Psalm 60

"You have rejected us"

Psalm 60 is one of those psalms that seems far removed from our modern imaginations. And while it can be difficult to bridge that gap, I frequently try. If you're a regular reader you've seen me do this time and time again, defending some vision or perspective from Scripture that we find implausible or distasteful. I did this two weeks ago with the imprecatory petitions of Psalm 58.

Psalm 60 is a lament over a military defeat and an expression of confidence that God will respond by bringing victory again to Israel. The historical note attached to the psalm places the military defeat during the reign of David, but it is easy to see how the poem would also have given voice to Israel's life as she faced and experienced invasion and exile. The lament "you have rejected us" was voiced many times in Israel's life.

The imaginative gap between our time and Psalm 60 concerns how God relates to history. Once upon a time, the notion that God was providentially guiding the trajectory of history was taken as commonplace, a cultural given. Today, we find that notion, God as Lord of History, as either implausible or problematic. Implausible because our default is to view humans as the agents of history, determining through our actions what happens next rather than God dictating which nations rise or fall according to His purposes and designs. Relatedly, we find this view problematic as it would name God as the cause for much of the violence and chaos of the world. If not directly then passively as God "turns his back" upon certain peoples.

To be sure, this view of history has not wholly evaporated. Among certain groups of evangelicals there is still the notion that God becomes angry at wayward nations and punishes them. Such arguments are used to call a nation back to repentance and defend, here in the US, some vision of Christian nationalism. The problematic assumption with this political use of Scripture is the quick and easy identification of America with ancient Israel, that God's designs and plans for Israel in the Old Testament can be straight-forwardly and literally applied to America. But I deem this easy one-for-one, America-for-Israel mapping in reading the Old Testament to be fundamentally illegitimate. The Bible is the story of Israel, not America. 

Returning, though, to the issue of God's relation to history, I've always been struck by a fragment of Abraham Lincoln's reflections entitled "The Meditation on the Divine Will," a scrap of Lincoln's writing that was preserved by White House secretary John Hay. Parts of the "Meditation" informed Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, considered to be one of the greatest speeches in American political history. Here is the "The Meditation on the Divine Will"

Washington, D.C.
September, 1862

The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party -- and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true -- that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere great power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And, having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.

I don't know if Lincoln was right or wrong about any of this, speculating that God willed the Civil War and willed it to continue for some providential purpose that we, as humans, cannot fathom or see. But I will say this: Lincoln's theological speculations steadied him in the face of setback and defeat. As Hay would later comment on the "Meditation":

"Mr. Lincoln admits us into the most secret recesses of his soul .... Perplexed and afflicted beyond the power of human help, by the disasters of war, the wrangling of parties, and the inexorable and constraining logic of his own mind, he shut out the world one day, and tried to put into form his double sense of responsibility to human duty and Divine Power; and this was the result. It shows -- as has been said in another place -- the awful sincerity of a perfectly honest soul, trying to bring itself into closer communion with its Maker."

As I said above, such was often the case. For generations, the providence of God, as mysterious and perplexing as it was, created capacities for emotional resignation, humility, and patience. And I wonder if the reason our politics has become so emotionally reactive is due to the fact that we've lost some of this perspective, that God moves in mysterious ways. To be sure, we need to practice Lincoln's humility when reading history. We need to stand quietly before the inscrutability of God rather than pridefully proclaiming what is or is not "God's will" in any given historical event. Our posture is patience and trust rather than redpilling ourselves into conspiracy theories. 

I feel all this in my own heart. For some reason I find hard to describe, I possess a peaceful non-anxiousness during this very vexed political moment and election season. And I have tried to understand just why I experience American politics with so much equanimity. Do I not care? Is something wrong with me? Is it a symptom of privilege? Perhaps. But a bit of it, I'm convinced, is theological. I trust that God is at work in history, even in the disasters. How, I don't know. To what purpose, I cannot say. Maybe God is rejecting America, and if so God has his reasons. We are not Israel after all. The hope of the world never depended upon us. But like Lincoln, I really don't know what is going on. So I act with what light has been given me and wait in humility, patience, and trust. And this trust gives me just enough emotional distance from today's news and future election results that I experience a peace that seems increasingly rare.