Good Thursday to you all,
I am writing this greeting on the evening of the first day of the SBC annual convention in Anaheim. I hope, by the time you’ve received this, that Anaheim is still standing and has not been burned to the ground due to turf wars in America’s largest denomination.1 It’s not going so well on Twitter so far, from what I’ve seen.2
The Part Where There’s an Essay: The Psalm Without Hope
The psalms are frequently lifted up as an example of “how to” mourn; we law-loving Christians too often want everything buttoned up neatly on a to-do list. “What’s the right and godly way to mourn?” we want to know. And the refrain answers: “be like the Psalmist -- say what’s on your heart, and then end by praising God. This is how all the psalms are.” -- except this is not true.
Here, in the middle of the book, is Psalm 88. This psalm refuses to fit into that category of tidy conclusions. Alex Motyer, in his excellent commentary on the Psalms, calls this passage “the psalm without hope.” It does not wrap up cleanly in a moment of acknowledgment of the goodness of God. This is how it ends:
Your wrath has swept over me;
your dreadful assaults destroy me.
They surround me like a flood all day long;
they close in on me together.
You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me;
my companions have become darkness.
As a reader, I find myself longing for just a “selah” - a cue to reflect - something to acknowledge the dreadfulness of this dark ending. But it’s not there.
I am so thankful Psalm 88 is here in our Bible. It calls out across the centuries to my heart, reminding me that not all endings are happy or neat. Too often the Pharisee inside of me accuses myself; I think that I must be doing something wrong if I’m uncomfortable with the way things are. But it’s not true, Psalm 88 answers. Sometimes it’s just dark. The darkness crowds in and wins the battle. Friends desert and disappoint us. Enemies spring up in endless numbers and calamities seem to multiply, flooding our minds and emotions.
We long for the happy endings because, to paraphrase CS Lewis, we long for another world. Eternity, and the happiness that accompanies it, is written on our hearts. We are created to desire resolution. This is why it’s disruptive to end a piece of music in an unresolved chord. It’s why we sometimes cry out for a sequel to a film if the first one didn’t give us the full happy ending. We want full resolution.
Christopher Nolan puts these words into the mouth of his protagonist in Inception: “positive emotion trumps negative emotion. We all long for reconciliation.” At first glance, this is a happy thought: the good side wins! However, living in a broken and twisted world as we do, often a longing for reconciliation means that we just end unsatisfied and sad.
This psalm is reminiscent of Jesus’ moments before death. His friends had deserted him. The anguish and aloneness he felt was dreadful. And yet -- that is what makes him our faithful high priest. If he didn’t do it -- if he didn’t feel it, he couldn’t understand it. From Hebrews 4:
14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
We rightfully shun the neat and wholesome sayings that tie up suffering with a neat bow: “God won’t give you anything you can’t handle,” or “God must think a lot of you to ask this of you.” Instead, we can welcome the account of a Savior who did not suffer neatly. He was grieved, he was afflicted. He opened not his mouth.
Psalm 88 asks us to sit quietly and acknowledge the horror of feeling deserted and alone. It ends in sadness, nestled in among its cheerier, neater neighbors. Yet it has been a comfort to me, in the same way that a bruised and broken Savior is.
For the Anglophiles
Last week an important event took place, awaited for years.
No, not the Platinum Jubilee. I’m referring to the Gloucestershire Cheese Roll, which had been sidelined for two years due to the pandemic.
It was back with a vengeance this year, and the victor ended up being a woman from North Carolina! Enjoy:
Reads & Listens of the Week
I really benefited from this conversation about happiness between Arthur Brooks and Russell Moore. It touches on fear, love, loneliness, and the culture wars.
The One Where We’re Both Glum: as always, I love listening to the two Cats chat about church life in England, even (or maybe especially) when one of them cries.
This seemed like a worthwhile exercise: How Making an If/Then List Can Help Your Mental Health.
Humility, which is just another word for honesty, feels like death, but it is our only freedom. - Dane Ortlund
Two thoughts on this commonly-said phrase. One, our favorite thing to say about the “denomination” part is that “it’s not a denomination, it’s a cooperative,” which is just another way of saying that the organization holds no authority over the individual churches — which is just another way of saying that we’re Baptists. Two, when I hear “America’s largest,” I think of that time seven years ago when we were replanting a small SBC church here in Charlotte. The church had over 400 people on its rolls. About twenty people attended each Sunday morning. If Baptists kept better records, I’d believe the numbers. To be sure, there are 11,000 SBC people in Anaheim this week, so there are lots of SBC members. But take the numbers of the total with a grain of salt. I do.
I permit myself a half hour of Twitter per day, and I don’t follow yucky people or click on hashtags. I’m sure it’s much, much worse than I know.