In Your Face
O God, You have rejected us. You have broken us; You have been angry; O, restore us. Psalm 60:1 [English] NASB
Angry – Emotionally-charged breathing. That’s the metaphorical intention of the use of ‘ap, the Hebrew word associated with nostril or nose. Hebrew is an intensely tactile language, employing dozens of idioms and metaphors from body parts for theological ideas. Breath is life, and breath is connected to the nose. So deep expressions of emotion are often connected to the way we breathe. Rapid breath, flared nostrils and facial changes are signs of anger. If you want to know if God is mad, listen to the way He breathes.
Notice that David employs parallelism in the this poem to amplify the meaning of “rejected” and “broken.” What does it mean to be rejected by God? It means to be “broken,” a military term for breaching a wall. This is punishment. After all, God is the God of protection and victory, so when the walls come tumbling down, God is punishing. Interestingly, the same word, parats, can also mean to overflow in blessing, to increase. Context tells the story, and here the context is certainly about disaster. It’s not unusual for us to think that God is punishing when our security is breached. We expect protection from a God who cares about us. But sometime terrible things happen and we ask, “Why, Lord, are you not taking care of me?” In those moments it is hardly consolation to be told, “Well, His purposes are not our purposes. God has a reason. We just don’t see it.”
God cares! That is a fundamental tenant of the biblical way of life. God cares about everything, so of course He cares about battles where His own children are involved. It is simply unimaginable that God, unlike the pagan deities, isn’t concerned. Therefore, the only other explanation for lack of protection is that God is angry. Something or someone has made Him mad.
One of the wonderful things about the psalms is that they don’t hide human feelings, even if those feeling call into question the character of God. In fact, if we understand the Hebraic correlation between emotions and faith, we will recognize that everything we feel, the good, the bad and the ugly, can be a highway to our God. Why? Because feelings are real! They are not the result of a corrupt nature, a dysfunctional attitude or inherited curses. Feelings are fundamental to what it means to be human. As David notices in Psalm 103:14, we are made for feelings (an interpretation of the third root of the word yatsar). If God is not in touch with my feelings or does not recognize my emotions, then He is an idol—inert, implacable, unmoved, dismissive.
David starts his poem with a strong complaint. It is a complaint that makes sense only to a God who feels. It is a complaint that assumes the legitimacy of feelings. Perhaps we need to incorporate these same elements in our conversations with our Maker. When was the last time you shouted, “Elohim, why?”
Topical Index: anger, ‘ap, nose, feelings, broken, parats, Psalm 60:1
As I gradually came out of my fog, and started to notice my own feelings, as well as others, as valid, I decided to determine which feelings were ‘ok’ – which feelings I didn’t have to try to hide or be ashamed of, or apologize for. I needed a moral foundation; a theological pass for them. I was sitting in a twelve step group that told me I had to process my feelings, and to do that, I had to allow them to exist. That was a problem, for when you are around disfunction – yours as well as others – the first thing that seems to get censured: I mean the VERY first thing, are your feelings. Sin marginalizes our reactions to life, and de-legitimizes (is that a word?) our identity, and I think I have noticed the first thing that has to go when evil sets out to destroy us is our sense of ourselves or others, and it does it by either hijacking (corrupting), or by flat out taking away our emotional responses. If I am not allowed to feel what I feel, I am not being allowed to exist in that place, and my destruction has begun.
So I set out through that entire Book, with the intent of determining which feelings were ‘allowed’ by God (I was so used to having to go check, with others or with myself, before I could have a feeling(!), whether or not it was allowed (legitimate), or whether someone else got to have the feelings in that place that I guess I just assumed God did that, too.) Well, it wasn’t long before I began to notice something disturbing; God seemed to be having emotional reactions to things, too! Then my task suddenly compounded: I also had to determine which of His emotional reactions were ‘valid'(!) and if they weren’t, it was automatically guaranteed – which I had been taught only too well – that it was going to be my fault some kind of way, which meant that I was going to have to take responsibility for His feelings, too! (It should be obvious by now which twelve step group I belonged to! LOL!) Well, I noticed that I was going to have to compile a list of His emotional reactions, as He seemed to be having more than one or two, and as it got longer and longer, I finally realized that I might be going to have to make another list of the ones that He DIDN’T have, so as to determine which ones I was not supposed(!) to have. (You may can see where I ended up at the end of that day already.)
Well, I sat there, and stared at my list, and stared. I did not have a clue as to what to do with it! It sat on a shelf for a good long while. I decided I needed to work on my own emotions first, as I was having trouble having any of them. I mean, my delayed reaction was so bad, I couldn’t even identify them, for sometimes it took days before I felt ‘safe’ enough to react, and by then, those reactions would come out of nowhere, and I would not be able to tell what I was reacting to. I even wondered if God knew what He was reacting to! I had to give myself permission to have my feelings. I decided that to do that, because I was so scared to even try to, I was going to ride on the fact I had already determined that if God had feelings, I could to! It felt like sin, but I decided to let God be God, and when I allowed(!) Him to have His emotions (exist), all of a sudden, it became possible for me to! WOW! This was my very first clue to the understanding that my reality was directly tied to the reality of another. When I allowed Him to be real, I got to be real, too.
