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.

Psalm 119:119 Prime Directive

Star Trek: City on the Edge of Forever

Any true fan of Star Trek will recognize the clip above from City on the Edge of Forever, a classic time travel episode from the original Star Trek series. Dr. McCoy has accidentally been sent back to mid-20th Century Earth, losing his memory in the process. Eventually, he saves a woman from being killed by an oncoming vehicle. That interruption in what "should have happened" triggers a ripple effect through history that causes major changes in the future.

Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock follow him back in time and manage to keep McCoy from saving her life, thus restoring the original timeline.

They do so, in spite of the fact that Kirk has fallen in love with the woman (Kirk falls in love in about every third episode of the original series). They put history back as it should have been because of the Prime Directive.

The Prime Directive, also known as Starfleet General Order 1 or the Non-Interference Directive, was the embodiment of one of Starfleet's most important ethical principles: noninterference with other cultures and civilizations. At its core was the philosophical concept that covered personnel should refrain from interfering in the natural, unassisted, development of societies, even if such interference was well-intentioned. The Prime Directive was viewed as so fundamental to Starfleet that officers swore to uphold the Prime Directive, even at the cost of their own life or the lives of their crew. (Memory-Alpha)

The plot line of many Star Trek episodes and movies has revolved around various complications with the Prime Directive, usually resulting in the main characters bending or breaking the directive. In this case, Kirk was following the Temporal Prime Directive, avoiding interference with a culture or civilization in the past.

All the wicked of the earth you discard like dross;
therefore I love your statutes.

Psalm 119:119

Is there a Prime Directive for the people of God?

As nearly every preacher has quoted at some point, "anytime you see the word therefore in scripture, you need to ask what it's there for."

In this case, the reason for the therefore isn't entirely clear. It's tempting to just ignore it.

But I think it's intended to emphasize the contrast between the two halves of the verse and draw a direct line of motivation.

The first half expresses in dramatic fashion the extreme character of God's wrath toward the wicked. The idea that He discards them like the scum or unwanted material that forms on the surface of molten metal, will make some readers uncomfortable. Which, I suppose is the point. We need to be reminded of the severity of God's wrath occasionally.

Once we get beyond being horrified by God's wrath, David says, the person after God's own heart will be motivated by it. Motivated toward loving God's ways with the same level of intensity as God despises wickedness.

It's the sort of love that doesn't pick and choose which statutes to love. It doesn't gloss over some, twist others, and ignore a few of them outright.

If you love God, you love all His statutes. Which is hard to do on a steady and unwavering basis.

Unless you focus on God's prime directive. Or prime directives.

You can take your pick among various expressions of our prime directive. Is it to "seek and save the lost"? To "Go into all the world and preach the gospel..."?

Those are good, but I like this expression of Jesus' Prime Directive, from Matthew 22:37-40:

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

Focusing on those two commands will make it much easier to love and follow all of God's statutes. Doing it the other way around, focusing on the many statutes, has historically led to all kinds of wickedness perpetrated in the name of God. If I cling tightly to the laws and fiercely enforce them, but have not love, I have become nothing but dross, unproductive and unwanted.

Psalm 119:118 Delusions

Signs from *M*A*S*H*

The TV show *MA*S*H* is another example of a sociological study of people trapped in extreme circumstances. In this case, though, the whole thing was played for laughs. There was plenty of tragedy and pathos during its 11 seasons, but it was primarily a comedy.

During the first four seasons of the show's run, Majors Frank Burns and Margaret Houlihan were cast in the role of judge and jury over the wayward behavior of everyone else in the camp. Many episodes centered around Frank and Margaret trying to make sure someone was reprimanded for their actions.

And they were right. The people of M*A*S*H* 4077 were frequently guilty of drunkenness, philandering, promiscuity, gambling, cross-dressing, disrespect, insubordination, and a host of other conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman.

There was just one problem. In addition to being judgmental, mean-spirited, and self-righteous, the two majors were involved with one another in ways unfit for a married doctor and the head nurse.

