to us in Jesus Christ.

“God’s speech in Jesus Christ meets us in the Holy Scriptures.  If we want to pray with assurance and joy, then the word of Holy Scripture must be the firm foundation of our prayer.  Here we know that Jesus Christ, the Word of God, teaches us to pray.  The words that come from God will be the steps on which we find our way to God.”

I have found that as I engage in praying the Psalms regularly, I start to internalize them and their phrases find their way into my spontaneous prayers as well. I find I am better able to articulate and direct my longings in prayer.

I recently began using the Paraclete Psalter to guide my prayer life. Essentially you pray a few Psalms 3-4 times per day (morning, mid-day, evening, bedtime) and you make it through all 150 Psalms every four weeks.

What kinds of regular disciplines do you use in prayer? Does anyone have a regular rhythm of praying the Psalms?