A Disturbing Ending to a Perfectly Good Psalm

Psalm 104 is amazing for its praise of the God who has made it all and keeps it all going. Sure, there are discordant notes along the way. This isn't a Polyanna version of the world, as if there wasn't any pain, no injustice. It's clear that there are struggles and even that God himself determines how long we are going to be here.

Yet, it's basically a good psalm except for the last verse, which seems to blow the whole delicate balance between praise and concern all apart. Quite simply, it says:

Let all sinners vanish from the face of the earth;
let the wicked disappear forever.
As for me--I will praise the LORD!
Praise the LORD!

So, in the end, it's "Kill the sinners. Disappear the wicked. Then I'll praise the Lord." It seems so self-righteous and vindictive. So ungodly.

Actually, though, it may be the key to the whole psalm.

We've been reckoning with the fact that God's amazing provision for his creation is laced with disturbing notes of pain and death. The world has taken a long journey since the Garden of Eden. If the creation reflects what's happened to the human beings in it, then sin and wickedness (code words for rejection of God and the kind of selfish independence that's not far from the experience of any of us) are reflected in the violence that mars the glory this world could be experiencing in full.

Knowing what wickedness does as it spreads its influence and is reflected in the physical world, the psalmist doesn't take it on himself to smite the evildoers. He calls on God to deal with the wicked himself, thus to ease the pain of the rest of the world (though none of us is untouched by evil). The psalmist won't strike out at the wicked. Instead he will praise God despite the questions that must still haunt him. He will err on the side of trust. God can take care of the other part.

Open Hand and Hidden Face

Somewhere there's a middle ground between been puzzled by/appalled by God, and finding him to be the greatest source of amazement and hope in the universe. He has his rules, we have ours, and when they correspond, we find peace. When they don't, we ask why.

Psalm 104 lays it out for us:

How many are your works, O LORD!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.

There is the sea, vast and spacious,
teeming with creatures beyond number—
living things both large and small.

There the ships go to and fro,
and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there.

These all look to you
to give them their food at the proper time.

When you give it to them,
they gather it up;
when you open your hand,
they are satisfied with good things.

When you hide your face,
they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.

When you send your Spirit,
they are created,
and you renew the face of the earth. (Psalm 104:24-30)

God opens his hand and the whole earth receives life from him. The world is satisfied with the good things that he provides, and there seems to be nothing else on our horizon but fulfilment and joy. We dare not shortchange this reality. All we are and all we have comes from the One who made it all and sustains it day by day, moment by moment. All life exists in a wondrous balance that ensures not just its survival but satisfaction.

Then, unaccountably, God hides his face and an Asian tsunami devastes thousands of miles of coastland. An earthquake in Pakistan levels whole towns. A hurrican Katrina wipes out a city of half a million people. Terrorists chop off heads and children suffer, and we can't believe this is the same God who gave us so much. We are terrified. He takes our breath away and we die.

There is no reconciliation here between these two realities, no middle ground that makes any sense. I think there is a key, though, that doesn't explain but gives us direction. It is simply this - we are a world in which God's highest creation has abandoned him in favor of their own narrative, their own plan. And natural world itself (as is clear in Genesis 3) has risen up to challenge our rebellion. Evil is in the world because we welcomed it, and every disaster is one more reminder that we've walked very far away from the One who made us.

But this doesn't explain, in the sense that there is no clear connection between a Katrina and the sin of a city (despite the silly assertions of some so-called theologians). Ironically, in the destruction of much of New Orleans in 2005, the French Quarter, where which much of the wild reputation of the city was born, did not suffer as much as other areas. Nor can we say that this or that particular suffering child had more evil parents than did other children, or whatever other explanation we may have.

The fact is that God does hide his face. He does take away our breath. And we can raise our fists at him quite easily if we want. Or we can do what the writer of the psalm does - Point out that the God who takes away also renews. We can, against all common sense, praise the God who, despite all of the terrible mystery of our existence, is still wondrous, still in control. The psalmist, knowing full well the horror of life, places himself back in the hand of God.

May the glory of the LORD endure forever;
may the LORD rejoice in his works-

he who looks at the earth, and it trembles,
who touches the mountains, and they smoke.

I will sing to the LORD all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.

May my meditation be pleasing to him,
as I rejoice in the LORD. (Psalm 104:31-34)