Psalm 16: Making Faith Visible (I)

"A Miktam of David.
1 Protect me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
2 I say to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord;
I have no good apart from you.’
3 As for the holy ones in the land, they are the noble,
in whom is all my delight.
4 Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows; their drink-offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names upon my lips.
5 The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.
6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; I have a goodly heritage.
7 I bless the Lord who gives me counsel;
in the night also my heart instructs me.
8 I keep the Lord always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices;
my body also rests secure.
10 For you do not give me up to Sheol,
or let your faithful one see the Pit.
11 You show me the path of life.
In your presence there is fullness of joy;
in your right hand are pleasures for evermore."

Introduction

This Psalm, quoted by the earliest Christians to refer to the death and resurrection of Jesus (v.10 in Acts 2:27), allows me the occasion to reflect on a problem which I think is a crucial one for the Mainline, and Evangelical Church, and that is what I call the "abstractness" of faith. This introduction will lay out the problem, and my exposition, in the next essay, will show how the Psalmist's way of dealing with his faith may help us in our own faith articulation in 2007.

The problem of faith in our day is a dual one: (1) its abstractness and (2) the fact that almost everyone who comes to church is a concrete thinker. The dissonance caused by this experience makes people ultimately not see church, or religious faith, as a vital reality in their lives. Let's begin with the practical nature of people's lives in 2007. We wake up with tasks to do. We have work, family, errands, pressures of all kinds. Our days are taken up with fulfilling the practical details of life. Sometimes we have moments of pleasure or retreat, where we can escape to our own worlds, of music or gardening or sometimes watching a moive. But even in those "escape" worlds, we are tethered to the realities around us. We "relax" or "escape," and we soon return to the demands of our life.

But faith wants to take us to a new and different dimension of living. It wants to take us to a world which we can't touch, see, taste, smell or hear. It takes us to a world the entry into which is conditioned, at least in traditional Christianity, by certain affirmations or things we say are true. For example, Christians say that "Christ died for my sins." It is a basic tenet of faith. But if we look closely at these five words, we see how abstract they are, how distant from the normal modes of thinking that we engage in in 2007. The words "Christ died" are not difficult to understand. He was a historical figure. We have accounts of his death. Other historical figures die. We quickly realize that we understand those two words.

But the words "For my sins" takes us into the most obscure and abstract world imaginable, a world that is just too difficult for us to understand. What does it mean to die "for" someone else? We really don't have that concept in our judicial system. We can't, indeed, buy our way out of a death sentence by having someone else take our place to be executed. Ancient Israel didn't permit this either (Num. 35:31). We can die for someone else if we push them out of the way of an oncoming train only to have it bear down on us and crush us. But this isn't what Christian faith wants to claim. It claims that Christ died "for our sins"--in other words, that somehow by his death 2000 years ago, our sins are forgiven.

We are thrown back to the judicial model, a model which doesn't exist in our culture. So, we have to imagine what this means. And, I think that we can barely imagine someone being put to death for another's murder. But let's say that we can imagine it happening. Our first thought is that the person substituting for the murderer either is crazy or has a death wish. Perhaps it is a loved one of the murderer, who for some reason wants to see him live. But it is a really fuzzy concept when you look at it. But Christian faith wants to up the ante even further. It wants to claim that a man who didn't know us gave up his life for us 2000 years ago.

That is a breathtaking statement, and we need to pause on it before our minds are utterly incapacitated in trying to take it in. How can we possibly understand (much less believe) the statement that a person who lived 2000 years ago "gave his life" for me? First, do we need or want someone to give his life for us? Let's take the "need" first. Christian faith argues that we are sinners, and that the result of our sin is spiritual death and ultimate exclusion from the presence of God. Fair enough. But, I don't think I believe it quite so simply anymore. That is, I have no problem with the concept that I am not always a nice person, that I have hurt people over the years, that I may have, in some way, sinned against God. Though, when push comes to shove, I think that God is probably not too worried about whether I lusted after someone in 1992 or whether I momentarily hated a person who cut me off on the highway. Whether I have a "sin nature" that is inveterately opposed to God is another very abstract statement, one that would have to be subject to the most searching scrutiny before I can assent to it. Let's not go there now.

So, back to Christ dying for me. First, I have to admit and agree that I need or want someone to die for me. But that is a real stretch. I can barely ask my kids to take out the garbage on the night before it is collected; how could I feel I want someone to give his life for me? And, for my sins? How does it "work" that someone's death 2000 years ago does something to my sins? And what does it do? It "covers" them or "forgives" them. But what does that mean? Does it mean that I am not held ultimately responsible for them? That it doesn't define my life? Make no mistake about it, I believe that acts of forgiveness between people, where people have agreed to reconcile, or try to build a future together, are most blessed times. But when this happens it is between or among people who often are across the table from each other when it is happening. That is, they see each other and can narrate the hurt and the hope.

Christian faith is playing for much higher stakes than this--an much more abstract stakes. Thus, when someone makes the claim that "Christ died for my sins," I see it as a very abstract statement by a person who is probably very practically-minded. They are so practically minded that they don't realize the abstract nature of the words they are uttering. They don't have the capacity to sort out the implications of their words, and when they just say that you should accept things "by faith," well, I think that this is often a cop out, a means for trying to gloss over a problem that they really don't understand.

That, friends, is the reality for faith in 2007. And, young people are aware of the issue. They are not going to sink themselves into something that just doesn't meet them in their world. Indeed, I think a number of older people in the pew have also given up faith, but they are there because of long associations with others or because they have too much "invested" in church to give it up. Pastors, especially, are in a bind because their livelihood and pension depend on their interest/ability in "maintaining faith."

The honest way to proceed, in my judgment, is to admit that the basic affirmations of faith make little sense to us today. This, then, should lead us to open the Scriptures together, meet in round-table meetings, and discuss what the implications of this are for us. Church would look radically different. Rather than processions and choirs and nice organ music and kids sermons and the offertory and long droning prayers, people would have to take responsibliity for their own understanding of faith and for the way that they understand it today. And, it will force us all to discover what it is about faith that keeps us coming back to each other and to church on a regular basis.

How does this relate to Psalm 16? As I was studying it I became impressed by how the Psalmist's theological or abstract affirmations flow from practical realities in his world. The next essay will exposit the Psalm, with particular attention to how he does this. My point will be that the Psalmist gives us a clue, and some cues, on how we, too, might reconstruct faith in our day.

[Next]

2711