You reject all who stray from your decrees,
for their delusions come to nothing. 

Psalm 119:118

It's easy to read this verse as describing the people who stray from God's decrees as being caught up in delusions.

And they are. They're deluded in thinking any amount of money, possessions, fame, or power will give them the peace and joy they crave. They make the wrong choices repeatedly, returning to the same futile schemes in pursuit of a good life.

But what about those of us who pretend we're the good ones, as though we never stray like those other people? We're also deluded, just like Frank and Margaret. We stray from God's decrees when we dabble in legalism and criticism, gossip and meanness, self-righteousness and hypocrisy.

We're all on this road together.

Psalm 119:117 Toddlers

The Handmaid's Tale, Hulu

Like many pre-reading children, our son would memorize the stories he heard us read to him. Left on his own, he'd open up one of his little books and turn the cardboard pages, reading the story out loud. He made few mistakes, even though he couldn't actually read any of the words yet.

Gifted with a fertile imagination, he would sometimes pick up a book at the library, one he'd never heard read to him, and "read" through it, making up a story based on the pictures he was seeing.

Sometimes our Bible reading resembles the reading of a toddler. We interpret the scriptures according to whatever we've heard from the preacher or other leaders. Or we read between the lines, filling in the gaps with creative interpretations that fit into our preconceived notions.

People have been doing this throughout the history of the scriptures. Inquisitions, witch trials, domineering legalism, political crusades, and cults have been born of reading the Word like toddlers.

The picture above is from the Hulu series The Handmaid's Tale, set in a near-future society where an extreme religious group has capitalized on fear to take over the government of a portion of America. Their defining feature is the enslavement of young fertile women, who are forced to submit to unspeakable acts, all in the name of God's work.

It's a detailed extrapolation of what can happen when believers apply the scriptures through a distorted lens of their own making.

Uphold me, and I will be delivered;
I will always have regard for your decrees.

Psalm 119:117

An alternate translation for this verse could be, "Prop me up, and I will be safe; I will always gaze closely at your decrees."

David isn't saying he's going to prop up the scriptures in front of himself so he can figure out which angle is the best for reading and interpreting the decrees. He's actually not the one doing the propping up at all.

Like a toddler, he's asking the Father to prop him up, so he can see the book as God holds it before him tells him what it says.

How much greater would it be if God's people came to His Word like children, not making up stories, but relying on God to see and understand His decrees. Then we could be saved from becoming the latest ones to call ourselves by His name while making a mockery of His Word.

Psalm 119:116 Dashed Hopes

Mad Men, AMC

"You’re born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget. I’m living like there’s no tomorrow because there isn’t one."

That's just one of many cheery quotes from Don Draper, the central character in the TV show Mad Men. If you've never seen the show, it's not an over simplification to sum it up as the story of a man (Don Draper) who started with nothing, stole someone else's life, had everything the advertising world tells us we could ever want, and was so miserable he threw it all away. And he knew it:

"We’re flawed because we want so much more. We’re ruined because we get these things and wish for what we had."

Everyone around Don Draper spends the 92 episodes doing the same as he does, continually scrambling to discover what their life is about, or should be about. Or maybe just what they can piece together and settle for.

In the final episodes most of the characters are shown grabbing hold of a way of life they think they've always wanted. The perfect job or the perfect family, self-fulfillment or love at long last.

But still, having watched these characters throughout the arc of the show's decade, I can see their hopes being dashed in the next season, the one after the series ended.

Sustain me, my God, according to your promise, and I will live;
do not let my hopes be dashed. 

Psalm 119:116

None of the Mad Man characters are portrayed as knowing God. Even the occasional religious side characters don't seem to have much grasp of the heart of God.

But as someone deeply embedded in the fellowship of believers, I feel qualified to say that we are often no better at keeping our hope on target than the irreligious people of Mad Men.

We sing, "My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness", all the while leaving behind one church family after another as we move from one job to the next rung on the ladder.

"I dare not trust the sweetest frame", but I'll gladly go into debt for a nicer home while never considering borrowing for money to give to a church building project.

