Does God Do That?

 

Does God Do That?

August 25, 2021

 

Psalm 146 raises an issue for me that I also have with many similar passages in the Bible. It is the issue of what God does in the world and what God does not do in the world. In verses 7 to 9 Psalm 146 says that God does all of these things:

 

·         Executes justice for the oppressed.

·         Gives food to the hungry.

·         Opens the eyes of the blind.

·         Lifts up those who are bowed down.

·         Loves the righteous.

·         Watches over the strangers.

·         Upholds the orphan.

·         Upholds the widow.

·         Brings the way of the wicked to ruin.

 

I’ll be honest here. Of all of those justice items in that list it seems to me that God does only one. God loves the righteous. That’s because God loves everyone. God even loves the self-righteous, something I and many other people aren’t quite able to do.

So I have to ask: If God executes justice for the oppressed, why are so many people still oppressed? If God gives food to the hungry, why are so many people still hungry? I ask the same question about all of the things in Psalm 146’s list. If God does all those things, why are there still so many prisoners, blind people, people bowed down? Why do orphans and widows so often have very hard times in their lives? Why do so many wicked people thrive economically and exert so much political power around the world? Really, if God did all the things that Psalm 146 says God does, the world would be a much better place than it is. That the world isn’t a better place than it is pretty much establishes that God doesn’t do the things Psalm 146 says God does.

So does that mean that the parts of Psalm 146 that say that God does all those things that we know God doesn’t do have no meaning for us? If we take Psalm 146 at face value no, I don’t think it has any meaning for us. I mean, what meaning could there be if the words in the psalm are just wrong? Yet I’m not quite ready to write off Psalm 146 altogether; but to get any meaning for us out of these lines  we have to read it essentially as saying something that on its face it doesn’t say. Let me explain.

Psalm 146 gives a list of very desirable things. We would all love to see all of those things become realities in the world, wouldn’t we? Of course we would. I’m quite sure that God would love to see all those things become realities in the world too. The God we know in and through Jesus Christ wants only the best for every person. God is love, and love always wants only the best for the beloved. Yet when we look at the world we see that God doesn’t intervene in the affairs of the world to make good things happen for all people. The book of Deuteronomy may say over and over again that the righteous succeed in this life and the unrighteous are cursed, but we know that that just isn’t true. Evil and suffering are existential realities for a great many people, most of them as innocent of wrongdoing as any of us humans ever are. So how do those lines from Psalm 146 have any meaning for us? How can they have any meaning for us?

Here's how I can understand them as having meaning for us. Those lines express a vision of what the world would be like if the world were ordered according to the will of God rather than the wills of human beings. We humans are so horribly fallible. We all make mistakes, sometimes big mistakes. Our mistakes perpetuate injustice and avoidable suffering on earth. Psalm 146 and a great many other passages in the Bible tell us what the world should be like. If we read it correctly—and sadly most of us don’t—we see God’s vision, God’s dream of a world of justice for the weak and vulnerable and peace for all people. Jesus calls that vision the kingdom of God. Giving us that vision, that dream, was what Jesus was mostly about.

When we read the Bible correctly we see God’s vision, God’s dream, and we see that God calls us to be the instruments of making that dream a reality. I can’t understand much of the Bible in any other way. The Bible brings us God’s vision. Sometimes it says God does the things needed to make the vision a reality, but we know that God doesn’t do that. We can get badly mired in the bog of theodicy if we think too much about why God doesn’t do it. That way lies confusion and despair. We are on much more solid ground when we see the divine vision of a transformed world as a call to us to do the work to make that vision real. To transform the world in the direction of justice and peace, actually of peace through justice. God doesn’t intervene to do that work. God never will. What God will do and does do is be with us, guiding and supporting us, as we do that work. The answer to the question that prompted this piece, the question “Does God Do That?” is no, God doesn’t. Or better, God does it but only through the efforts of human beings. Only through the work of fallible women and men working bas best they can, as best we can, to make the vision a reality on earth. We do the work. God is with us as a source of inspiration, guidance, consolation, and forgiveness of our inevitable mistakes. On our own we couldn’t do it. With God’s sustaining presence maybe we can. So let’s get one with it, shall we?