I will sing of your love and justice

Psalm 101 (TNIV) -

1 I will sing of your love and justice;
to you, Lord, I will sing praise.

2 I will be careful to lead a blameless life—
when will you come to me?
I will conduct the affairs of my house
with a blameless heart.

3 I will not look with approval
on anything that is vile.
I hate what faithless people do;
I will have no part in it.

4 The perverse of heart shall be far from me;
I will have nothing to do with what is evil.

5 Whoever slanders their neighbor in secret,
I will put to silence;
whoever has haughty eyes and a proud heart,
I will not endure.

6 My eyes will be on the faithful in the land,
that they may dwell with me;
those whose walk is blameless
will minister to me.

7 No one who practices deceit
will dwell in my house;
no one who speaks falsely
will stand in my presence.

8 Every morning I will put to silence
all the wicked in the land;
I will cut off every evildoer
from the city of the Lord.

My thoughts -

We read this Psalm last night at the prayer meeting at Mansfield's house. I have to say, every time I read the Psalms I get a little convicted about what I do.

Verse 1 says it all here: "I will sing of your love and justice; to you, Lord, I will sing praise."

We love to sing of God's love. We love to sing happy, affirming songs. We love to sing about all the wonderful things God has done in our lives. But do we love to sing about God's justice? Do we love to sing about our role in that? Do we love to affirm when we sing God's praise God's call for righteousness from us?

There are some songs that we sing that mention these things in passing but I don't know that there are too many we do or might ever do that hammer that message home with the directness and power of Psalm 101.

I love verse 8: "Every morning I will put to silence all the wicked in the land; I will cut off every evildoer from the city of the Lord."

Are we silencing evil? Are we calling it out and telling it to shut up? Are we willing to? We have a selfish culture that ostracizes ad even vilifies the poor, the downtrodden, and the needy among us. We have a culture that shouts "get a job" and laments human "leeches". We have a culture that treats tax cuts for the rich as a necessity but services for the poor as wasteful spending. We have a culture in which the sentencing for crimes depends less on guilt or innocence and more on race and resources. The same people propagating this agenda are calling themselves Christians and playing up culture war issues to get Christian support. Are we calling this shit out? Do we think God doesn't care?

Can we, within the context of our worship, praise God for God's love and for God's justice? Can we call out the deceit that is pervasive in our political and economic systems as well as in our own lives in our mindless participation in them? Is church just not the place for that? Is worship just not the place for that? Is that a concern for God's justice is or is just politics? Can you separate the two?

Honestly I don't know. But I do know that we have been, in my experience, playing it awfully safe and sticking principally to God's love and if we do call out sin it isn't sin that any of us are likely to commit. We don't want to offend anyone.

But can we speak with a prophetic voice while ignoring God's demand for justice? Can we really praise God while ignoring God's desire for righteousness and demand for justice?