Harsh Psalms and Nice Christians: Should Christians Pray Those Psalms Where God Destroys Our Enemies?
Introduction
Johnny serves as a missionary to a remote village. He spends most of his time praying in his pickup truck in between the days-long journey between his home in the city to the village deep in the bush. On his last trek into the village, he entered the remains of a war zone. Days earlier a neighboring tribe attacked the tribe Johnny has been visiting and killed most of the people. None of the villagers Johnny led to faith survived. The smoke from the still smoldering huts clung to his clothes, and the smell of carnage seared his memory. After helping the remaining tribesmen bury the dead, Johnny traveled back home praying that God would destroy those who killed his friends.
What are Imprecatory Psalms?
Throughout the psalter you find requests for God to destroy the wicked. We call these psalms imprecatory psalms because to imprecate means to call down curses on a person. For example, Psalm 35 begins with:
Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me; Fight against those who fight against me. Psalm 35:1
When David’s enemies plot against him, David goes to God for help. Here in Psalm 35, David asks for God to fight his enemies for him. Now, most Christians don’t have problems with David praying for God to help him; their problem is that David gets specific in the help he wants from God. At times David prays for God to obliterate the memory of the wicked from the earth (Psalm 34:16). Sometimes he asks for God to break their arm (Psalm 10:15). And one time He even asked God to dash his enemies’ children against rocks (Psalm 137:9). I’m fairly certain your Sunday School teacher skipped those verses.
So, what do we do with these imprecatory Psalms? Many Christians ignore them like they do most of the Bible. Others excuse them as leftovers from the obsolete Old Testament. But if you’re a Bible-believing Christian, those answers shouldn’t cut the mustard. So, back to the question, what do we do with these Psalms? How about we use them the way the Bible tells us? The New Testament twice commands Christians to sing the psalms in our worship (Colossians 3:16; Ephesians 5:19). There’s no indication in these passages of God redacting certain Psalms from the list of songs we sing. Since God commands us to sing the psalms to one another on Sunday at church, we can deduce by true and necessary consequence He also expects us to pray them on Thursday when we’re folding the laundry.
The Way the World Really Is
One reason imprecatory Psalms rub Christians the wrong way is that we’ve bought into this secular world’s categories. We buy into categories like niceness is akin to godliness and clichés like “you do you.” Today, anyone can choose their marriage partner, sexual orientation, and even their own species. Modern man has a cornucopia of choices to choose from, the first being if he actually wants to be a man. There’s dozens of sexes, genders, opinions, feelings, and experiences. A good person in this secular society smiles and accepts all the choices. It’s just what nice people do. And God said somewhere that Christians got to be the nicest (He really didn’t).
Despite what your feed on Facebook tells you, there aren’t hundreds of types of people living in a nice little world. The world isn’t neutral, and people aren’t either. There are two types of people living in a good world broken by sin. There’s the children of the woman and the children of serpent (Genesis 3:15), the descendants of Seth and the descendants of Cain (Genesis 4:24,26), the children of Sarah and the children of Hagar (Galatians 4:22-23), the wise man and the foolish man (Proverbs 28:26), and the righteous and the wicked (Psalm 1). In the world God made, the world we live in, there’s no neutrality. Either you’re on God’s side or you aren’t.
When Christians gather for worship, God wants to remind us that we’re His people. He wants the songs that we sing to remind us we belong to Him, not ourselves (Psalm 100:3; 1 Corinthians 6:19). Sadly, many Christians in America gather on Sundays for any reason but remembering they’re the Lord’s. God wants us to constantly preach, sing, and pray what separates us from the wicked world—the revealed will of God.
And its only because of God’s revealed will that we learn this wicked world should not be this way. God’s word tells us that every good thing comes from Him (James 1:17) and every evil thing comes from human sin (Mark 7:23). Our sin is like a cancer eating and infecting God’s good world. And God, the good doctor, must eliminate the cancer. The only reason you’re a Christian is because God defeated a wicked person by saving you. The curses—the imprecation—you deserved fell on Christ instead (Galatians 3:13). God will answer all the imprecatory Psalms. It’s just the curse may fall on Christ instead of the wicked. Either way, God will destroy the wicked. Which is why we should never stop praying the way God tells us to.
Because the wicked forsake God, they do everything in their own power and according to their own desires. The only standard of morality for them changes like the wind (Psalm 1:4). The righteous should be different. We live and follow God’s standards. We train our thoughts after His thoughts. We feel what He wants us to feel. So, when we get to commands like “Vengeance is mine says the Lord,” we say “yes, Lord.” We say with David, “rise up, Lord, do not forget me (Psalm 10:12).”
Destruction through Salvation
In a world of wicked sinners, every Christian is a traitor. We turn from the evil domain of darkness and surrender to the kingdom of Christ (Colossians 1:13). One reason the wicked world hates Christians is because they see us as traitors. And the Devil, who wants humanity destroyed any way he can manage it, wants us to hate them like they hate us. If the wicked hate us with violence, Satan wants us to respond to violence with vengeance. He wants us to take matters into our own hands instead of putting them in God’s hands. The Devil wants the righteous to live like the wicked.
But God instructs us to trust in His will. God made the world so that some things are our responsibility while others aren’t (Deuteronomy 29:29). Preaching the gospel to angry protestors is our responsibility (Acts 4:1-3). Vengeance to those protestors after they burn down your church is God’s responsibility (Romans 12:19).
Just as Christians should not destroy the wicked, we also cannot save the lost. Only God can save sinners. We only preach the word of God to them. And that’s also what we are supposed to do when the wicked tempt us to despair or react. We preach the word to them. But before we continue preaching the word to them, we probably need to hear it first ourselves. One reason God wants us to pray and sing these Psalms is precisely because we won’t take vengeance in our own hands.
A Healthy Dose of Psalms
Christians find no need for these Psalms because they don’t live like Christ. Remember, the Jesus you say you follow died at the hands of His enemies. So, Christian, relearn to sing the entire psalter. Each week we sing the psalms we are reminded that there’s no sitting on the fence in God’s world. You’re either in Christ or you’re not. Preach the word of God to the world. And after the world taunts you for preaching the word to them, sing that same word on Sunday and pray that word throughout the week.
Christians should be the type of people who pray and sing for wickedness to end, for the wicked to die, and for the generations of the wicked to fail. God commands us to do so. He shows His mercy to us by hearing the prayers we pray and the songs we sing. He shows His mercy to the wicked by saving them despite their best efforts against Him (Acts 26:14). God wins and His people sing!
Conclusion
It’s been six years since that dreadful day Johnny buried his friends and prayed for God to defeat the attacking tribe. In those six years God answered Johnny’s prayer in surprising ways. Not long after the attacking village killed Johnny’s friends, another tribe attacked them killing most of the tribe and displacing the rest. Many from that tribe traveled to Johnny’s village seeking refuge. To Johnny’s surprise, God defeated the remaining survivors from that wicked tribe converting them to Christ’s kingdom. One way or another, God defeats His enemies.