Theodicy and Psalm 37

From 2020 up till mid 2023 a number of very difficult things have occurred, and still cast a shadow over all of us. The conundrum that seems most common is “why.” The question itself implies a rather innate sense that there is a right when a wrong occurs. There is a sense of “this is not how things are supposed to be.” To dig into “why” it is vital to remove a tremendous semantical ambiguation that common culture lives in – good, bad, love, hate, short little phrases that trivialize people and societies and cultures into a simple line drawing.

Psalm 37 seems to contain two basic treatments of theodicy – the discussion of why does good permit evil, why is there a broken state for everything. The first section from verses 1-9 are very much instructions on the reality of evil and the provisions or practices to deal with it internally, where your own hope and sense of peace live. Verses 11-40 are directed at grounding good, evil, of discussing who God is in the middle of an evil place – where ‘place’ is some label for the experiences and pressures brought by those elements within the experience.

Dealing with evil

Psalm 37:1-2 “Do not fret over those who do evil; so not envy those who do wrong. For they wither like the grass and wilt like tender plants.”

Psalm 37:8-9 “Refrain from anger and abandon wrath; do not fret – it can only bring harm. For the evil doers will be cut off, but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land and delight in abundant prosperity.”

Theodicy is all about reconciling evil. There is a quote from Dee Henderson that I found profound – actually, two of them.

“The knowledge of good and evil requires the experience of evil to know it.”

“There must be something stunningly beautiful and remarkable about free will that only God can truly grasp, because God hates, literally abhors, evil, yet He created a world where evil could happen if people chose it. God sees something in free will and choice that’s worth tolerating the horrifying blackness that would appear if evil was chosen rather than good.

The first ambiguation which must be addressed is that of good and evil. Good has so many applications in spoken communication that it becomes virtually useless in discussion. A more precise term might be ‘beneficial.’ Beneficial has the impact of saying that a person’s life place is improved by receiving benefit. Evil in contrast normally is not used as an evaluation of life. It is shied away from until something truly vile outside the realm of common life experience – something irrational, sociopathic or psychopathic happens. It is abstracted from daily life and life situation. The simpler use of evil, however, is the term destructive.

If a person were to draw a stick figure of themself and then lines to the important parts of their life, the parts that are of high (typically security of self-definition) value, every time one of those parts is damage evil has happened. That destabilizes what might be called the ‘temporal’ or ‘relational’ self. There is a grief in all loss. All loss. There is also a need to rediscover who you are with that change of your identity when beneficial or harmful events come – beneficial is a point of blessing because what you value is increased; harmful is a point of grief because what you value is diminished.

Your temporal identity is in fact temporary. Psalm 37 is about discovering your eternal identity and placing it’s value in a context of your live that gives you peace, that lets you lean into God.

Fact: God Is.

Fact: God has a plan for your life. It is an eternal plan with temporal teaching and equipping and training in righteousness and holiness.

Fact: There will be pain and blessing in being taught, equipped and trained.

Psalm 37:3 – simple rules to walking forward.

• Trust Yahweh. This is a relational trust; He has you and will walk with you through this life.
• Do Good. This is both acting in a beneficial way to others and to yourself. That is, if you have something that is before you do it well, do good at what you do.
• Dwell in the land: Literally, Live in the earth. Wake up and go and do what your hand finds to do – that is, what is placed in your day. Don’t live in tomorrow, don’t live in yesterday, go and do what you have to do. Things happen every day that you are responsible or given.
• Cultivate Steadfastness: This is a really profound word – it is the one who with determination does what is needed in the stress, the challenge, the temptation to slack off, to move away.

Psalm 37:3 can generate some self-questions such as “If I am trusting God am I really trusting me to control this event? Am I doing good or being selfish? Am I avoiding this day and just hiding away till things change? Am I doing what I need to cover this responsibility (including getting help!)?

Psalm 37:4 – dealing with my heart

The heart seems to be the place of decision. We purpose in our heart, we rationalize with our mind to build a substance, and argument to support what we have already purposed. Therefore, it seems we need to change how we reward our heart.

• Delight yourself in Yahweh. The heart is constrained by the things the mind rehearses; it seems. If we rehearse grievances or loss, we become bitter and our heart presses us to take control, to make us “happy.” This notion of delighting in Yahweh is to rehearse and declare what has been done for your benefit. It is extremely important to recognize that being given something hard to accomplish is a chance to be able to experience the joy of completion.
• He will give you the desires of your heart. This is one of those promises that people immediately begin to deprecate. “He will change you so you actually enjoy liver.” That is, he will transform your heart. Frankly, that is not correct. We have been given a new heart, e.g. life in Christ – but we still are deceitful. We are supposed to control our heart – that is what the practice of being righteous is about, and being righteous happens through repentance, and not just a desire to be good, but a determination to be righteous. The challenge here is that in the new heart you have been given is an eternal desire, not a temporal desire. Generally, it seems that those desires are an impetus for exercising your gift and calling. It is the eternal heart that God wants to grant the desires of.

Psalm 37:5-6 Commit and Trust

These two verses were the door that caused this journey of a couple of years into Psalm 37. There were two major obstacles to entering into agreement – first, what does commitment actually look like – and then why is that word needing the addition of “trust?”  The clue herein was that commitment is jumping – trust is being confident, that it is for the greatest benefit. Sometimes jumping is forced as an expression of desperation or even panic. The idea of committing to a way gets confused with just making a guess as to what is the best answer. Trust means that there is confidence in the choice of the way.

One of the more common references that helped with this is “there will be a voice behind you saying this is the right way. You should go this way.” Isaiah 30:21. That immediately makes clear that committing to the way and trusting in Yahweh means listening, doing what is told.  The second part of these verses then clarify the outcome.

• Commit and Trust. Don’t dither, don’t ignore, don’t wait. Do what you are told when you are told. Obviously and it is very important to test the pressure to see if it is from God. Is what you are told consistent with Scripture? Does the Holy Spirit encourage you in that way? Does a sound person confirm that is right?
• Make your righteousness and Justice… Righteousness is the immediate feedback (first thing to show) when you are obedient. Justice is the exposed assessment (judgement) that demonstrates the rightness of your walking in the way, in your commitment. Not immediate…

Psalm 37:7 Be Still, Do not Fret

This verse is the closing to the simple instructions of Psalm 37. It wraps back to the problem of walking through a harmful experience (evil). The discipline herein is a great deal like “be angry and sin not,” only as constructed in Psalm 4:4 – “Be angry, yet do not sin; on your bed search your heart and be still.” Anger often is a response to harm done directly to you or to those who are part of your ‘temporal’ self. In this verse (Psalm 37:7) being still is being obedient.

• “Be Still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him” seems to push a person to stuffing how they feel. The scripture in multiple places talks about spreading things out before the LORD. Being still, then, more tells us to let God deal with the evil. Waiting patiently for Him seems also to tell us that we are waiting with Him.
• Not. Fret. One of the key learnings about dealing with livestock is that the easiest way to control them is fear. Fretting is a rehearsal of fear, which makes us exceptionally vulnerable to amazingly foolish behaviors. Note that foolishness is not stupid nor ignorant – it is acting in selfishness to exert control.

The essence of this discussion is in this: Bad things happen to good people for their eternal value. That is not something to tell someone going through bad things – grieve with those who grieve, and harm is a grief.

Note that there will be a follow on to this discussion dealing with the essential truth that when harm falls on us Jesus walks with us through it.