"His oath, His covenant, His blood support me in the 'whelming flood," but I'm willing to excuse unholy behavior in any politician who will stand for the "right" policies to protect us from the overwhelming onslaught of the "wrong" sort of politics.

Sustain me, my God, according to your promise, and I will live. Sustain me financially, sustain my career, my family, my country, my congregation.

Do not let my hopes be dashed.

Psalm 119:115 Evildoers

The Dark Knight, Warner Brothers, 2008

Joker: Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!

[Still holding the gun, Harvey Dent pauses and takes out his coin]

Harvey Dent: [Showing Joker the good side] You live.

Joker: Mm-hmm.

Harvey Dent: [Showing the scarred side] You die.

Joker: Mmm, now we're talking.

The Dark Knight trilogy, from which the above quote comes, couldn't have been more unlike the Batman series of the 1960s. Instead of over the top camp and primary colors, the newer take on Batman is dark, brooding, and cynical.

Heath Ledger's Joker is cast as the epitome of evil. As Bruce Wayne's butler, Alfred, says, "Some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."

But this version of the Batman doesn't go for a simple good vs. evil trope. Batman isn't portrayed as the ultimate good hero in contrast to the evildoer. This Dark Knight is fleshed out in darker tones. He's battling his own inner evil.

The film even seems to prop up other heroes as the embodiment of good, only to show their true darkness. Jim Gordon, who becomes police commissioner, is a crusader for justice who uses the most corrupt members of his police force to accomplish his goals. Harvey Dent, whom Bruce Wayne thinks is the hero Gotham needs, becomes unhinged mentally under the pressure of great suffering and loss.

The lesson of the Dark Knight is that we are all evildoers.

Away from me, you evildoers,
that I may keep the commands of my God!

Psalm 119:115

Who are the evildoers, in God's eyes?

The Hebrew word describes people who are actively in opposition to God, to society, or to the norms of society. They might even be chaos engines, introducing a little anarchy in opposition to the way God intended the world to work.

They also might be you and me.

A friend told me recently, "You're a better person than I am."

"No. I'm not," I replied, after getting over my shock. "You don't really want to read my mind or see my heart at its worst."

If the people of God allow ourselves to believe we're better than "those evildoers", we've missed the point of being the people of God.

We're not His people because we're worthy of His name. We belong to Him because the blood of Christ covers our evil and His grace welcomes us home.

Our purpose, as His people, is to walk alongside our fellow evildoers on the 1 road of life, the ones who don't know Him.

If they actively try to pull us aside and join them in their evil plans, we should keep as much distance from them as necessary to keep from being dragged along with them.

And yet, at the same time, our ultimate goal isn't to build walls and isolate ourselves from our fellow evildoers, but to introduce them to Christ and shower them with grace. Because every one of us met a fellow evildoer along the road who welcomed us into fellowship with God.

Psalm 119:114 Armor

The Walking Dead, AMC

The Walking Dead, another guilty pleasure of mine, is a show that can't seem to decide what it wants to be.

Sometimes it's an extended horror show, with gruesome monsters wreaking havoc on the people who remain alive. The fans of horror movies love the episodes that major in monster mayhem.

Other times, the series is an extended sociological study of the many ways people are changed by extreme circumstances. And what could be more extreme that a zombie apocalypse? The horror movie fans get restless when the show dwells on what they call the melodrama.

Personally, my favorite episodes are the character studies. I've always been drawn to stories of people forced to live daily life in the midst of an impossible situation. Books about people forced to live in prison. Movies about soldiers and citizens in the midst of war. TV shows about ordinary people during apocalyptic times.

In season 5, episode 10, the lead character, Rick Grimes, sums up that experience of living through the worst of times, telling a story about his grandfather's way of making it through each day of World War II:

"Every day he woke up and told himself, 'Rest in peace; now get up and go to war,'" says Rick. "After a few years of pretending he was dead, he made it out alive. That's the trick of it, I think. We do what we need to do, and then we get to live. No matter what we find in D.C., I know we'll be okay. This is how we survive: We tell ourselves that we are the walking dead."

