Look Now
Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my groaning. Heed the sound of my cry for help, my King and my God, for to You I pray. Psalm 5:1-2 NASB
Heed– If you’re like me, your first reaction to a beggar on the street is to turn away. If you’re like me, the sight of a wounded person makes you cringe. If you’re like me, you try to avoid the mentally disturbed, the unwashed vagrant, the aroma of poverty. These situations make us uncomfortable because they jar our sense of propriety, of justice, and of proper social order, especially when we feel powerless to make them “right.” These feelings are precisely what occur when God’s children turn to Him to correct inequity, to overcome tyranny, to remove offense. In other words, a psalm like this is a plea for justice—and that plea is impotent unless God heeds the cry of distress.
qāšab, “to pay attention to, to hear, to heed,” is a verb commonly associated with prayer in the Psalms. It is a demand for YHVH to look at me, to not turn away. But in many cases, the psalmist physically manifests the injustice by assuming the role of the great unwashed, by taking on the attributes of what would otherwise be repulsive, in order to get God’s attention. In other words, the author induces affliction, “altering [his] ontological status through rites of self-diminishment”[1]in order to confront YHVH with something that should not be the case, thereby demanding that YHVH restore proper order in the world. “ . . . human impotence and dependence are physically demonstrated just prior to the sudden and total reversal that divine intervention brings. Indeed throughout biblical literature—Job’s is a dramatic example—the path to success always lies through She’ol. Unlike the modern gradualist model of progress, redemption follows from extreme states of deprivation.”[2] What we often find in the psalms is the description of these “extreme states of deprivation” intended to elicit divine intervention. What we do not find is our usual assumption that redemption occurs after repentance. The Hebrew Scriptures appear to portray our interaction with God more like divine theater than like an alter call. In fact, according to Lambert’s analysis, the usual presumption that redemption is a consequence of repentance is more likely the product of much later religious development, particularly in the mode that it occurs today in most churches.
Before you throw out the idea as heretical, ask yourself where repentance actually occurs in the Hebrew Scriptures. Try reading the text as theater; yes, theater with an objective, but nevertheless, a drama staged before God, and visa-versa, God’s dramatic presentation of His reality before men. Ask yourself if the stories in the opening pages of Genesis are history or dramatic spectacles intended to provide the audience with anchors for understanding their role in God’s play. Ask yourself how many times God rescues without requiring prior repentance. Ask yourself why the prophets act as they do. See what you find.
Topical Index: qāšab, heed, theater, drama, repentance, Psalm 5:1-2
I have heard many testimonies of those who have, in what seems to me to be a very natural way to approach God, made an appeal and made a deal that if God would prove Himself good, faithful, and true to meet their pressing need, they would essentially bow down and serve him the rest of their days. Is it beyond Him to humble Himself in such a way to lost, unbelieving sinners whom He created as objects of His love to do such a thing and to make Himself known to those who have the understanding that once having been “saved”, a great debt is owed?
Rescue before repentance? Hmm
If repentance is a gift, then we have to have an open hand to receive it, but what opens that hand? Is it not trust? Rescue establishes trust.
People think the curses are about making people ‘sorry for their sins’. I have yet to see somebody sorry for their sins because they are having a hard time! Lost people, anyway, have no basis for that. I have become suspicious that only people who already have at least some basis for trust in God even have the ability to repent. Nope. I think the curses (hard times) we experience are about convincing us that we need to be rescued; not about convincing us that we are ‘bad’. I think evangelists who miss this can risk ending up drumming to a deaf audience. (My theory as to why they do miss it has to do with the assumption that people can somehow repent in the flesh, but I digress.)
Relationship is about trust. Trust is an essential prerequisite to all relationship. Details as to how to fine tune that relationship (such as the removal of sin) can come later (um, that would be post-justification). Grace (basis for justification, or getting us back into relationship with God) is provided to float the ship off the sand bar. Repentance (turning around) is only possible if you are already not grounded. Repentance is an act of faith, too, but faith (trust) is only possible after the restoration of relationship. The act of that restoration would necessarily be (in our case, anyway) rescue, because all of us are already lost. I have come to think that repentance, in the order of salvation, belongs more to the sanctification end of the spectrum than it does to the pre-justification end. Before rescue, the only ‘right’ response possible (in the flesh, anyway) is desperation!
I have one small quibble with the TW today, and I think it probably has to do with perception: what we perceive vs. what God perceives. Anyway, I think God is ALREADY at the rescue points with all of us at all times; it is we who have to wake up to our already desperate status. The slain Lamb before the foundation of the world, and even the Saviour on the cross, were both preemptive responses of the FAITH of God that at least some of us would wake up. I think by these actions He has demonstrated that He is already waiting at our crossroads, and surely wondering what is taking us so long.
What is the crossroads? We have to pinpoint where trust was shattered, and go to that place, for it is the only place it can be restored. We have to open the wound: revisit the trauma: or, failing that, be hit with an even more all-encompassing trauma that can put our true condition in the present, which is the only place where it can be dealt with. Modern psychology now recognizes this technique as the basis for all true healing. I think David shows us how to practice it.
Thank you Laurita, I needed the expansion and clarification you gave,
Skip, we’re still rolling along on that same page, even after so many years.