On worship in wartime: Is it time for imprecations?
Article
12th December 2022
Dr Steffen Jenkins faces up to the Psalms about enemies and asks whether it is possible to make use of them in our worship.
During World War II, CS Lewis, a veteran of the World War I trenches, preached a sermon to a (largely) university congregation in which he asked: can we really give ourselves to scholarship when there is a war on? (Learning in War-Time, 1939). [1]
He masterfully began by pointing out a more glaring question: can we really give ourselves to scholarship when there is a hell? His answer to both questions repays reading.
In light of recent events in Eastern Europe, many have started to look at Psalms that contain ‘imprecations’ (prayers against enemies) and to wonder whether it is possible to make use of them in Bible reading, prayer and even corporate worship. Such texts have always jarred with readers—they appear to be at significant odds with the ethics of the New Testament. You’re merrily reading the most beautiful Psalms, and suddenly the Dr Jekyll of song turns into a Mr Hyde of self- righteousness. Can we really use them in our Bible reading, our prayers and our worship?
I want to introduce that question by asking this question: should we really be doing something as other-worldly as Bible reading, prayer, even corporate worship, when there is a war on?
My answer is that Jesus, when we worship him (which includes reading his word and praying it back to him), teaches us certain attitudes and convictions. We cannot give ourselves properly to pressing global matters unless we continue to allow Jesus to cultivate that right state of our minds and hearts. If we want to serve him in the world, he needs to keep building us up in our worship of him. Let’s look at how that works with the Psalms more generally, before turning to imprecations.
Who is called to worship in the Psalms?
Praise the LORD, all nations! Extol him, all peoples! For great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever. Praise the LORD!
The first verse of Psalm 117 extols the faithfulness and mercy of God to his people, those who already worship him. But this call is also to reach all nations, all peoples. The book of Psalms opens by describing the blessed life in Psalm 1, before warning the world’s leaders (2:1) and the people whom they govern (2:2) to come and serve the Lord, to make peace with the Son and enjoy that blessing (2:10- 12). The Psalms end by announcing a day of judgment against the very same leaders if they have not turned (149:6-9), before issuing a call to universal worship (“everything that has breath”) of God: Psalm 150.
When God’s people respond to God’s call to worship him together, it is necessary to be mindful that the call is issued globally to unbelievers who need to repent as well. It is issued to leaders and nations. We are not turning our backs on troubled nations when we worship Jesus: we are calling them to join us. We ourselves are doing what we invite others to in our evangelism. We are being the fruit of mission. We are being the community that is built up by the Prince of Peace. Peace cannot really come from anywhere else. Nations will melt down their weapons, and benefit from lasting peace settlements, only when they worship Jesus (Isaiah 2:2-4).
Forgo the work of Jesus in our lives by forgoing his worship, and we stop being the solution and start being the problem.
Jesus, in the Psalms, calls us to confession
They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
When God’s people meet together, Jesus reminds us in the Psalms that the problems of the world are not out there, in some distant land, or even outside the doors of the Church. The problems are right here, in each of our own hearts.
Woe betide the Christian who thinks that our nation, our leaders, or even our churches are different to those who start wars. We need to have our sins forgiven. We need to distrust the devices of our own hearts.
Worship of Jesus will slow down our joining of self-righteous mobs. If truth is the first casualty of war, the Church must make sure that one truth keeps ringing out, which the Psalms tell us to pray like this:
If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.
Jesus, in the Psalms, calls us to adoration and intercession
Before we engage in action of any kind for a troubled part of the world, we should consider what it is that we want for them. If it is peace, then what does that peace look like?
Does peace not mean a community where there is peace with God, the only author of true and lasting peace? Does it not mean a community where we do not focus on each other’s faults against each other, but bear one another’s burdens?
We should therefore continue to be such a community as we adore the author of such blessing, and as we ask him to care for those among us who are burdened.
If this is what we want for the churches of nations ravaged by war, then we must also seek it in our own lives.
Let’s pray for just that: Christians, churches, missionaries and seminaries where the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keeps their hearts and minds in Jesus, and which shamelessly preaches and teaches a better way to live.
What about imprecations?
World peace must begin with the awareness of our own sinfulness. Our worship will instil and reinforce that awareness and due humility in the face of enemies, whether our own or those of others. Presumably, then, we should avoid including prayers that are focused against enemies. The notorious Psalms which do this must be far from our thoughts and our prayers, right?
In fact, these are the very Psalms where we are confronted with our own unworthiness in the clearest possible way, both as individuals and as nations. Prayers that have unrighteous enemies in view call us to the very same attitudes of gospel humility that the rest of the Psalms do, but they are even more pointed in their demand for us to examine ourselves and for us to be aware that we have earned judgment, not salvation. Over and against some common assumptions about the Old Testament, here are three things these difficult prayers insist on.
1. Imprecations do not require perfect righteousness (real or imagined)
In a conflict where judgement is required, the one praying for justice must be innocent of the charges at issue. They need not be sinless in general, and certainly not perfectly righteous. Prayers such as Psalm 7:8-10 are cut from the same cloth as Psalm 51. The news that I am a sinner is found even in these challenging Psalms. Self-righteousness is excluded by these prayers against enemies.
2. Victimhood is not righteousness
As above, to ask for divine protection, it is not enough to say that you are being persecuted. You also need to show that you are not the one in the wrong against your enemy. (The prayers that show this are often mistaken for claims of perfect sinlessness, or self-righteous delusions, as in (1) above.)
In Psalm 7, ‘Save me from all my pursuers [... ] lest like a lion they tear my soul apart ...’ is followed by verse three ‘O LORD my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, ...’ and verse five ‘let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and let him trample my life to the ground’.
Imprecations in the Psalms teach the same as 1 Peter 2:20, and insist that we complete the beatitude Matt 5:10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake”.
3. The enemies are redeemable
It is a modern (but widespread) fiction that the Old Testament thought evildoers could only be destroyed rather than converted. Yet the very Psalms that contain imprecations teach us that the wicked enemies are redeemable, as early as Psalm 2:10-12. They ask for an end to evil deeds (Psalm 7:9) while warning the enemy about judgment (Psalm 7:12-17). Repentance of the wicked is the preferred option for the enemy in the Psalms as a whole.
Should we use these Psalms now?
Rather than turning to neglected and difficult prayers now, without the balance of the rest of the Psalms, it would help if we recovered the time-tested practice of regularly traversing all the Psalms in order—something which many churches find sensible with every other book of the Bible. Such sequential reading, without leaving any Psalms out, will throttle any lingering sense of our moral superiority and self-sufficiency. Even when we may pray against enemies, we are to prefer an end of evil deeds (through repentance and forgiveness) over the end of the evildoer (through justice and judgment). There is a time to pray relief against enemies for our oppressed kin in troubled parts of the world— but even they are reliant on mercy, and these Psalms teach them to call down grace on their persecutors.
These Psalms prove that God cares for the victims of sin, and can intervene before final judgment. They also show why his final judgment has not landed to end all suffering: God is waiting for wicked nations to repent.
Ultimately, none of us can stand on our own merits before the judge of all the earth. The tune of the Psalter is that Jesus the judge is the willing saviour. He is immovably determined to bring all nations into his choir. That is why God’s Anointed leads us in singing: Let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever (Psalm 145:21).