Walking Dead fans have their favorite seasons and their least favorite. The horror fans love the seasons filled with bloody battles. The sociology fans love the seasons where the main characters are pushed to their limits by the new world of the walking dead.

The character-developing seasons tend to take place behind walls of some sort. Most of the second season was spent on a farm, with what they thought was the safety of being in a remote location surrounded by forests. It didn't last.

The following season was spent in a prison, where they felt safe behind fences and walls, only to discover they weren't safe there either. Then they moved to a wall town, only to discover they weren't safe from predators among the living. In the most recent season they encounter a group of people who have taken a completely opposite approach to fallen society, living hidden in the middle of the walking dead.

After several seasons, the question still remains unanswered completely: How can people not only survive the worst life has to throw at us, but thrive under the pressure?

You are my refuge and my shield;
I have put my hope in your word.

Psalm 119:114

I've often tried to figure out why I like the stories of people dealing with impossible situations. My two brothers both admitted, as adults, that they also liked those stories.

It's possible we gravitated toward such tales because we were raised being told both at home and at church that as Christians we were unlike everyone else in The World (always in capital letters). We are the believers, they are the unbelievers. We are alive in Christ, they are dead in their sins. We are God's chosen people, they are children of darkness.

The thing is, all of those descriptions and contrasts come straight from the Bible. Throughout the scriptures there is a thread of tension between Us and Them. As it was summarized frequently in the churches where I grew up, we can't avoid being IN the world, but we aren't to be OF the World.

So how do we respond to that tension? The pressure of being part of a community of life amid a world of death will change each of us.

Some Christians do everything they can to not mix with the world at all. They build metaphorical walls around themselves to protect their way of life from the sinful world.

Others choose the opposite approach, blending in among the people who are slaves to sin. They learn to blend in, walking among the dead as though they were part of the world themselves.

I don't think either of those approaches is what God tells us to do.

He promises that He will be our refuge. Rather than building up false walls and completely separating ourselves from the world, he invites us to build a life centered in him. Put down roots in him. Life in him. Roots in him. Be the branches on the vine that is Christ.

If we do that, he will be our shield, our refuge. He will protect us.

If we were intended to hide from the world, he wouldn't have given us the full armor of God (Ephesians 6:13-17). Soldiers don't wear their full armor when they're sitting at their headquarters enjoying the company of their friends. Armor is worn when they go out into a potentially hostile world.

By living in Him among the world, wearing the full armor of God, we become walking and talking examples of his life.

We are not the walking dead. We are walking among the dead, filled with abundant life.

Psalm 119:113 Dilemma

The Good Place, NBC

Pardon me while I indulge my guilty pleasures with this quote from The Good Place, which is either a sacrilegious NBC sitcom or a parable about the doctrine of works vs. grace.

Chidi: So, making decisions isn't exactly my strong suit.

Michael: I know that, buddy. You once had a panic attack at a make-your-own sundae bar.

Chidi: There were too many toppings. And very early in the process you had to commit to a chocolate palate or a fruit palate and if you couldn't decide you wound up with kiwi, junior mint, raisin, and it just ruins everybody's night.

And now back to our regularly scheduled snippet from Psalm 119.

I hate double-minded people,
but I love your law.

Psalm 119:113

The Hebrew word translated as double-minded comes from a root word meaning a cleft or a branch. What was once a single thing has suddenly split into two optional directions. It also sometimes carried the meaning of a dilemma, a choice between options.

The word people doesn't actually appear in the original Hebrew text for this verse. The translators inserted it, as they often do, in order to try to make sense out of the sentence.

But David is saying he hates double-mindedness. Or double-minded fill in the blank, if you will. Double-minded people, double-minded situations, double-minded governments. Or maybe he just hates double-minded  choices, like poor Chidi faced.

I can relate. I grew up in a right vs. wrong culture. It's either this or it's that. Yes or No. Us or Them. Make up your mind, because you can't have it both ways.

