Seems to me something disturbing happens in discussions of psalms 42-43.
Often
these two psalms are thought to have been just one originally, given the
repeated refrain ’Why are you downcast O my soul?’ (42:5, 42:11, 43:5) and other parallel
language (e.g. Ps 42:9 and 43:2). That’s not the disturbing thing, mind you, just some
context.
What’s
disturbing is the way the psalms are regularly used to commend giving yourself
a good talking to. That the answer to a
downcast soul is to take yourself in hand and engage in “self-talk.”
Tim
Keller, for example, in My Rock and My Refuge reflects on Ps 42-43,
saying “Change
and hope come as we, in effect, argue with ourselves.”
Or James Montgomery Boice summarises the psalmist’s
model to us under three headings. He:
1. takes himself in hand
2. he challenges himself to do what should be done
3. he
reminds himself of a great certainty.
Both
of them, I suspect, are influenced by Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ famous Spiritual
Depression, which presents Ps 42-43 as the crowning witness to spiritual
depression and its cure:
The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle
yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself,
preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: ‘Why art thou
cast down’ – what business have you to be disquieted You must turn on yourself,
upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself ‘Hope
thou in God’ – instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way. And then
you must go on to remind yourself God, Who God is, and what God is and what God
has done, and what God has pledged himself to do. Then having done that, end on
this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and
the whole world, and say with this man, ‘I shall yet praise him for the help of
his countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God.
So
what’s disturbing about that? Well, the trouble with this approach to Ps42-43
is that it fails to notice what is the most significant speech. It is not,
ultimately, what the psalmist says to himself, but what he says to God – that’s
where hope lies. That’s where the psalmist’s longings get satisfied.
The
desperate need is there at the beginning of psalm 42: the psalmist longs for
God, longs to be near him, and is taunted by enemies who tell him God’s nowhere
to be seen in all this: ‘Where is your God?’ 42:3, 10. The psalmist is in
danger of agreeing, feeling forgotten (42:9) and rejected (43:2). The solution,
though, clearly comes in 43:1 and 43:3 when God acts. It is not about
the psalmist giving himself a good talking to, it is God sending his “light and
faithful care” – “Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my joy and my
delight.”
So
where does hope and change come from in Ps 42-43, it comes through the psalmist
talking to God – calling on him to act.
In
the meantime, there is a place for talking to ourselves, of course. Even when
we feel forgotten, we are to remember who God is. We are not to judge by
appearances. The enemies see him stricken and think God is absent. The psalmist
reminds himself that is not true– God is in the trials we face; note 42:7 “your
waves and breakers have swept over me.” And he reminds himself of who God is,
not least in 42:8 where he speaks of God as YHWH, the God of covenant love and
faithfulness.
As Spurgeon
says:
As though he were two men, the psalmist talks to
himself. His faith reasons with his fears, his hope argues with his sorrows.
These present troubles, are they to last forever? The rejoicings of my foes,
are they more than empty talk? My absence from the solemn feasts, is that a
perpetual exile? Why this deep depression, this faithless fainting, this
chicken-hearted melancholy? As someone says, "David chides David out of
the dumps; "and herein he is an example for all desponding ones.
But
that cannot be the whole story. The danger is that we could end up functionally
agreeing with the ones taunting the psalmist. We end up acting as if we are on
our own and it’s down to us to talk ourselves out of these situations.
Relatedly,
there is a danger that we end up treating psalm 42-43 as a static model of
self-talk, rather than a dynamic story that, in the case of the psalmist,
awaits resolution, but in our case has found some resolution. God has sent his
light and his faithful care. His Son. We have been brought into his presence. We
have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God.
To be sure, we still await
the arrival of the heavenly Jerusalem descending and being with the Lord face
to face. And this interim phase includes many hardships that might cause us to
be downcast. But these psalms do not teach us to look inward in those moments
or seasons but to look upwards and call on God to act.
On balance, I think I’d
rather say that that is “the main art in the matter of spiritual living.”