C.S. Lewis's Reflection On Psalmic Hatred

In Reflections on the Psalms, C.S. Lewis eloquently takes on the challenge of some of Scripture's difficult passages-- the vitriolic resentment and cursing found in the Psalms. While one contemporary Christian interpretation states (and valuably) that such is the posture we are to take with our spiritual adversaries rather than human enemies, it remains that these often terrifying rants were spoken, by the original poets, against a very human enemy; the anguished cry was that Sheol would swallow up the wicked men, not demonic minions. Lewis addresses this with astonishing clarity(though my excerpt is piecemeal):

The examples which (in me at any rate) can hardly fail to produce a smile may occur most disquietingly in Psalms we love; 143, after proceeding for eleven verses in a strain that brings tears to the eyes, adds in the twelfth, almost like an afterthought "and of thy goodness slay mine enemies". Even more naively, almost childishly, 139, in the middle of its hymn of praise throws in (19) "Wilt thou not slay the wicked, O God?"--as if it were surprising that such a simple remedy for human ills had not occurred to the Almighty. Worst of all in "The Lord is my shepherd" (23), after the green pasture, the waters of comfort, the sure confidence in the valley of the shadow, we suddenly run across (5) "Thou shalt prepare a table for me against them that trouble me"--or , as Dr. Moffatt translates it, "Thou art my host, spreading a feast for me while my enemies look on." The poet's enjoyment of his present prosperity would not be complete unless those horrid Joneses (who used to look down their noses at him) were watching it all and hating it.

At the outset I felt sure, and I feel sure still, that we must not either try to explain them away or to yield for one moment to the idea that, because it comes in the Bible, all this vindictive hatred must somehow be good and pious. One might have expected that this would immediately, and usefully, have turned my attention to the same thing in my own heart. And that, of course is one very good use we can make of the maledictory Psalms...in the Psalmists' tendency to chew over and over the cud of some injury, to dwell in a kind of self-torture on every circumstance that aggravates it, most of us can recognize something we have met in ourselves. In fact, however, something else occured to me first. It seemed to me that, seeing in them hatred undisguised, I saw also the natural result of injuring a human being.

[In Pagan literature], I can find...lasciviousness, much brutal insensibility, cold cruelties taken for granted, but not this fury or luxury of hatred...One's first impression is that the Jews were much more vindictive and vitriolic than the Pagans...the absence of anger, especially that sort of anger which we call indignation, can, in my opinion, be a most alarming symptom. And the presence of indignation may be a good one. Even when that indignation passes into bitter personal vindictiveness, it may still be a good symptom, though bad in itself.

If the Jews cursed more bitterly than the Pagans this was, I think, at least in part because they took right and wrong more seriously. For if we look at their railings we find they are usually angry not simply because these things have been done to them but because these things are manifestly wrong, and hateful to God as well as the victim...The Jews sinned in this matter worse than Pagans not because they were further from God but because they were nearer to Him...In that way the relentlessness of the Psalmists is far nearer to one side of the truth than many modern attitudes which can be mistaken, by those who hold them, for Christian charity.

I love the final jab, in nearly the last sentence of the chapter, intimating that the taken-for-granted Christian demeanor of calm temperance is very often a mask for the refusal to admit that anything is wrong.

Philip Yancey's time with leprosy specialist Dr. Paul Brand supplements this entire theme nicely. He writes in Soul Survivor:

I was writing the book Where Is God When It Hurts; he invited me to consider an alternative world without pain. He insisted on pain's great value, holding up as proof the terrible results of leprosy-- damaged faces, blindness, and loss of fingers, toes, and limbs-- all of which occur as side-effects of painlessness. As a young doctor in India, Brand had made the groundbreaking medical discovery that leprosy does its damage merely by destroying nerve endings. People who lose pain sensation then damage themselves by such simple actions as gripping a splintered rake or wearing tight shoes. Pressure sores form, infection sets in, and no pain signals alert them to tend to the wounded area..."I thank God for pain," Brand declared with the utmost sincerity. "I cannot think of a greater gift I could give my leprosy patients." He went on to describe the intricacies of the pain system that protects the human body..."Most people view pain as an enemy. Yet, as my leprosy patients prove, it forces us to pay attention to threats against our bodies...Virtually every response of our bodies that we view with irritation or disgust-- blister, callus, swelling, fever, sneeze, cough, vomiting, and especially pain-- demonstrates a reflex toward health."

As I listened to Brand, I realized that I had been approaching God like a sick patient- as if the Creator were running a complaint desk. I anguished over the tragedies, diseases, and injustices, all the while ignoring the many good things surrounding me in the world. Like the psalmists, could I learn to praise and lament at the same time, with neither intonation drowning out the other?...As the Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel wrote, "The cardinal issue, Why does the God of justice and compassion permit evil to persist? is bound up with the problem of how man should aid God so that his justice and compassion prevail."