About those emotions. I found EVERY one of them on the list of What God Felt. Every one. He seemed to be upset just as much as He seemed to be having glorious ones; I mean, He was all over the place! I eventually got jealous, as He did not seem to be having any trouble having them, either! I wished it were that easy for me! When you are afraid of (idolizing) yourself or others, then yourself or others have power over you, and that includes power over your emotional responses. When I repented for idolatry of man, then, and only then, did I become free to feel what I felt.
Emotions are not sin. What we do with them, can be, however, and in my life, the biggest sin I ever committed with mine was to not allow myself to have them. I found, once I repented for that, that none of them had ever gone anywhere: I mean, I was sitting on emotions that dated back to the dawn of man (well, at least, Laurita!), all neatly stored in the very cells of my body, waiting for me to get around to having them. It was a backload! I clung to the verse “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” for a good while, as it was a promise that He would not allow me to be overwhelmed with anything I had to deal with.
I need all my emotions, as they are information that I need to be able to relate with God, myself and others. All emotions can be a vehicle for, or a response to, love. My emotions are determined by what I believe, and they change whenever I make a new choice about those beliefs, but I am never going to be able to change a large portion of my beliefs if I do not allow myself to have all my emotions; for, contrary to what those Greeks seemed to desperately wish were true, a large portion of my beliefs are emotionally charged ones: they are generated, stored, and processed emotionally. Beliefs are not a cool, purely cognitive, head thing. My beliefs can be found in every cell of my body, and every cell lives or dies according to them. If you want to forever change the way to think about your nephesh, read a book called “The Molecules Of Emotion” written by Candace Pert, who was a biological researcher. You might not agree with all her conclusions, but her research is hard to deny. Its not all ‘just’ in our heart, or head, or in our bodies; it is everywhere, all of it, all the time! Halleluah!
Awesome. No wonder I wanted to write our new book, 31, with you.
Hey, Skip, I like hanging with you, too.
I was wondering If there is no emotion then is there no love??
When was the last time you shouted, “Elohim, why?”
That’s an appropriate question at times, but I think an equally valid one is “WHY NOT???”
If we truly explore that question with integrity, (and FEELINGS,) often times we will discover the answer.
Yes I have been asking Elohim why – when I made right choices in the situation I chose You , why Lord did you not take care of me ??? I don’t understand who You are anymore because of it ……I thought I was your bride your love why not protect me ? ….just for suffering sake ? Maturity? I chose love , faith ,trust in the midst of a dark valley I know You never leave me You were there but where was Your mighty hand on my behalf why not intervene & defend me…it seems I am left confused, broken unjustly
…….aching now for redemption & longing for healing , waiting for the binding of my wounds & healing for your heart , to experience your love for US to be restored……
At some point in our lives, we all need to FEEL the anguish of Job, the questioning of Job, the confusion of Job. Perhaps we, as a community, should take on the challenge of Job and really look at his life in depth. That does not mean we will get the answers we want, but at least we will know that we are not alone in the ache.
Emotions; anger, loneliness, despair, separation, anxiety. We all experience them at times in different situations. Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche, an actual home-environment living program for people with broken mental circumstances, congenital or otherwise writes;
“I once visited a psychiatric hospital that was a kind of warehouse of human misery. Hundreds of children with severe disabilities were lying, neglected, on their cots. There was a deadly silence. Not one of them was crying. When they realize that nobody cares, that nobody will answer them, children no longer cry. It takes too much energy. We cry out only when there is hope that someone will hear us.
Such loneliness is born of the most complete and utter depression, from the bottom of the deepest pit in which the human soul can find itself. The loneliness that engenders depression manifests itself as chaos. There is confusion, and coming out of this confusion there can be a desire for self destruction, for death. So loneliness can become agony, a scream of pain. There is no light, no consolation, no touch of peace and of the joy life brings. Such loneliness reveals the true meaning of chaos.”
How often does life seem chaotic, unfocussed, without meaning and direction? All the time, too often, sometimes, never? How to deal with it? YWVH hears our cries. Do we hear His? Our lives of separation from community have taken us to this place. Can a community help us find our way back? A community need only be two people. This community certainly helps us to do that. There is boundless energy here.
Thank you so much for this citation. It helps me realize that the primal chaos which was fundamental to non-Hebraic ancient cosmologies grew out of human experience and was the most frightening thing imaginable for those people. Genesis is light in the dark world of Egypt.