Most mornings I try and read a Psalm, to still myself before God at the beginning of each day. It turns out, this isn’t the safest practice in the world. Recently I’ve noticed many of the Psalms are challenging my habitual ways of seeing the world.
It doesn’t take a particularly thorough read of the Psalter to notice the heavy emphasis on praise. Even those psalms that begin with complaint usually turn at some point to worship and thanks. What has struck me of late is what exactly Israel are thanking God for. Among other things, God is praised for his work in nature and his work in history; he is the God who creates and sustains the natural world (see Psalms 65, 104, 148, for example) and the Lord of History, governing and judging the nations (see Psalms 9, 47, 66, 106 for example). Prophets like Isaiah make much the same point elsewhere in the Bible (see Isaiah 40-66 for example).
If I am honest, this is not my default way of seeing the world. I am happy praising God for his personal provision in my life, for his comfort in my sorrow, and so on, but it is all to easy to ignore the work of God in nature and history when we have at our finger-tips natural and historical explanations which seem to make sufficient sense of things. When we see lightening, do we see God’s power at work? When we think about our Government, do we see God’s hand at work in providing a stable society to live in? For me at least, the connection isn’t entirely evident. When I can explain something scientifically or historically, what place is left for God?
The answer to this last question is a complex one and I don’t plan to unpack it all here. One point to note is that we tend to exaggerate the difference between ancient Israel and ourselves in these matters. We have bought into the Enlightenment narrative which suggests that Israel saw God at work only because they didn’t have alternative scientific and historical explanations. A careful reading of Scripture suggests this narrative is an over-simplification. Israel was quite aware of all the political, economic, historical and cultural reasons empires came and went (the prophets spent quite a bit of time writing on these things) and yet still saw God as an active agent in history. So too, they were aware of the “independent” operations of nature (each creature according to its kind, for example), but still spoke of the created world as a theatre of God’s providential care and a place through which he displayed his glory.
The Biblical writers saw, and gave thanks for, God’s work in the world. Not only in a general sense – God as abstract Creator – but in an immediate and immanent sense – God as an agent acting in the world. My experience is that many of us moderns struggle with this understanding of God if we are really honest. Our God has become the God of the gaps, only at work when we can find no other explanation for what is happening. The history of how we got to this point is long and complex (see A Secular Age, by Charles Taylor for a long and complex explanation), but I am beginning to think there is a big cost to our way of seeing the world.
First, in ignoring the work of God in the public worlds of nature and history, we tend to reduce his activities to our individualised, private worlds. God is Lord of my heart, and not much else. Christianity thus becomes mainly a private religion, something to do with what God has done and is doing in me as an individual, rather than the good news of what God has done and is doing in all the world. Faithfulness, in the modern view, becomes something closer to feeling right about God, rather than the Biblical picture of participation in God’s restoration of Creation as we ourselves are restored in our relationship to God.
Second, the sense of God at work in our lives becomes tenuous, thus reducing our experience of thankfulness. We train ourselves to only see the hand of God in the miraculous, the supernatural, whereas the Biblical witness to God sees his love and care for us not only in the supernatural, but in his provision of the natural processes that make life sustainable (rain, sun, seasons etc) and the historic processes which give rise to stable governments, justice and order, all of which makes life livable. Paul’s command to “always give thanks” (Ephesians 5:20) makes more sense in a world where even breath is a gift from God and thus an occasion for praise.
Part of the work of Scripture is to reshape the way we see the world. I am trying to enter into the world announced by the Psalms, where God is active sustaining and guiding his creation. I have tried to echo the Psalms in my prayer life, thanking God for the food I eat, and the fact that I eat it in a city and a country which are at peace. There is danger in such prayers. A faith that is no longer private, which sees God at work in the world, asks of me the question: how is my life announcing the reign of God, the Lord of Creation and History?
