Psalm 119:123 Free Range

Cattle should not be in the middle of the road.

I realize that in some parts of the world, including some parts of this country, it's not all that uncommon to find a rancher taking a herd of cattle or sheep down a road. It's a generally accepted practice and drivers are used to waiting for the road to clear.

But where I live, coming upon livestock in the road is neither expected nor accepted. It's obvious something is wrong if a cow is in the road.

Most recently I came across chickens wandering about on a street in a residential neighborhood here in Columbia. I had seen chickens in this family's yard before, behind a fence, but to come upon them in the road was not good.

The chickens, however, were enjoying themselves. They were doing what chickens do, which is to wander about wherever they can. They were expressing their chosen identity as free-range chickens.

I've no doubt the owners of this flock have a different concept of what chickens are supposed to do. Chickens aren't supposed to wander into the city street, free range or not. It's not good for the chickens and not representative of the owners' intent for their chickens.

My eyes fail, looking for your salvation, looking for your righteous promise.

Psalm 119:123

God created all of us to have free will. It's up to us to choose whether to be his servants or not.

Some of us, though, think of ourselves as free-range servants. Our personal definition of righteousness is different than God's. We grab hold of the freedom He offers and start making up our own rules of what a servant of God is supposed to be and do.

And then we find ourselves in places both unexpected and unacceptable.

Do you ever find yourself way too preoccupied with the ways other people are falling short of your definition of righteousness?

Are you spending too much time in a whirlpool of self-recrimination, obsessed with guilt (either real or imagined) over every little thing?

Do you linger too long in the past, unable to forgive others - or yourself?

Are you wandering about, trying to find salvation and acceptance in clinging to the right opinions rather than righteousness?

The righteous servant of God finds their true home in the righteous promises of God.

Psalm 119:122 Squeezed

Ensure your servant’s well-being; 
do not let the arrogant oppress me.
Psalm 119:122

Who ensures the well-being of God's righteous servants?

Judging by the conversations and social media comments of many Christians, they're putting their hope in elected leaders. Great tragedy will apparently befall both the church and the nation if the wrong people are elected to office.

And it appears "the right people" are the ones who agree with particular political points of view, regardless of whether they are righteous servants of God. In fact, some of the people championed most by Christians look, to my eyes, more like the arrogant oppressors than servants of God.

Arrogance is almost a prerequisite for politicians here in the 21st century. The more arrogant a person is toward their opponents, the more attention they get and the more votes they garner.

Has the church wandered so far off the path that its people are frightened for their future if certain political platforms and parties are successful? Are we really building our house on the sinking sand of politics and personalities?

Oppression means literally to be pressed down, pushed, squeezed. When we allow politics and politicians to push us off the path of righteous servanthood and squeeze us into the mold of our neighbors who don't know Christ, we've transferred our loyalty from God to the oppressors.

Psalm 119:121 Opressors and Offenders

I have done what is righteous and just;
do not leave me to my oppressors.
Psalm 119:121

The 21st century American version of this verse would go something like this:

I am right. I just am. Do not leave me to those who offend me.

It's our obsession with being right,as opposed to doing what is righteous, that makes us so easily offended.

If I'm actively spouting off my opinions about the topics I'm convinced everyone else is wrong about, I can naturally expect others to take offense at my arrogance and respond with words that offend my sense of self-importance.

But if I'm actively doing the things that reflect the righteous character and purposes of God, I can naturally expect people will try to oppress me: silence me, interfere with what I'm trying to accomplish, undermine me.

I expect God would be pleased if we model our prayers after David's, asking God to not leave us at the mercy of our oppressors. I also suspect God would be less pleased if we pray for protection from the people who offend our sensibilities.

