Week 2 Psalm 10
Sometimes I read with a Personal Preference Bias (PPB) in the back of my mind. My PPB is a notion about how I think things should be. Unfortunately quite a bit of bible content is about how things actually are. So my PPB bumps against that.
Psalm 10 talks about the way things are.
The writer talks about people who are wealthy greedy powerful & corrupt.
He highlights what these people think-and-believe. Evil actions are okay. God is dead. Nothing bad will happen to us. God won’t notice. We’re accountable to no one.
He describes what they do. They oppress poor people. Threaten people who live wretched & brutal lives. Murder innocent people. Victimize helpless misfortunates. They lie & curse God & stir up trouble & distribute grief lavishly & terrorize their opponents.
That’s what’s happening. It’s how things are.
Psalm 10 is about the real world and the writer asks: O Lord, why do you stand so far away? Why do you hide when (we) need you the most? I think those are a couple of really good questions.
It’s only near the end the writer reminds himself that: the Lord will bring justice to the orphans and the oppressed.
The Lord might take so long to act that it begins looking like he won’t. But assuming he will it becomes a matter of me trying to coordinate my own (short-range) Personal Preference Biases with his (quite a bit more expansive) sense of acting on time.
Note: quotes from Psalm 10:1 18 (NLT)