Year 2, Day 227: Psalm 94

Psalm 94

Psalm 94 is another song from the perspective of a plea.  It is easy to understand the perspective of the psalmist.  When we look around this world, we can see many places where evil seems to prosper.  It is easy to wonder how long God will allow it to happen this way.  It is easy to turn to God and say, “It’s Your world, when are you going to fix it?”

However, this perspective loses sight of God’s desire to give human beings free will.  If God were to truly “fix” this world, it would necessarily imply that humanity would lose our free will.  In order for this world to be genuinely fixed, our penchant for sin would have to be removed.  Our ability to even choose sin would have to be cast aside.  This would essentially turn humanity into a collection of meaningless robots.  If God were to fix this world, He would have to remove our ability to choose between Him and our evil human ways.

God could have done this from the very beginning if He desired.  God very easily could have created a world full of beings that have no choice in the matter except to perfectly live the way He desired.  But this is not what God wants.  God desires that we examine the differences between our manmade ways and His ways and then choose His ways.  He wants us to put our faith in Him and cast off our selfish human desires.  He doesn’t wish to accomplish this by force; rather He desires that we come to Him out of free will.  After all, how many of us would want to be loved by people who have no choice but to love us?  That isn’t really love, is it?

Thus, because God wants us to be able to think for ourselves and choose His ways, it also means we must have the option of thinking for ourselves and choosing our own ways.  It means that there will always be a tension in this world between the righteous and the unrighteous.  It means that the righteous will always have the ability to look around and wonder how long it will seem like the unrighteous will prosper.  Thus, while the opening of this psalm is certainly understandable; we must understand that it is the natural consequence of our free will.  Our ability to reject our evil human desires and instead to pursue God inherently implies that other people will make the opposite choice.

However, just because we can see the impact of evil in this world doesn’t mean that God still isn’t in control.  If God can make the eye, He is certainly capable of seeing for Himself who is choosing His ways.  If He can make the ear, He is certainly capable of hearing who is seeking Him out and who is seeking out their own understanding.  He knows all of our thoughts, and they are but a breath to Him.  While we can reject Him for a time, our time of rejection is short and a day of reckoning will surely come.

This is the reason that verse 12 and the verses following it take on so much meaning.  Blessed is the one that the Lord disciplines!  We don’t usually think about it this way, but it is so very true.  Think about it in terms of a parent and a child.  What happens to a child who is never told that they do anything wrong?  What happens to a different child who is corrected firmly but in love?  Which child is more productive in life?  Which child ultimately has a higher self-esteem and more self-confidence?  Human beings need firm and steady discipline to teach us how to succeed.  Indeed, the one who can humble Himself to God and embrace His discipline is blessed.  We are blessed because we will be guided into success in His ways.  We are also blessed because He can bring us through this life and into the perfect and eternal life to come.

It is in this thought that the ending of the psalm makes the most sense.  Certainly this world is not perfect.  Certainly this world sees the wicked prosper.  The greedy build empires for themselves.  The wicked take advantage of the people around them.  The righteous are cast aside as though they are foolish and antiquated.  But the righteous also know what it is like to depend on the Lord.  The world says that when the going gets tough, the tough may get going.  But I say that when the going gets tough, the followers of God take time to remember that it is God who will ultimately sustain their going.

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