Emotion in the Psalms
Posted
Thursday, August 07, 2008
by
Charlie Trimm
Categories:
Psalms
The point of reading the Psalm is not to discover a new truth (such as the fact that God reigns over the whole world), although that is a process which can be done and which I do below. The point of reading the psalms is to read the psalms to express and to change one’s emotion. The Psalms help to us to truly understand our emotional situation. But the Psalms also help us to speak to ourselves emotionally and to challenge us to different emotions and different feelings. The Psalms help us to put into reality what was not present before. For example, the phrase “Yahweh is king” in the Psalms is not simply make a proposition about reality, it is to help the reader recognize that Yahweh truly is king in their life.1Some of the psalms (42-43, for example) advocate talking to yourself: reminding yourself of truth when the truth is not felt as true.
The psalms also helps us express our emotions to God when we are not sure they are appropriate. “On the other hand, Israel’s prayer is at the same time a guard and guarantee against an overpolite idolatry. Such an idolatry imagines that God is fragile, delicate, and easily offended. In much of fraudulent piety, God is too nice and so our prayers must be censored. The outcome of such deference, of course, is that there is never serious and effective address.”2 When we have strong feelings, we should talk to God about them. It is not as if we could hide them successfully anyway.
to add comments