Psalm 139 is a very popular poem written about God, attributed to King David. We don’t really know what led to such a gushing of praise in prose, but it must have been something pretty powerful. A moment of insight? Or a moment of conclusion after a long period of reflection? We don’t know. Whatever happened, the poet was left extolling ideas about God that have resonated with many people throughout the ages, even up to now, showing up in Ellie Holcomb’s song,Where Can I Go. The poet offers his insights about God’s character and nature, believing that God knows everything about him – even the number of hairs on his head! He believes that God is absolutely everywhere, which is huge claim lost on us in our time – gods were largely understood to be regional in that time in history. He notes that he believes that God knows the future in advance, including every word that the poet would ever utter. The poem is itself a declaration of adoration, but he goes further to say that he hates God’s enemies and wished them dead. Kind of a dark turn before a more positive finish. The poet is overwhelmed at what he perceived to be God’s knowledge, power, and magnitude. Yet the poet doesn’t necessarily declare that God is good or kind or loving.
At this point, it is good to remember that Psalm 139 is a poem, not meant to be doctrinal even if it certainly communicates aspects of the poet’s theology. We need also remember that the Bible is a collection of books written over hundreds of years capturing roughly 2,000 years of ideas about God with multiple genres. It is a marvelous collection of how people thought over time based on their learning and experience. God didn’t write the Bible; people like us did. With great care, I might add. Sometimes what they wrote resonates so much with us that we might even say it was inspired. Yet it remains what it is, and that makes it a great gift and invitation to us. A gift because we get a courtside view of the struggle people went through as they developed their thought. An invitation because the Bible itself displays contrasting ideas throughout, which means we are invited to wrestle ourselves with such big ideas about the nature of everything, including God. We can take issue with the writers and craft our own poems and positions in light of our learning and experience, including what we have learned from them.
So, where do you agree with the poet. And where don’t you agree? If you wrote your own poem using Psalm 139 as a reference, what would you keep? What would you cut? What would you modify to make it your own? You are allowed to do this. You already have over the course of your life, again and again and again.
Sometimes we get tripped up by the Bible because we approach it wrongly, as written by God. When we do that, the ideas about God’s foreknowledge of everything becomes problematic. It implies that we really don’t have any volition in our lives. No agency. It has been written. We are predetermined – the good, the bad, and the ugly. If your life is awesome, good for you! You won the lottery, apparently. If your life feels sucky, well, that’s a bummer. Too bad for you for getting handed that script. Such thinking limits our personal responsibility. “Hey, sorry for the pain my life has caused. But don’t get mad at me – I was just following the script – get mad at the author.”
What do you think – is your life predetermined? Do you have relative agency over your own life? Are your decisions yours or were they scripted before “in the beginning”?
We see a contrast in another popular passage of scripture coming from a time of agony. Israel was overtaken by the Babylonian Empire. Except for a small remnant of folk, most Jewish people were taken to Babylon as exiles. They wondered what to make of it all, what it said about them, God, and their future. The prophet, Jeremiah, in his reflection offered a beautiful word of hope about God’s position on the subject:
I know the plans I have in mind for you, declares the LORD; they are plans for peace, not disaster, to give you a future filled with hope. – Jeremiah 29:11 CEB
In other parts of Jeremiah, the idea is presented that Israel’s exile is due to their disobedience. If they had been more faithful over the centuries, they would still be in the Promised Land. If only they had followed God’s plan. The idea of God’s plan is a whopper for a lot of Christians. I have watched people agonize over major decisions, wondering, “Is this God’s plan for me? What if I get it wrong?” I have, at times, agonized as well. Yet, as Mark Feldmeir correctly notes in his book, Life After God, Jeremiah isn’t referring to some already predetermined plan but rather hopes, dreams, a vision of something more.
How does this change things for you regarding interpreting God’s plan for you or will for you? On the one hand, it takes a lot of pressure off knowing that “plans” are really hopes and not a playbook we must follow or suffer God’s condemnation. On the other hand, it implies we bear responsibility for our own lives. We don’t have to entertain God’s hopes into our lives at all! We can do what we want. We always do.