Psalm 119:121-128 Ayin

I have done what is righteous and just;
do not leave me to my oppressors.
Ensure your servant’s well-being; 
do not let the arrogant oppress me. 
My eyes fail, looking for your salvation, 
looking for your righteous promise. 
Deal with your servant according to your love
and teach me your decrees. 
I am your servant; give me discernment
that I may understand your statutes. 
It is time for you to act, Lord; 
your law is being broken.
Because I love your commands more than gold, 
more than pure gold, 
and because I consider all your precepts right, 
I hate every wrong path.

Psalm 119:121-128

Much of American Christianity has gotten off track in the 21st century. Many have given themselves over to the post-modern concept that truth is fluid, dependent entirely on the perception of the individual. Others have retreated into centuries-old legalism and judgmentalism.

Both of those extremes have their roots in self-centered attitudes. It's all about me and what I think is true or right.

We've lost our grip on two important attitudes David talks about in Ayin: A servant's heart and a righteous heart.

Without a servant's heart we fall into the habit of telling other people what to do, because we're confident we know best and should be in charge. If we nurture a servant's heart, we interact with others based on what we understand God's priorities are, confident that he alone knows best and he alone is able to make each person stand before him (Romans 14:4).

Without a heart of righteousness, we fall naturally into self-righteousness and mere rightness. The self-righteous person tells himself he is the arbiter of what is righteous. That self-centered definition of righteousness usually boils down to "I'm right and you're wrong". It becomes more important to defend what we think is right than to pursue the righteousness of God.

Righteousness and servanthood are a matched set, both focused on submission to God's character and God's mission.

Psalm 119:120 Trembling

Winter's Bone

I recently re-watched one of my favorite movies, Winter's Bone, starring a very young looking Jennifer Lawrence. Her character, Ree Dolly, is responsible for feeding and raising her young brother and sister because her mother has mentally checked out of the world and her father is almost always gone. And now he is missing.

Ree's efforts to find her father and thus save their home is complicated by the pervasive code of the Ozarks where she lives. Jessup, her father, is a meth cooker, a fact known and accepted by everyone. One person in the movie even says, matter of factly, that "everyone cooks crank." It's just become part of the culture, as the best way to make good money.

Turns out, though, that the code of the hills means no one wants to tell her anything that could help her find her father. She is chastised repeatedly and beaten more than once when she refuses to stop asking forbidden questions. In spite of her fear of stepping across the wrong lines and angering some very dangerous people, she fears more losing her family's home and losing her ability to care for her brother and sister. So she persists, leading toward a chilling conclusion.

I love this movie because I know people like Ree Dolly and the people she encounters. I've met them behind the walls of a women's prison in Missouri. I can see their faces now as I write about them, young women who found themselves entangled in the culture of the Ozarks drug business and caught up in the legal traps of law enforcement. Some of them had real difficulty comprehending what they had done wrong, because they were simply following the only set of rules they'd ever known, the only "laws" that made any sense to them.

And yet, still, they were in the wrong. And now they were in prison.

My flesh trembles in fear of you;
I stand in awe of your laws.

Psalm 119:120

Everyone lives in some sort of community of culture that exists in a cobbled together cage of accepted rules and practices. The people who live in that cage of their own making often don't even realize how different they are than the people in other cages. This is what they know and this is how they live.

They love what they love and they fear what they fear because they've convinced themselves those things are important to love and to fear.

When I was growing up in the church, I was scared to question the doctrines I was being taught from the pulpit, in Sunday School, and youth group. Our church culture made it quite clear that doubting the officially accepted teachings of our non-denominational denomination was as sinful as doubting God Himself.

We loved the laws of the Bible. We stood in awe of them. They were the building blocks from which our way of religious life was constructed.

We allowed them to become a cage that held our faith.

The way out of the cages of fear that restrict us is to find a better target for our love and more genuine object of our fear.

The reason David stands in awe of God's laws is because he stands in awe of the God he loves. He doesn't make the mistake of loving God's laws more than God himself - or more than God's people.

Never get overly comfortable and lackadaisical about your relationship with the Word. Check yourself regularly to make sure you're keeping it in the proper perspective.