Red Letter Revolution

5:30am – Ben wakes up to the cheerful chirps of his Wall-E alarm clock.
5:45am – After getting dressed, Ben looks into the mirror and says to himself, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”
6:30am – Ben arrives at the office to check his email.
7-9:00am – Ben looks at pictures of cats.
9:15am – Ben calls N.T. Wright to discuss his latest appearance in TIME, and to complement him on the appearance of his beard.
10:30am – Ben checks his blogs for comments.
11:15am – Ben has a lunch consisting of carrots, celery, and self-righteousness.
12:00pm – Ben takes a stroll on the campus of Asbury. After seeing an interesting pile of detritus, Ben is moved to tears and writes an epic poem about it.
1-5:00pm – Ben grades papers and teaches a New Testament class. Ben emerges from class very happy having made a Koine joke that one student laughed at.
5:30pm – Ben arrives home and gets to work on a blog that criticizes conservatives for mixing religion and politics. Ben concludes the piece by reminding us that socialism is truest to the Gospel.
6:30pm – Ben watches a romantic family comedy.
8:30pm – Ben tries to think of synonyms for awesome to describe the movie.
9:00pm – Ben sets his Wall-E alarm clock and goes to bed.

Psalms of Disorientation

According to Brueggemann, the problem with Psalms of Orientation is that they don’t acknowledge the realities of human existence. If we focus solely on orientation as most churches do, we do not effectively speak to the disoriented. If our focus on orientation arose out of a surety of the goodness of God meant to comfort, then it might be good, but it is probably more a reflection of the church wanting to turn a blind eye to difficulty. We lose something important as a church if we do this. “The use of these ‘psalms of darkness’ may be judged by the world to be acts of unfaith and failure, but for the trusting community, their use is an act of bold faith, albeit a transformed faith.” (emphasis original) These psalms demand the world be experienced as it really is and a faith that does this is transformational. It is a faith that can speak into real situations, and it is precisely in these moments of despair that God chooses to breathe new life into you, transforming you. These psalms evoke reality and make us face the ugliness of our situation. They tend to follow a similar pattern. They begin with a plea, a complaint that God should correct a skewed situation. The plea often contains an address to God, a complaint, a petition which is often in the form of an imperative, a motivation for God to act, and sometimes an imprecation that reflects a raw demand for justice. They end with a praise which is marked in the ext by a shift in tone. The praise element often contains an assurance of being heard, a declaration of kept vows, doxology, and some mystery cause of change. These are the most varied and widespread of all the psalm categories.

The first subcategory of psalms is personal laments. This type of psalm constitutes a considerable portion of the lament psalms. They are a standard form of expression for the Israelites. The form is quite straightforward and can shed light on other psalms of disorientation. As Brueggemann succinctly puts it, “The issue in all these psalms is that something is amiss in the relationship, and it must be righted.” The psalm given as an example is psalm 13. There is something terribly wrong in the life of the speaker and their life with God. Verses 1 and 2 contain a series of rhetorical questions which essentially accuse God of failing to help and that also serve as an address. Verses 3 and 4 provide the petition and motivation. The petition is made with a triad of imperatives: consider, answer, and lighten. The motivation given by the speaker is their inability to shoulder the burden, therefore, God must act. Finally, change occurs, though it occurs over an undisclosed period of time.

The second subcategory is psalms of Communal Lament. Brueggemann argues that personal laments most easily resonate with us partly because they are most common and partly because they correspond with the way we experience reality. Furthermore, we have lost the idea of a public awareness or shared public imagination and so do not have a parallel for communal laments. The whole idea that public issues may require public prayer is not much practiced in the present-day church. Consequently, he proposes that to understand the communal laments we need to understand these public events privately. Brueggemann uses the example of imagining the destruction of the temple as the destruction of the whole world. By so doing, you could understand the threat by incorporating yourself in it. He is probably on to something when he says that we no longer think in these categories. Americans in particular seem to be in love with their own autonomy. Naturally, this is a barrier to understanding a society not built on democracy and western ideas of equality. However, the usefulness of the exercise proposed by Brueggemann to solve the issue is questionable. The psalm given as an example for this category is Psalm 74. The temple has been lost and with it the greatest symbol of life. With the center gone, all other things degrade. The psalm begins with an urging to Yahweh, who comes first, even before the situation has been described. Then the speaker attempts to convince Yahweh to act. The speaker gives a description of the suffering, and boldly declares God’s glory to be at stake. The Psalm concludes with a series of imperatives given to Yahweh, based on his own past actions. It is hard to imagine such boldness! The Psalm speaks of the disorientation of losing the temple and answers that the loss of the temple is not the loss of Yahweh.

Brueggemann also addresses a couple of Psalms that do not fit into the pattern. These do not appear to offer any sort of hope or reconciliation. They will not be discussed in detail except to point out that Brueggemann deals with the imprecatory nature of Psalm 109 by positing that it is a relinquishment to Yahweh of the speaker’s anger. This might seem like it is too neat of an answer, but it is probably the best answer that is consistent with the Christian worldview.

The final subcategory of disorientation psalms are psalms that look at these situations from a different perspective: Yahweh’s. In these psalms Yahweh views disorientation as a trouble in the relationship brought on by disobedience or lack of trust. These psalms place the blame squarely on Israel. The example given is Psalm 50 which opens with a theophany of God coming in his majesty. God then testifies against Israel, emphasizing his own independence and separation from them. The psalm concludes with a harsh polemic against the wicked and a warning, and this is followed by an alternative in the last verse: follow Yahweh.

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.