The whopper question is, what do we want to do with our lives? What role does our understanding of God play in our decisions? Why would we care about God’s hopes and dreams, according to Jeremiah’s view? Further, which view of God in the Bible do we choose to embrace? Some passages portray God as a hot-headed, immature jerk that is incredibly temperamental and even untrustworthy, ready to punish us if we get out of step. Maybe that’s why there are people of faith that are jerks – they are basing their belief on that understanding of God. The Bible is a gift in that way. When we recognize that many people from the distant past had divergent views of God, it reminds us that we are on the journey, too, figuring out what we believe, why it matters, and what we are going to do with it.
A major theme that shows up throughout the Bible is a very big idea wrapped up in the word, shalom. Feldmeir expresses it this way:
Shalom means to make something whole. Shalom is an experience of fullness, completeness, contentment. Perhaps the closest word to shalom in the English language is something like well-being. But even that’s inadequate, because well-being doesn’t come close to capturing the radical and counterintuitive nature of shalom. In the Hebraic way of thinking, this fullness, completeness, contentment, well-being called shalom is the result of the joining together of opposites or ostensibly opposing forces. (74-75)
For the Jewish people, shalom is salvation. Even though there are references to an angry, judging, wrathful God waiting to strike (a reminder of the human origins of biblical text), there exists throughout the Hebrew scriptures a counterintuitive, countercultural vision of shalom as described above. The theme continues throughout the Christian New Testament but using Greek words instead. Salvation itself referred mostly to the themes of shalom – being healed, made whole, deep and abiding peace. The salvation spoken of by Jesus was also countercultural and a direct challenge to the Roman Empire, which also claimed to offer salvation. The Pax Romana – the Peace of Rome – was peacekeeping by force: obey the Empire unless you want to suffer the consequences. The Salvation Jesus promoted was aligned with the Jewish shalom that he undoubtedly knew and embodied. This was not peacekeeping, but peacemaking. Not a peace kept by force, but a peace cultivated by love. Jesus was all about this kind of salvation, a holistic wellbeing, deep peace, and abiding love that invites, compels, and instructs our lives going forward. Jesus lived this shalom, taught this shalom, and in inviting others to follow, he was wooing them to do the same. This is a way of seeing and engaging the world that affects our intrapersonal lives (our relationship with ourselves), our interpersonal lives (our relationship with others), and also the global community (how nations and peoples get along with each other). I believe that while we often settle for a cheap imitation of peacekeeping by force, our heart of hearts longs for the deeply rooted peacemaking shalom of God.
This shalom, by the way, requires some very hard work. Bringing opposites together, shining a light on things we would rather avoid or deny yet are always with us, informing us. Feldmeir speaks into this regarding our past. He quotes William Faulkner who famously said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Feldmier goes on to suggest that “our past determines our present and informs our future possibilities. We are products of our past. We are the sum total of our past choices and experiences, and the sum total of the world’s past choices and experiences” (78). As we move forward with our lives there are three variables that determine our future. The past and what we do with it, the always present, shalom-oriented invitation of God, and ourselves.
What do you want for your life? Feldmeir offers insight on the shalom-way forward:
“Shalom is refusing to get mired too deeply in the past and refusing to live too far into the future... Shalom, wholeness, well-being happens when we join our imperfect, less-than-ideal past with the more hopeful and real possibilities of the future and choose to live most fully in the real and present moment, deciding today who we will be, how we will live, whether we will pursue the aim or intention God has set before us” (80-81). How is this landing with you today? Perhaps there is unfinished business in your life, unresolved, unhealed wounds from your past. Could the woo of shalom be inviting you to take steps toward healing, maybe with the help of a counselor or close friend or a journal or at minimum time and space where you no longer pretend it’s not there? Perhaps today you are being wooed toward peacemaking instead of peacekeeping in your relationship with yourself, others, and in the way you view global turmoil. Sometimes peacekeeping is needed to stop bloodshed, but if that’s all we settle for, there will eventually be more bloodshed. Peacemaking leads to lasting peace. Perhaps all of us today way be feeling the invitation to refresh our commitment to living our lives by the True North of shalom, which happens to be what we are agreeing to when we pledge our allegiance to following Jesus. Perhaps declaring such commitment regularly – daily – will remind us to stay the course even when the prevailing winds of culture come at us with gale force, demanding a different direction. These are the biggest questions of life, and they are always before us.
May you trust in shalom, which is to trust in God. May you fully embrace the vision that shalom-God truly does have a vision for your life that does not harm but is full of hope. May you feel the fresh breeze of invitation to this life every morning, every moment, and may you say “yes!”