Breaking the Boxes
Who pardons all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases; Psalm 103:3 NASB
Iniquities – Bent over! That’s what we were before pardon and healing. In fact, Yeshua recognizes the connection in his encounter with the woman suffering from scoliosis. He responds to those who raised objections to his act of healing by trying the disease directly to Satan. “And this woman, a daughter of Abraham as she is, whom Satan has bound for eighteen long years, should she not have been released from this bond on the Sabbath day?” (Luke 13:16). David’s parallelism also makes the connection. ‘Awon and tahaluim often go hand-in-hand.
Now recall that this poem is actually addressed to the speaker. Recall that the opening line is an exhortation to self-declaration. Is David saying that everyone who is forgiven will experience perfect health? Or is he saying that he, the one in the mirror, has discovered that pardon from guilt brings restoration of the body as well? Human experience suggests the latter. Forgiveness does not automatically remove physical illness. It can, of course, as Yeshua’s example clearly demonstrates. But this poem is self-reflexive, and as such it tells us more about the author than about the reader. David discovered healing in the company of pardon. We might discover the same, but if we do not that doesn’t mean pardon has not been given.
The connection between ‘awon and tahaluim seems clear enough to those who are sensitive to God’s hand in human affairs. Even holistic medicine recognizes that inner psychological states affect outer physical ones. We don’t come compartmentalized. We are intimately connected. Sin has greater effects than forensic conditions. ‘Awon, the word David uses translated “iniquities,” has some unique characteristics. First, it is collective. It views the whole of thoughts and deeds as a single unit; a unit that is bent, twisted and unable to fulfill its intended purpose. In Hebrew thought, sin is the issue. Sins are merely representative examples of a much more pervasive problem: rebellion. Just as there is no compartmentalization in us, so there is no separation in rebellion. There are no venial rather than mortal sins (plural). Rather, there is being bent in whatever way prevents the whole of who we are from completing the design of the Creator in us.
Secondly, in Hebrew thought, ‘awon includes both deed and consequence. Act is not separated from result. Sin inevitably brings its reward, and its “reward” is dishonor, disgrace and death. It is only a matter of time (which, as you recall, is another way of viewing grace).
Now David’s self-reflection becomes even more powerful. YHVH pardons the man in the mirror of those thoughts and deeds that exhibited his crooked character, that demonstrated his rebellion. When the man in the mirror experienced pardon, he discovered refreshment and restoration. This is intentional self-confession and deliberate self-recognition of divine intervention. One thing affected another, just as it had when David cried, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word” (Psalm 119:67). No man lives in the self-constructed boxes designed to insolate him from his own deeds. They will always break open, for good or evil.
Given the first verse of this psalm, are you able to bless the Lord for your own broken boxes?
Topical Index: ‘awon, tahaluim, iniquity, sickness, Psalm 119:67, Luke 13:16, Psalm 103:3
Praise Him for my brokenness! Yes! It was designed to bring me to Him. I, too, sing this Psalm often as it reflects my history and experience. You know, battles and disaster are only shameful if you lose. Even the most awful and gory and embarrassing of situations are but even more glorious tales of conquest IF you are victorious. The harder the fight, the sweeter the victory. All those years I writhed with embarrassment and the shame of being wiped out continually? Well, to the extent that I finally figured out what my part was in those sordid affairs and what I needed to do to change my part in them, is to the extent that I am grateful for them, for then they turned into opportunities to get muscle and knowledge to share, as well as yet even more to praise Him for! You know, the people who have had the most to roll out from under (which certainly wasn’t me!), have also been the ones whom He has loved the most, too. Time for more praise! Now, I just need to learn that if those bent places were the means of giving to me the muscle I need to overcome the present problems, as soon as I get properly motivated to go after them, then I will get to praising Him for my present trials and bent and stuck places, too, which are also going to look different in that rearview mirror one day. If I praise Him for the victory in advance, then that changes my relationship with my sins and my brokenness now. Faith brings the future down to the present, and superimposes it over the problems, forcing them to straighten up. The victory has already gone down, anyway; I just need to catch up with that! Praise is a form of faith if you are doing it in places where the things of victory are not yet seen. I am lining myself up with victory when I praise Him for the battle, for praise is how I go singing out to war. Hey, it unnerves the enemy! Praise makes a great weapon! Praise is almost as good a weapon as rest (peace), which makes the best one, of course. Praise can give you peace, in fact, which is the assurance of victory, and, as any martial arts practitioner can tell you, rest is the place where you stay while the enemy annihilates himself on his own charge and weapon. Sweet spot.
Heschel, in his book “Who Is Man?,” asks “Is it not conceivable that our entire civilization is built upon a misinterpretation of man? Or that the tragedy of modern man is due to the fact that he is a being who forgot the question: Who is man?”
He goes on to say, ” The failure to identify himself, to know what is authentic human existence, leads him to assume a false identity, to pretend to be what he is unable to be or to fail to accept what is at the very root of his being. Ignorance about man is not lack of knowledge but false knowledge.” (from Chapter One)
It seems that life for us is a journey of discovering what is authentically human in us and what is not and then to act on those discoveries toward a resemblance of who YHVH made us to be.
