The Psalms: Sadness and Fear in Healing
The Psalms: Sadness and Fear in Healing
by AFBR
I am reading through the Bible now, Genesis to Revelation. While I have read and studied the Judeo-Christian scripture my whole life, and reread many passages over and over, even studying some in Hebrew and Greek, I have never gone cover to cover. (And, by and large, this reading is most assuredly confirming my agnosticism.) My current stop is the book of Psalms, where I am in the middle of the work. I am struck by a theme I will call ‘sadness and fear in healing.’ Here is what I mean.
I know many Christians of good conscience (myself included once upon a time) who, when a loved one is sick and in the hospital or their sick bed, pray for recovery and God’s blessings. When the person recovers, the believer praises God for hearing the prayer; when the sick person dies, the believer praises God for knowing more than we humble and ignorant servants do. And this sentiment is portrayed in many of the Psalms when the Psalmist(s) pleads for healing, usually for himself, sometimes for the nation, and waits for the Lord to hear his prayer. And that is the second half of a prominent theme.
Yet there is a first half to that plea that the Psalmist(s) expresses, and a part I believe even strong bible-believing Christians who take comfort in the Psalms ignore. There are many examples, but let’s take Ps 38 as a starting place. The scholarly notes in my Revised Standard Version make it clear that there was a common belief in the Psalmist’s day that sickness is a result of personal sin. And we see this clearly, too, in the text itself when in verse 3 it reads: ‘There is not soundness in my flesh because of my indignation; there is no health in my bones because of my sin.’ There are several other places in this Ps, as well as many others, where we see this thought that personal iniquity causes sickness is dominate.
The petitioner goes on to ask for healing and trusts in the Lord, as in verse 15, ‘O Lord, I do wait; it is thou, O Lord my God, who wilt answer,’ and in verse 21, ‘Do not forsake me, O Lord! O my God, be not far from me!’
What I am wondering is, why have most Christians (that I know) forgotten that the writers of the Christian Old Testament believed that disease and sickness are the result of personal sin (if they were ever aware in the first place)? Do they just ignore that part of the formula, while clinging to the second, the one that praises? It seems that the old idea that sin and disease are linked is quaint, but that we know better now. Yet, when someone recovers, why is it all about God’s hearing prayer for the many? Is it that they want to ignore the dark side of a God who’d punish sin through disease, even to those who are righteous, but wish to praise Him just to be safe? Why shut the eye to the wrathful side of the God of the OT, a God who will most likely one day ‘delight in bringing ruin upon [His people] and destroying’ them because they are sinful (Deuteronomy 28:63)?
It is interesting that at least one writer in the OT calls God out for punishing His children for having done nothing wrong. Psalm 44 – my new favorite – calls the Lord to account without a neat just-in-case-He-might-smite-me clause of praise at the end. It leaves the darkness hanging there and begs for the Lord God to answer. But no reply is forthcoming. God is silent, it seems, when held responsible for injustice, even if most of the other Psalms praise Him as the Lord of righteousness.