Monday, January 17

Monday

Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.  But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold.  For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.  They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong.  They are free from the burdens common to man; they are not plagued by human ills.  Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence.  From their callous hearts comes iniquity; the evil conceits of their minds know no limits.  They scoff, and speak with malice; in their arrogance they threaten oppression.  Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth.  Therefore their people turn to them and drink up waters in abundance.  They say,  “How can God know? Does the Most High have knowledge?”  This is what the wicked are like — always carefree, they increase in wealth.            - Psalm 73:1-12

One of the things I love most about the Psalms is their raw honesty.  They hold nothing back, from anger and pain, to joy and exaltation – it is all there.  The author of this Psalm is a man named Asaph.  Asaph was a worship leader for God’s people the ancient Israelites.  Here in Psalm 73, he opens his heart to God (and to us) by expressing his very real struggle with doubt.

Doubt is not something that most of associate with our heart or emotions, most people think of doubts as being intellectual objections or questions about God.  G. K. Chesterton wrote in his classic book Orthodoxy, “our doubts often masquerade as much more intellectual than they actually are.”  While it is true that doubts are often expressed as intellectual questions or arguments, at the core, they are often issues of the heart. 

Doubts can be caused by any number of things; grief, loss, pain, failure, even peer pressure.  For Asaph, his doubts come as the result of the injustice he sees in the world.  He was struggling with the apparent contradiction between what he believed about God - that God was good to the upright and to those who were pure in heart - and his experience in life.  He was envious, he said, of the arrogant, and disturbed by the prosperity of the wicked. That prosperity seemed to him to be a direct contradiction to what he had been taught about God.  He had been told that if you are "upright and pure in heart," then God would be good to you, take care of you, and watch over you.  But instead this man was finding his own situation to be difficult and very discouraging, but the wicked around him, the ungodly (that is always the meaning of "wicked" in the Psalms), were prospering and everything was going well with them.  He just could not reconcile this.  It troubled him so terribly that it created deep resentment, envy and doubt in his heart.  This in turn became such a threat to his faith that ultimately he found himself threatened with a complete loss of faith.  His feet had almost slipped, he had come to the place where he was almost ready to renounce his faith.

This might sound like an extreme reaction, but Asaph is really a lot like us.  He is questioning if following God with his life is really worth it.  I think there are many Christians who struggle with this very question, but are afraid to admit it.  Perhaps you have had this doubt.  Perhaps you have wondered if God is really good, and why He seems to let the those who reject Him succeed and those who follow Him struggle.

If nothing else, at least this Psalm teaches us that it is not wrong to doubt or to have serious questions about God.  Asaph was a worship leader in ancient Israel and an author of Scripture, and yet he had doubts!  The very reason we have this amazing Psalm is because Asaph was willing to express his doubt and be honest about his struggle.  As we will see, it is his honesty before God that will become the path through his doubts to a greater vision of God.

Too many Christians think that doubting is somehow wrong or sinful, that we should not question God, because He would be angry with us for our disbelief.  But the most famous doubter in all of the Bible was (you know) Thomas.  In John 20, the disciples who saw the risen Jesus tell Thomas about it.  But Thomas is a hard case, and he isn’t going to be taken in by such a fantastic story.  In fact, he refuses to believe that Jesus is risen unless he can touch the very wounds in hands and side.  When Jesus shows up a week later (John 20:26-28) He doesn’t condemn Thomas for doubting, he doesn’t tell him that he is disqualified from being a disciple for his doubts.  Instead, Jesus tells him to place his hands in His wounds.  Jesus meets Thomas at the place of his doubt, but he does not leave him there.  John tells us that after Thomas had touched Jesus’ wounds, he fell to his knees and cried, “my Lord and my God!”.  The amazing thing is that he came to this realization of Jesus through his doubts!

Take a few moments to pray and/or write your biggest questions and doubts about God.  Like the psalmist, tell God what troubles you and what you don’t understand.  He will not reject you for your doubts, and you might just find that He will lead you through them to a deeper understanding of His love.


Jeff Frazier