Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Week 4, post 1

The God presented in Psalm 18 is a powerful and mighty creature, a warrior, described rather like a volcano even. He steps in to save the speaker in the midst of battle, leading him to victory. The idea that the speaker presents, of God dealing with each person by their merit (granting good things to the faithful and pure, and ills to the sacreligious) is nothing new- however this psalm seems to take it an extra step further. The God of this psalm doesn't merely save the speaker from death in battle, nor does He create some otherworldly miracle to end the war itself. Rather, He takes the speaker's side above that of his enemies, and leads him to crush them.

This idea, God as a warrior who takes clear sides in battle, is definitely problematic. The God of this psalm is not a benevolent all-powerful being, taking all of his beings' needs and desires into consideration- he is placing one group of greater importance than the other. I suppose if each and every one of the speaker's enemies were horrible people who like ate babies for fun or something and cursed God's name, then maybe it would make sense for him to be mad and put the speaker in complete power over their lives after leading him to win over them in battle. But even if God wanted to punish some of them, shouldn't he take each person into account, rather than making them all "cringe?" (Then again, I'm not sure I'm being particularly consistent at all... The God of the Hebrew bible did all kinds of not-very-pleasant things to the enemies of his chosen people, even when those "enemies" were innocent in and of themselves- ie: the slaying of the first born sons in the Passover story).

Also, if this person won the battle by having a strong faith in God and praying a whole lot, what happens if both sides are praying to the same God for victory?

1 comment:

  1. I strongly agree with your view about the qualities of this God being portrayed in the book of psalms as being powerful and mighty.It is true he takes sides and revenge for his people but i believe and the speaker talks about in other verses about how merciful and loving this same God is.If so then in my opinion, this God is like a two edged sword which can cut on both sides.That is he deals fairly with people by their deeds. For instance, Moses who lead Israel from Egypt could not experience life on the "promise land" because he had taken God's glory out of anger.The whole story I believe we all know but what am driving at is the point that this God is not partial but fair.Then the question of what would happen if both parties pray alot for victory in a battle would be determined by how physically prepared both parties would be.

    ReplyDelete