Chew On This

Psalm 15

A psalm of David.

1 Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent?
    Who may live on your holy mountain?

2 The one whose walk is blameless,
    who does what is righteous,
    who speaks the truth from their heart;
3 whose tongue utters no slander,
    who does no wrong to a neighbor,
    and casts no slur on others;
4 who despises a vile person
    but honors those who fear the Lord;
who keeps an oath even when it hurts,
    and does not change their mind;
5 who lends money to the poor without interest;
    who does not accept a bribe against the innocent.

Whoever does these things
    will never be shaken.

This is the Psalm for this Sunday.  I'm tempted just to post it and let is speak for itself, but that would be contrary to my idiom.  When I read this as a description of righteousness and holiness, I can't help but be terrified for myself and for the world.

I generally listen to those who would use Scripture as a prescription for prosperity and success with a bit of skepticism.  Okay, with a lot of skepticism, and so I am hesitant to interpret the meaning of the end of the Psalm as meaning that if you abide by the standards listed above, God will somehow make all your problems go away.

I don't actually believe that God works that way.  But I do believe that God has standards, there is such a thing as righteousness.  I believe in forgiveness and grace, AND I want, as much as I can to live a life that is pleasing to my Creator.

Things such as this ring with truth, because they are all essentially extensions of Jesus' commandment to love our neighbors.  When we hear the phrase "love our neighbors" most of us begin to wonder exactly what that means.  Texts like this Psalm give us some guidance.

Let's leave out the more generalized descriptions like being blameless, righteous, doing no wrong, despising the vile, and fearing the Lord, because those things leave us hanging with little more than an idea.

Let's look at the most specific injunctions:

1. Speak truth from the heart, no slander, no slurs: Have you ever listened to an argument between two people who are worshiping at the altar of their own opinions?  No?  Turn on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, go do it now, I'll wait. Chances are you just witnessed some form of argument, where people pronounced that their opinion was the best, perhaps called someone names, and otherwise demonstrated the intellectual decline of modern society.  You probably did not witness reasoned dialogue, where anyone was deeply searching for the truth.  They may not have even been truly representing what they actually believe, and they almost certainly were not respecting dissenting opinions.  As long as this is the form of our public discourse, we are doomed to schism and ultimately dissolution.
2. Keeps an oath, even when it hurts, does not change their mind:  This would disqualify every politician that ever walked the face of the earth... actually it would probably disqualify just about everyone that has ever walked the face of the earth.  We all make promises we can't keep.  However, I think we probably need to understand this as a bit more specific.  In a world where swearing oaths was the primary mode of making a contract of any sort, the value of a person's word was binding.  Now we say, "get it in writing," which is wise in a world where the spoken word has been drastically devalued by the dynamic described above.  The dependent clause: "even when it hurts," is a stinger though.  We have almost come to expect that people will bail on promises if things get too tough, even if they did give their word.
3. Lends money to the poor WITHOUT INTEREST:  The NRSV translation just says "do not lend money at interest," which is even more extreme.  If we did away with the charging of interest, the global economy would crash in a matter of hours.  By the way, there is a lot more prohibitive language about charging interest in the Bible than there is about homosexual behavior, I find that curious, don't you?  But lets go with the easier load: what if we just did it for the poor.  What if we gave people below a certain income interest free loans, not a handout, just a no loan, with no interest.  They still had to pay it back, and if they didn't they were going to have problems.  Let's imagine that we did that for mortgages, car loans and student loans.  We'll put credit cards and other forms of borrowing to the side for a moment.  We would improve poor people's access to housing, transportation, and education, which are basically the building blocks of prosperity in the modern world.  This seems like it should be a dream of both conservatives and liberals alike, it quells the need for "handouts" by giving people more of an opportunity to stand on their own two feet.  Instead, what we do is charge poor people higher interest rates than we do rich people, because they're "higher risk," and because they're higher risk we make it more difficult for them to borrow money they actually need for the basic building blocks of success and we make it more difficult, in some cases almost impossible, for them to ever dig out from under the avalanche of debt that begins to roll down over them.  Are you still aware that this is in the BIBLE? This is not the communist manifesto, but it's pretty radical and pretty challenging, and it is pretty obvious that we're just getting things really wrong.
4. Does not accept a bribe against the innocent: Okay, so we're going to have to get in the way back machine to understand this one.  The justice system of ancient society were largely based on local judges, who were wise men (and actually sometimes women), who were tasked with arbitrating disputes.  They would listen to testimony (which again makes #1 and #2 really important) and decide who was righteous in any given situation.  If someone broke an oath or defaulted on a loan, the judge would, with the support of the community, make it right.  Unless someone bribed them, or paid some witnesses off in order to win.  When that happened (notice the economic component here too) the person with money could buy justice, and the poor could not.  In that world, as in ours, the rich could get away with almost anything, unless there was an absolutely righteous judge, and reliable witnesses.  All the other parts of the Psalm start to fall into place when you realize that the qualities described were not just necessary for some utopian dream of God's kingdom.  They were necessary for the basic functioning of a reasonably just society.  They still are.  And we're doing badly on almost all counts.

I would punch a wall, but the deductible on my insurance plan tells me that would be unwise.