The Context of Humility
Indeed, I was born through iniquity; with sin my mother conceived me. Psalm 51:5 (David Lambert translation)
Born– My goodness, what theological mileage has been fueled with this verse! Augustine told us that it confirmed the essential sinfulness of human beings. It is a standard proof-text for the doctrine of original sin. Others have tried to find an adulterous history in Jesse’s past, making David the product of a sinful encounter. Requisitioned by one theological camp after another, this piece of poetry has been treated as everything from a personal confession to a universal judgment.
David Lambert suggests something else. Noticing that penitent behavior in the ancient world often involves deliberate diminution of status, he says, “Here David could be seen as speaking in the voice of his doomed son.”[1] His insight fits the cultural context, something often ignored by Western-leaning exegetes. In other words, Lambert reveals the fact that in the ancient Middle East, one of the ways to elicit God’s mercy was to take the position of the devalued supplicant. The king puts on sackcloth. The prophet tears his garments. These were not signs of moral repentance. They were expressions of social contradiction for the purpose of inducing God to act and restore the proper social order. Since this was a common technique in Israel, David’s psalm could easily be seen as the voice of the condemned child, pleading with God to restore the proper balance, that is, life to the innocent and rejected. If this is the case, then we can understand David’s reaction when the child dies. The plea has been unsuccessful. Now life in the palace must return to the normal hierarchy.
Aside from the exegetical correction Lambert’s analysis provides, there is perhaps an even more important lesson here. That lesson is a reiteration of the fundamental principle of exegesis: all Scripture is given within the cultural confines of the original audience. If we want to know what a verse means, we must first read it as it would have been understood by the author and the first audience. That means (among other things) that Scripture is not primarily theology. Rather, it is the record of the interaction of men and women in the past with their circumstances and their God. And it always comes in culturally-bound clothes. This is just as true for Yeshua as it is for David. Our grave error is to treat the word of God as if it isn’t literature, as if somehow it is the timeless dictation of a transcendent Being cleverly disguised in human history. That error leads to all kinds of theological nonsense because it divorces the life-situations of the actors from God’s interaction. If you really want to know what a verse means, you have to start with what it meant in the time, place, and ethos of the original audience. Unless you know that, you simply do not know the sense of the verse. In the end, the Bible wasn’t written to you. That doesn’t mean you can’t find meaning in it. It just means that you have to start with the people that it was written for.
Topical Index: exegesis, born, Psalm 51:5
I have been meditating lately on the essential difference between looking at the world through the lens of ‘answers’ (facts: forms: rules: the past being more relevant than the present) rather than through the lens of questions, or even faith. Folks, you cannot have faith in the facts, for by the time they are facts, faith can do nothing about them. You also cannot have faith in the past, where all forms (and facts) reside, for the past is also fixed (at least according to the Greeks).
When my daughter was being tested for admission into school, the admissions officer wrote an algebraic question on the board and asked her to solve it. When she did, he asked her to show how she got there. She wrote the equation out and he said he had never seen it done that way, but that it worked. She passed. It’s not the answers that are important; its how we get there. Not the destination, as they say, but the journey. Not the nouns, but the verbs. Not what we think God is, but how He acts in reality.
The Greeks handed us a huge list of facts: forms, formulas; answers, creeds. We are taught to NEVER question the ‘facts’; that the facts are to question us. We are taught to ONLY put our faith in facts, in fact, but that does violence to the very essence of faith, for faith is about the future, where no facts yet reside! Skip says the questions are more important; that the facts (or Scripture, even) are only there to support whatever the questions are. If you really stop and realize the implications of all that, it is going to queer your education, ya’ll; guaranteed!
I think most of us also seem to have been taught that Scripture was a whole bunch of facts that we are to put our faith in. But that is not what Scripture itself teaches, for it says that we are to put all our faith in the One that Scripture reveals. Um, there is a difference! I think the net effect is that we are left not knowing what faith really is. Time to start over. Again!
Amen, Laurita:) Facts are byproduct of faith & truth or lack thereof. By the time the facts are out, faith has already moved on.
Though Lambert’s book brings up some good pts he left me thinking t9he Israelites had no sense of remorse,no internal dialogue just did rituals of sufferring to get God to notice them everything was external.He relegated anything about change of heart or a right spirit in man of very little importance. I do believe than and now that people really show a false sense of guilt,it’s more about ” oh my I got caught now what do I do” how about get on my knees and beg maybe God will notice. His book is an easy read but his conclusions are so contextualized and over reaching to demolish any penitential lens and that it was a concoction made up by Jews and Christians in second temple period and beyond. I do think we need a review to what real repentance is just because a word for it does not exist in old testament doesn’t mean people did not understand remorse or Godly sorrow.We do why would we think they didn’t.
