Psalms is the Language for Deconstruction
Many of us have been wrestling with our faith over the last several years. As we have experienced people acting in unloving ways, politics becoming so divided, and the world being affected by the chaos and loss of a pandemic, it has thrown so much of what we believe up in the air.
Does God have a plan? What is the purpose of the church? Is what I was told was sinful really a sin? What does the cross actually mean?
Questions have swirled into more questions, leaving some of us feeling alone and untethered.
In those feelings of aloneness, it is easy to think we are the first or only ones to wrestle through faith shifts. Especially when the news has told us over and over again that we are in “unprecedented times.”
But what if we aren’t? Certainly, these exact circumstances haven’t existed before now. But can we find parallels with what has come before?
It’s easy to forget when we open the Bible that the span of its narrative crossed thousands of years. Which is enough time to witness people inside its stories who
Followed a God who promised blessing.
Wondered whether God was real when that blessing didn’t seem to come, or was received and then lost.
Wrestle through a faith that could hold the tension of faith and disappointment.
One might look at this pattern and call it
Construction/Orientation
Deconstruction/Disorientation
Reconstruction/Reorientation
Abram left everything behind for the blessings promised by God. Then, he got frustrated, wrestled, and made many mistakes as he walked out the 25 years between that promise and the birth of Isaac. The people left slavery in Egypt for the promise that God was taking them to the land of milk and honey. Then, they grumbled (understandably) as they wandered in the wilderness eating manna for 40 years, not sure when (or if) that crossing would really come. The people of Israel lived in a promised land and centered their worship practices on a temple to God. Then, they were conquered, taken to another land, and had to figure out whether there could still be connection to God when nothing familiar was left.
Throughout these shifts, artists did as they have always done: they created works that brought imagery and language to the losses and shifts and reorientations of life and faith. That art work is left for us to wrestle with and get help from in our own times. We call it the book of Psalms.
Some psalms fit in the category of faith construction or orientation. They are pictures of what the universe looks like when everything is happening the way it's supposed to. There is a Creator who is good and a creation that is in order.
Other psalms fit in the category of faith deconstruction or disorientation. They carry laments about the inaction of God, cries for justice and revenge, and anger at the ways evil seems to be winning. God does not seem to be good and nothing is the way it’s supposed to be.
Still other psalms fit in the category of faith reconstruction or reorientation. Things aren’t perfect, but something in the writer is finding the capacity to hold the tensions. They carry emotion and vulnerability and questions alongside a trust that somehow God is there.
There are, of course, other Psalms that don’t fit neatly into these three categories. Neither art nor the human experience can easily be so boxy or linear. At the same time, the number of Psalms that do fit in these categories provide us with something we can tether to when we aren’t sure where else to go.
This is why we decided our next Roots program should be on Psalms. This isn’t the same kind of rooting we do in Torah or Gospels, in which we find orientation to the stories that are foundational to our faith.
Psalms provide another kind of rooting: a deep connection into art, mystery, and questions.
We can come alongside the authors of these poems as people have done for hundreds of years. We can use their language as a pathway to find our own. We can allow their courageous honesty to open us to the deeper realms of our own hearts. We look for where they find foundations and retell stories, and be inspired to do the same.
In Psalm Roots, you can expect that communally we will find the kind of pathways that are difficult to open up on our own.
We will ask questions, wrestle, and listen for the wisdom of a gathered community to add to open up the message of the Psalms.
We will meet on the second Friday of each month, in person, from 9-11 am, starting in October. Like all Roots programs, there is a curriculum that can help serve as a guide, both when we are together and at home. We hope you can join us. Learn more and register here.