As I grew older I faced a real dilemma, as do many people. My life experiences didn't always align well with an either/or approach to life.

Can divorce really be a bad thing if two people who are clearly bad for one another finally improve their lives by splitting up? If I have friends who are gay, how can I possibly tell them their way of life is sinful? If I encounter someone whose spirit was wounded by their extremely negative experiences in the church of their childhood, can I really blame them for turning their back on church?

As difficult as those dilemmas are - and I've experienced every one of them - what resonates most in me when I read David's statement that he hates double-minded people is my disdain for people who don't actually make a choice when faced with those dilemmas.

Instead of going deep in the Word to understand Jesus' teachings about divorce, and thinking long and hard about how the clear biblical teaching should be applied to the reality of toxic marriages, double-minded people just decide to go with the flow and have it both ways. Sure, divorce is bad. But it can be good sometimes, right?

Trying to have your cake and eat it too means going out of your way to re-interpret the scriptures that talk about homosexuality in order to build a castle of cards that says the greatest display of holiness is to accept each person for who they identify themselves as. Have your scriptures, but cover them with a frosting that makes it all taste better to the 21st century palate.

The double-minded people I encounter most often walking along beside me on the one road of life fall into two groups. There's the ones who want to craft their own version of spirituality while pursuing a lifestyle contrary to God's righteousness. And then there are the others who cling to a more traditional "Christian" lifestyle in many ways, claiming to live and believe according to the Word - except when they find it more convenient to follow along with the ways of the popular culture.

Why does this bother me so greatly? Because the double-minded Christians who are willing to bend their beliefs for the sake of their un-churched friends are actually doing those friends a great disservice.

Because there is a third way.

Be rooted firmly in the Word, refusing to water it down for the sake of expedience. Be focused mightily on the Mission, approaching each life experience as a God-sent opportunity to win people to Christ. Be single-minded in expressing both the Word and the Mission through Love, rather than through judgment or co-dependent faux grace..

Psalm 119:113-120 Samekh

I hate double-minded people,
but I love your law.
You are my refuge and my shield;
I have put my hope in your word.
Away from me, you evildoers,
that I may keep the commands of my God!
Sustain me, my God, according to your promise, and I will live;
do not let my hopes be dashed.
Uphold me, and I will be delivered;
I will always have regard for your decrees.
You reject all who stray from your decrees,
for their delusions come to nothing.
All the wicked of the earth you discard like dross;
therefore I love your statutes.
My flesh trembles in fear of you;
I stand in awe of your laws.

Psalm 119:113-120

Look at Samekh. Isn't it cute?

The 15th letter of the Hebrew alphabet looks like an earnest 12-year old boy, hair combed over nicely, with a curl and a wave. Maybe even one of those Bieber flops.

The kind of boy who grows up to know his right from wrong. Good from evil. Them from us.

That's the kind of 12 year old I was. Ready to take my place on the right side of things, confident of  the unwavering line between right and not-right.

This entire set of eight verses seems to be about black and white, the divisions between good and evil. I've no doubt that's pretty much how the world looked from David's point of view.

But 21st century America is overdosing on POVs. Our culture is gorging itself on opinions. Instead of building walls to divide ourselves into opposing camps, we charge headlong into the internet of arguments. We've elevated squabbling and quibbling and shaming to preferred status as our National Pastime.

As I heard a co-worker exclaim just this morning, "Oh, I love it when people argue on Facebook!"

Some of those Facebook fighters and POV-pushers are also claiming to be people of God.

Who are the double-minded people David talks about? Are they "those sinners"? Or are they people who love the Lord their God with half of their heart and some of their soul and the part of their mind they can spare when they're not arguing online about walls and guns?

Who are the evildoers? Who is straying from the decrees of God? Who are the ones with delusions? Who is wickedly discarding his truth?

Could it be me? Could it be you?

Are we focusing on being the best of God's soldiers? Or is our engagement in the anti-social media turning us into weakened warriors?