Alien or Alienating? Monster-Psalm Meditation # 3

Last updated on: July 17, 2014 at 2:58 pm by Morgan Guyton

Alien or Alienating? Monster-Psalm Meditation # 3 2014-07-17T14:58:50-05:00 Morgan Guyton

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The first two sections of Psalm 119 described the psalmist’s love for God’s law and meditation on the question of “how young people can keep their way pure.” In this third section, we encounter conflict for the first time. The psalmist describes being persecuted and alienated and calls upon God for deliverance. Much hinges on how we understand the nature of this alienation.

Psalm 119:17-24

Deal bountifully with your servant,
   so that I may live and observe your word.
Open my eyes, so that I may behold
   wondrous things out of your law.
I live as an alien in the land;
   do not hide your commandments from me.
My soul is consumed with longing
   for your ordinances at all times.
You rebuke the insolent, accursed ones,
   who wander from your commandments;
Take away from me their scorn and contempt,
   for I have kept your decrees.
Even though princes sit plotting against me,
   your servant will meditate on your statutes.
Your decrees are my delight,
   they are my counselors.

“I live as an alien in the land.” That is the first phrase that gives us a hint that all might not be well for the psalmist. Being in love with God’s law has made him an outsider who encounters “scorn and contempt” from the “insolent, accursed ones” and against whom “princes sit plotting.” The idea of being persecuted for what you believe is a popular trope in American Christianity. We teach our children that our country was founded by religious pilgrims fleeing persecution in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620 (as opposed to greedy land speculators looking to strike it rich in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607). We grow up with the idea that you’re supposed to be persecuted if you stand up for what you believe (which means that if you’re not being persecuted, you’re not standing up for anything, a mindset that explains a lot about the ethos of American political discourse).

There’s a difference between being made alien to the world by our love for God’s law and being deliberately alienating to others in order to attract attention and feed our own martyrdom complex. It seems like a byproduct of the information age in which everyone needs to be important and have something unique and controversial to say is this fetish for soliciting persecution. There’s a whole industry that is built off of alienating other people and relishing the “persecution” we receive which is really not persecution but fame. Sarah Palin has made a career out of celebrity martyrdom, which is not to say that the right-wing has a monopoly on this very effective self-promotion strategy. Carson T. Clark calls out the Christian blogosphere for engaging in this cynical controversy fetish in order to increase the hits on their blog pages. I have fallen for that temptation on this blog.

But what the psalm is talking about is so utterly different than being publicly controversial in order to attract attention. We live like aliens in the world when we refuse to see the world according to its terms but instead see the kingdom of God with eyes of faith. It makes us alien to love God’s law. Understand that this is very different than living in an exclusive gated community because we love being protected from the “lawless” masses. Loving God’s law is not the same as being thankful that lawbreakers who pose a threat to our property or physical safety are in jail. When we say we love “law and order,” what we’re really loving is our own safety and comfort and our right not to be disrupted by people who are messy and harmful whether it’s because they grew up poor, they’re mentally ill, or they have some sad, twisted reason for taking up crime. Loving God’s law is different than loving the fact that cops and judges take care of people who might harm me or my family. I’m not dissing the latter; I’m just pointing out a difference that suburban evangelicals have built a whole “family-safe, kid-friendly” world out of conflating.

Loving God’s law is wanting the world to look completely different than it currently looks. It’s wanting God’s shalom to reign over all the Earth. Shalom is not just “peace”; it’s not even just “peace with justice”; it’s perfect completeness. It means that everyone has a place to belong and everyone is filling the unique niche for which God created each of us. That’s what the world would look like if everyone was attuned to God’s law. Because the world doesn’t look that way, we who love God’s law are resident aliens in this world, to use the title of Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon’s 1989 classic that I’ve been reading. We affirm that God’s kingdom reigns even though it doesn’t look that way at all. We affirm that God has invited all, not just to be on the donor list of a non-profit bureaucracy called “church,” but to be the ekklesia (“the called-out ones”), the people who do things that don’t make any sense to the invisible hand of the world’s marketplace, to be a single family, and even more radically, a single body who grow so coordinated in our life together that we behave like a physical body in which each cell has an indispensable part to play but no cell operates in individualist isolation.

Living this way is completely alien to the world, but it’s not necessarily alienating to others; it’s actually attractive. What people want more than anything else is to belong somewhere. That’s just how God made us. A world driven by competition and profit is not a world where people can find belonging. The best thing that can happen to us when God allows things to happen that alienate us from the world, because you have to be alien before you can belong.

Previous Post

July 14, 2011

What will we do when the poor get cut off?

Next Post

July 17, 2011 From self-justification to mercy

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Advent Beauty Will Save the World Bible Big Picture: Ephesians Bloggers Book Christian salvation and the Beautitudes Culture Daily Office Danceable Homiletics Deadly Sins Deep Roots: Genesis Devotions Dominican Republic May 2011 El Principio Misericordia (The Mercy Principle) Five verses God tattooed on my heart Fundraising FutureGospel Good Biblical Words Henri Nouwen Interview Jennings' Christian Imagination Jesus inside the beltway Jesus Is My Candidate Jesus vs the Pharisees Jesus vs. Plato Journey to Eternity Looking Back on 2012 Love Actually Monday Merton Monday Merton Music Occupy the manger On Earth As It Is In Heaven Original Sin Podcast Poetry Politics Prayer Psalm 119 Radical Jesus 101 Reviews Sermon on the Mount Sermons Spanish Bible study Special Series Spiritual but not religious Synchroblog Theology Things that made me think Thomas a Kempis Ugliness Into Beauty Uncategorized Viaje Dominicano 2013 Walking in the Valley (Lent) Welcome: It's More than a Mat Wild Goose 2013 Wrestling

Select a Month March 2022 January 2022 December 2021 September 2021 April 2021 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which Psalm ends the Book of Psalms with "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Psalm 23 Psalm 100 Psalm 50 Psalm 150