Heschel also states, “To be human is to be a problem, and the problem expresses itself in anguish, in the mental suffering of man . . . It is in anguish that man becomes a problem to himself.”
And, “The perplexity begins when we attempt to make clear what is meant by the humanity of man.”
I see David, in his psalms, as he constantly looks at who he sees in the mirror and converses with that image as to who he is and how he relates to YHVH. It reflects the energy David expends on finding out who he is, what he is made of, how he operates and how it all depends on how YHVH explains David to himself. I see him struggling in the same ways we all do to understand so as to act in ways that are reflective of YHVH.
In trying to understand Heschel’s observance in the beginning of his book, it seems man is continually having difficulties and is challenged to see and understand who he is, how he works and the very issue of what it means to be human. Man is constantly morphing, changing, molding to the sum of the next collection of decisions he makes. As a man thinks, so he is.
It would seem a simple matter to view torah a necessity for our very lives, yet, we make it so complicated and exhausting amid the choices we have. Is it that our creative likeness to YHVH’s image demands that we understand truly what we do in relation to who we are. Simply desiring to truly know who we are consumes us from birth to death. Everything in between is effort to make sense and clarify who we are with our actions employed as experiments to see if it jells and fits in to meaning and value.
Reading text off a page is the beginning. Translating and comprehending the resultant ideas/theories through life via actions is needed daily to bring cohesion and substance to what it means to be human.
What a quest!
A better question than “who is man?,” might be “Who is the Son of man?” All we ever need to know concerning the “how to” of daily living is found *in Him!” I don’t believe He ever wasted any words, including His own words, “follow Me.” Do, as I do. Do it (life) like this. Rabbi Sha’ul, (the apostle Paul to some) declared in his writings – “be followers of me even as I am of Christ.” Christ-centered, Christ-centric living. Is this possible? What do the scriptures say? “Let this mind be in you, which also was in Christ Jesus!” or again the Scriptures speak: – “we [now] have the mind of Christ.”
Would our Heavenlyl Father be so cruel as to say “be holy as I am holy,” and then NOT enable or empower us to “live like that?” How? Through [ever-always-only] “looking unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith and through constant, conscious dependence upon the Holy Spirit, our Comforter, Teacher (personal Trainer!) and Strengthener, the One who is now within us, and the One who is greater that he who is in the world.
Yes, also a good question.
Yeshua said, “Follow me.”
Would that include observing Shabbat? Eating kosher? Wearing tzitzit? Doing all that torah instructed?
Observing the Moadim, etc?
By the way, David asked both of those questions, at least via one translation:
“What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?”
Psalm 8:4 ESV
Who is this man David speaks of? And who is this son of man that YHVH cares for? Is this son of man a different Son of man, the mashiach (Yeshua or mashiach David or mashiach Saul)?
“Would our Heavenlyl Father be so cruel as to say “be holy as I am holy,” and then NOT enable or empower us to “live like that?” ” – Absolutely! He created us with a nephesh capable of understanding his instructions and equipped with the energy and will to do exactly what he tells us to (hearing/doing). We simply need to understand who he is, who we are and then choose to obey. If one knows nothing of either, I doubt any would bother to obey.
Skip asked a question “are you able to bless the Lord for your own broken boxes.” My answer to that question is yes, but grudgingly . It’s getting easier, but some of my correction has taken from me that which I love and enjoy a great deal. Life does have consequences.
“Life is, after all, a succession of alternating highs and lows, of experienced success and failure. Triumph and tragedy. Moments of joy and sadness. Sadness is an absolutely unavoidable part of life. We are given occasions of sadness for a specific, very important reason. In reality, most of the sadness in our lives is of our own making, the result of our own decisions and actions. We are given them, so that we will learn to transcend them. And we transcend them by approaching life in a spirit of Aliyah, of always ascending, of lifting ourselves up and looking towards ever greater, more joyful experiences.
We are not given sadness so that it will rule our very lives, that it will become the theme of our existence. That it will oppress us and lead to addictions and mental illness. We are given sadness and setbacks to enable us to learn to overcome them. To take lemons and make lemonade. To experience the triumph of ascent, of lifting ourselves out of our funk and moving on, ascend from your bitterness, from your disappointments and failures. Accept them as the consequences of living. But don’t let them become the theme of your life. Make your own theme. And make it a theme of joy. Even when you feel that there’s a weight on your back that you’re unable to lift. Lift up your back anyway. Feel the joy that comes with triumph over sadness. And dance!” Rabbi Don.
“…self-reflection…” WILL get us out of the box, of whatever that enslaves us, when we are truly downcast, disheartened by our failures to walk in His ways, to seek to be in His Presence to hear from YHWH.
Honest self- reflection is what will lead us to return fully to Him, of being “sensitive to God’s hand in human/(our) affairs.”
“Sins are merely representative examples of a much more pervasive problem: rebellion.” Rebellion is simply, not taking counsel to heart, not accepting His instructions and guidance/truth.