Justice. We are thinking and talking about it a lot these days. Or maybe I should say, we are thinking and talking about what appears to be the LACK of it in many key areas in our world, our country, our city, our neighborhoods, even our own particular circumstances today.
Do you hear the rawness in David’s tone in Psalm 58? He sounds frustrated, at his wit’s end, DONE with people in his life who aren’t seeking justice and therefore, I assume, circumstances as a result that feel unjust. Sounds all too familiar, doesn’t it?
This psalm is technically categorized as an imprecatory psalm, which is a category of psalms that asks for judgment and curses to fall on those who are viewed as enemies of the writer or of God’s plans. It also sounds like a lament as I read it. “Justice – do you rulers know the meaning of the word?” (NLT) David is absolutely sick at heart to see such widespread injustice and grieved that the people who could do something to change it, don’t seem to care.
I often think that we feel uncomfortable with the idea of lamenting. Of really telling God how angry or sad or disillusioned we are. I’m sure there are lots of reasons for this. When we are grieved our words aren’t usually packaged in well-polished ways. Sometimes they don’t even make sense! Sometimes we are afraid of how raw our rawness really is. But David’s example in psalms like these makes me think that God isn’t nearly as hung up on lamenting as we are. In fact, He probably wants us to do it more often.
Paul E. Miller, in A Praying Life, talks about another person in the Bible who, like David, had mastered the art of lament. Isaiah is also full of really raw words for God. His description of Isaiah seems to also describe David in this psalm (and numerous other ones for that matter.) Miller says that as he reads Isaiah “you can feel Isaiah’s [or David’s] broken heart; thousands of years later it still jumps off the page….In a kind of pilgrimage, he begins feisty, in God’s face, then he slowly reveals his faith and his heart….[David’s] faith drives this lament [or imprecatory psalm]. He believes three things about God: First, God is sovereign. He can do something. Second, God is love. He is for me. He wants to do something. And Finally, God is a covenant-keeping God. He is bound by his own word. He will do something.”
David ends the psalm by saying, “Surely there is a God who judges justly here on earth”. He comes back to faith in God and the constancy of His character. In the face of people and circumstances today…here and now…that feel categorically unjust, we still serve a sovereign, loving covenant-keeping and JUST God. When was the last time you lamented things not being as they should be? Things in your life? In our life? In our world? Maybe it’s time to do it again or do it for the first time? Lamenting can be one of the most faith-filled things we do. We also get to lament with a perspective on history that David and Isaiah didn’t have. Jesus came as the answer to our lament. And He’s coming back one day to end injustice once and for all.
- Dan and Rebekah Gorrell