Psalms for Turbulent Times - Psalm 53 - No one does good

Psalm 53[1]


 

¹    Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’
    They are corrupt, they commit abominable acts;
    there is no one who does good.

²   God looks down from heaven on humankind
    to see if there are any who are wise,
    who seek after God.

³  They have all fallen away, they are all alike perverse;
    there is no one who does good,
    no, not one.

⁴   Have they no knowledge, those evildoers,
    who eat up my people as they eat bread,
    and do not call upon God?

⁵  There they shall be in great terror,
    in terror such as has not been.
    For God will scatter the bones of the ungodly;^[a]
    they will be put to shame,^[b] for God has rejected them.

⁶   O that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion!
    When God restores the fortunes of his people,
    Jacob will rejoice; Israel will be glad.

Déjà vu. Something lockdown seems to do to us. Each day can flow into another like the last. Similar to that weird time between Christmas and New Year, we can find ourselves asking ‘what day is it?’ Well, this psalm is a déjà vu psalm. This is because it is almost identical to Psalm 14, almost.

The slight difference arises in the comparison between 53.5 (above) and 14.5-6: ‘There they shall be in great terror, for God is with the company of the righteous. You would confound the plans of the poor, but the Lord is their refuge.’ The emphasis in Psalm 14 is on the instinct of God to be a refuge to the poor; whereas the disposition of Psalm 53 is to underline that God rejects the foolish ones who ‘eat up people like bread’ rather than call upon God. Both psalms predict ‘terror’ (Hebrew word pahad) for ‘evil-doers’ who have forgotten or deny God. Shame, rejection and ‘scattered bones’ will be the only future of those who are corrupt and fail to do good, according to Psalm 53.

It is a fairly bleak assessment for those who say in their hearts ‘there is not God’. 

In the 1960s, Soviet propaganda artists produced this anti-religious poster. It featured the celebrated Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. Between his floating body and the onion domes of churches are the words ‘Бога Нет!’ – ‘There is no God’. This is a quote which is associated with Gagarin following his epoch-defining journey into space in 1961. However, it is disputed whether Gagarin, who was a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, actually said the words ‘I looked and looked and looked but I didn’t see God.’  His political boss, the then president of the USSR – Nikita Khrushchev – did however say something like that in an anti-religion speech to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He did say: ‘Gagarin flew into space, but didn’t see any god there.’

However, in the psalmist’s imagination, God is indeed in heaven (that which is over and around us but not located in physical space) and is looking for faithful people. The gaze of God is a longing gaze ranging over the whole earth. Is there anyone on earth who is wise? Wisdom is defined as a heart that ‘seeks after God’.  

Theology, according to St Anselm, the once Archbishop of Canterbury (1033-1109), is defined as ‘faith seeking understanding’. To understand something or someone, almost inevitably first requires attentive loving regard. To Anselm, ‘faith seeking understanding’ means something like ‘an active love of God seeking a deeper knowledge of God.’ To ‘see God’, I believe, requires first that a seeker has a heart that is willing to take the risk to love that which the heart seeks.

In these déjà vu days of the pandemic, where days run into each other, what I am finding helpful is the desire to ‘slow down’ and ‘be attentive’. Speedy space travel is the opposite of these slow-motion days.  And although there is much that leads to a sense of torpor and ennui, one of the benefits I am finding is a slowed-down heart rate and a willingness to go deeper, inward and outward, in my search for God, whom I am learning to love with all my heart.

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[1] New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised (NRSVA)
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Footnotes:
Psalm 53:5 Cn Compare Gk Syr: Heb him who encamps against you
Psalm 53:5 Gk: Heb you will put to shame