If you are going to ask it that way, Pam, strictly speaking, we cannot ‘change’ our own hearts. Repentance is listed as a gift of God for a reason. Often, I am free to feel true remorse only after I have experienced forgiveness. I think we can only be completely remorseful when we can comprehend the full extent of the damage, but that takes time! Perhaps even eternity…
We are told to FEEL remorseful, and THEN God forgives to the extent we do feel it. Now, that assumes we repent ‘on our own’; in the flesh, so to speak. Dangerous fallacy! All remorse by the flesh is conditional in some way; the flesh cannot manufacture repentance or even the substrate (wanting to repent) for it. The best we can do is look at the Law and make a decision to turn around. The mechanics of that turning are all done by God. The desire for that change is a gift, too.
As usual, the dialectic split the baby and we are left with none of the original pieces. But both camps (grace-only and legalists; otherwise known as pot-n-kettle) have to agree (whoops! danger sign!) on the flesh as the manufacturer of the mechanics of repentance as the very basis for their little fight. They are both wrong. As always. Sigh.
If we did not have a sense of remorse or even any conscious awareness of it wouldn’t that be what we label a narcissist or a psychopath . I think we have vested interest in heart change it’s God alone who can give us a new heart and spirit I agree but how we guard it is up to us.
The decision to turn around (which we make when we look at the Law) IS the decision to come back to the symbiotic state with Him we were created to stay in. At that point, who is doing what is a moot issue, because everything is done together; and, just as you cannot tell which part of our symbiosis with our organic inner biome is the chicken or the egg when it comes to body reality, we cannot tell where we leave off and He begins in our spiritual reality either. Nor does it matter.
P.S. the real definition of a “narcissist or psychopath” is somebody who is not joined to God. That is the only way any of us do have a “sense of remorse or even any conscious awareness of it”. It is the mind of Christ operating in us. The Spirit moves on any heart that is not actively resisting Him (or that, as you point out is continuing to guard the relationship with Him), and that includes most of us to some extent at any given time. Grace is amazing. Halleluah!
Good discussion.
Not quite sure what your saying,before we became a believer or joined to God and Christ we did not know remorse about things we did or any conscious awareness of it. Then why ask for forgiveness why ask for mercy why did I realize I desperately needed him if not for remorse an complete emptiness. Even though we not seeing things the same way I sure love your miss Laurita we are quite a mess lol.
He works on all of us. It takes a lot to resist that Spirit! We have to practice avoiding the truth quite diligently! Most people I know have very special creative ways to do just that. Severely retarded folks, for example, CAN’T do that, and so do not resist at all. Rest assured, you were drawn by His attraction, not your own momentum. Attraction is the power of all creation, but we do not provide any of it. It is His beauty that slays us, not our own. We are just messes without Him; right? LOL back to you.
I’m sure your heart intent in using ” severely mentally retarded folks” was not to be derogatory as I know you wouldn’t feel that way. Being I work in this field it is very offensive to them and their families and others reading on this blog that don’t know you and may take it wrong. Being so eloquent with words surprised you would use it.
Thank you! I used language that others use because that is how they see them. If you had been even more helpful you could have corrected me all the way by giving me the language that we should be using instead, that being your specialty.
My point was, of course, that we are the ones who are severely retarded in our ability to meet God because we have creative ways to avoid Him. Some folks are not so cursed. We should envy them their lack of God filters, avoid-ers, deny-ers and blasphemy-ers. Now, who has the true handicaps? The so-called “handicapped”, or the rest of us?
Should be I love you! Who new large thumbs would not be very accommodating to technology.??
I would like to give a sincere thanks to Skip for always giving us his reading sources. I actual take the time to read who he reads. May not get the same conclusions but feel before I comment it’s best to read.It’s an art well lost on many.
Bottom Line:
Yeshua does for us what we can’t do for ourselves.
It’s all God’s gifting!
Yet it requires our receiving it as new clothing, as we willfully
and knowingly shed the old.
Then it’s a concert of doing, as the willful receiver slowly transforms
into the One new life of the Giver.
This rings so true. I am continually thankful for the change in paradigm in attempting to understand the words of scripture. It makes so much more sense than the entrenched dogma I was brainwashed into for most of my life. Freedom to actually think has value.