Red Letter Revolution

Psalms of Orientation

These psalms express a confident, serene settlement of faith issues. Life is settled and pleasant, and there is an overwhelming sense of security and freedom from anxiety. God is reliable and trustworthy. “They are statements that describe a happy, blessed state in which the speakers are grateful for and confident in the abiding, reliable gifts of life [.] Life…is not troubled or threatened, but is seen as the well-ordered world intended by God.” These Psalms are dominated by a notion of creation faith that views the world as God has made it and with a confidence that it will continue to be good. Brueggeman argues that these psalms serve two functions. Theologically, they serve to praise God and give him glory for the world he has made and the power he possesses. Socially, they serve to provide a “sacred canopy” by asserting righteousness to being alive for the sake of being Yahweh’s creation rather than viewing life simply as a task. Brueggemann asserts that these psalms were probably set down by the well-to do, the economically sound, and the politically significant. He also argues that they serve as a form of social control that indoctrinate the youth into a system of obedience and reward. These few fleeting paragraphs are the only place in the whole book that after reading one might feel motivated to pelt Brueggemann with tomatoes. It is apparently impossible for him to envision a poor person in ancient Israel penning a Psalm about how neat and ordered the world is because of the goodness of Yahweh. This is probably a result of Brueggemann’s obsession with social justice and finding ways he can insert it into the Old Testament. He is probably right many times when he does identify this thread, but it seems almost as if his identification with the downtrodden leads him to be suspicious of psalms with a positive message. He should be careful attributing motivations like social control to the text. One could just as easily paint the cross with that broad brush.
Under each of the main categories of psalms are a number of subcategories the first for Psalms of Orientation being Songs of Creation. The most common experience of orientation is the experience of life’s regularities which are good and are derived from God’s goodness. Since the world is a blessing bestowed onto us by God, then we should respond with gratitude. Brueggemann uses Psalm 33 as an example of a song of creation. This psalm is about the new world which Yahweh is presently creating, a world in which God’s justice is the point by which all things are fixed. It is a world of rightness. The first five verses announce the theme and provide a typical example of Israel’s hymnic expression which is followed by a reflection on first the power of the word of Yahweh and second on the character of Yahweh as the absolute power in the universe. The last verses restate the theme from the beginning. Brueggemann views these psalms as a summons to the upright and cautious because they are the ones who read songs of creation.
The second subcategory is called Songs of Torah. These flow out of songs of creation because creation emphasizes the goodness of life through the sovereign ordering of the world and Torah reflects the will/purpose of this sovereign God. According to Brueggemann, Torah songs acknowledge the role and value of Israel’s efforts in upholding their part of the covenant. This conclusion can be troubling if it becomes a challenge to the sovereignty of God, because it could make the certainty of an ordered creation dependent on the will of human beings. At that point, Torah does not flow from Creation but seems to contradict it. Nonetheless, it is certainly true that the Psalms are often exhortative in nature and to capture this was probably Brueggemann’s intention. He uses Psalm 1 as an example, and argues that its placement serves as a prologue for the entire hymnic collection. The primary agenda for worship life is obedience. This hymn creates a distinction between righteous and wicked, innocent and guilty. The action of living and the quality of that action determines where you fit into that spectrum of holy and profane. There is no neutral ground. Brueggemann considers this to also be a part of the social control aspect of these psalms.
Brueggeman also sets aside two subcategories that he does not elaborate on very much. Wisdom psalms reflect the well-ordered nature of the world and should probably not be their own category, but rather be lumped with creation psalms. Songs of Retribution speak of a world ruled by God in moral symmetry. Brueggemann acknowledges that they might best be placed with Torah psalms, but decides to separate them out anyway. There does not appear to be enough difference to warrant separating these out.
The last subcategory that will be discussed here are the Occasions of Well-Being Psalms. These reflect the reliability of God through everyday life experiences where God’s presence is implied more than stated. These are significant life events like birth, marriage, family, and death. In the interest of brevity we will skip examples for this category, but it is important to note that Brueggemann is probably right to separate out these psalms from the songs of creation. The themes are very similar, but God’s placement in them is different in a nuanced way.

Brueggemann seeks in this writing to use a post-critical approach to the Psalms that incorporates both the popular devotional use of the psalms and the intellectual critical understanding of the Psalms. He gives three reasons for this approach. 1. There is already a well established interpretation of the Psalms in service of the Gospel that focuses on the nice psalms and often looks at them through a romanticized tint. 2. The Psalms are taken as a resource of faith, especially during the Reformation. This tradition is continued in the present-day Protestant church. It is characterized by the notion that “The Psalms articulate the whole Gospel of God in a nutshell.” 3. We are also critical people. The scholarly emphasis cannot and should not be ignored. For example, Gunkel’s Form-Critical approach has led to a greater understanding of the limited recurring patterns of the psalms, and Westermann’s interesting conclusion that lament is the most basic form of the psalm from which all others derive. Using these ideas, Brueggemann constructs a structure of the psalms in three parts: Psalms of Orientation, Psalms of Disorientation, and Psalms of New Orientation. He argues that these categories correspond with both the critical understanding of the Psalms and the human experience of joy, suffering, and renewal. Brueggemann may claim that he is incorporating the devotional aspect with this method, but in truth he simply segregates all the devotionally used psalms to one category in a way that is slightly condescending to their popular usage. Nonetheless, he views the psalms as focusing on two kinds of movement from one state to the other. The first move is from orientation to disorientation. That is a move from security to harm, from safety to trouble. The second move is from disorientation to new orientation. That is from the place of despair to the new hope. The whole of the Psalms is in Brueggemann’s view a description of the points along these movements and the movement itself.

Obviously this is a much simplified rendering of the argument, but I think for the most part that Brueggemann is on to something good here with the idea of these movements. It is always difficult to construct a framework that can contain the Psalms, but I think that Brueggemann’s approach might actually come close. If this goes as planned, we’ll look at the three categories of psalms in part 2, 3, and 4, and then my final thoughts in part 5.

This is a short story I wrote. It’s about the Church and industrial orphans.

Mr. Kanazawa walked down the street as he did every morning, in quest of caffeine and the resultant rush of awareness. As he passed one of the countless alleys of the city, he barely noticed the stirring of cardboard that made the blue dumpster it contained so very unlike all the others. As Mr. Kanazawa continued his search for caffeinated satisfaction, a small boy emerged from his home of refrigerator boxes and discarded clothing. Continue reading