“let the righteous be glad and rejoice before God : let them also be merry and joyful.” (Psalm 68)
As the number of self-confessed Christian believers continues to dwindle in virtually every Western country, I sometimes wonder if the above quotation is not among the reasons. I suspect that for the author of the psalm there was no real problem: the ungodly and wicked should disappear (and a merciful God could be trusted to take care of that, sooner or later), and those who believed, and who worked at keeping His commandments, should be merry and joyful. That is one of the beauties of Judaism.
Christianity, though, can never take this simply: the minute a Christian reads and begins to ponder this verse, and this Psalm, he at once realises that while the righteous should be merry and joyful, he cannot count himself one of them. Who am I, to call myself righteous? Think of all the ways in which I have not lived up to what the Lord expects of me. Think of all the ways in which I have not been constantly alert and awaiting the Bridegroom’s coming. Think of my oil lamp, long since dry. Think of all the poor I have not helped. Think of all the misery of the world I have not done much to allay. Righteous, me? Merry and joyful, me? You’re joking.
And yet, he’d be wrong. If, as Luther and the Catholic catechism both say, we are saved by faith, then the criterion for the happiness of being accepted as a loved child of a loving Father is not whether we are good enough but whether we honestly believe that Yeshua bar-Yosef was the Meshiach, that he was crucified for us, and that he arose from the dead. And moreover, it is not even demanded of us not to have doubts: as long as we incorporate those into our prayers and say “Lord, I believe: help thou mine unbelief”, we are accepted. And being accepted, we are what ‘King David’ called righteous; however unperfect we are in our daily life. And as such, we have every reason to be merry and joyful.
Ah, but. In our relentless search for obstacles, we say, OK, fine, but what about all the people around me whom I love but who feel not the slightest interest in, let alone need for, faith in their life, and who cheerfully live, not in wickedness at all, but in perfect ungodliness? If I try to convert them it will only drive them further away; if, as the Church sometimes counsels, I live a noticeably good life while being known as a believer, they will simply think I’m a good man and make no connection whatever to my faith. So will they, in the Psalm’s words, perish as wax melteth before the fire? A friend’s evangelical mother said to her daughters in all seriousness how sad it made her to think that after she died she would never see them again, because she, being a believer, would go to Heaven while they, being unbelievers, would not. (She did not actually mention Hell, but the implication was there.) I’m prepared, if you insist, to be merry and joyful, but what about my faithless loved ones?
I believe – not in the sense of full faith, but in the sense of a trusting guess – that the answer to that question is just that: trust. I think that if we have faith, we need to trust the God we believe in and love back to deal with our loved ones as He, the God of love, thinks fit. “Thy will be done” applies. You may call it smorgasbord Christianity, but we are asked to trust our Father’s wisdom rather than even the collective and cumulative theorising of centuries of theologians. I suspect that on this particular question He is telling us to butt out and leave it to Him.
Ah, but. In our relentless search for obstacles, we say, OK, fine, but what about the people whose houses in Mariupol are flattened by missiles; the people who are fleeing wildfires everywhere; the women maltreated by Taliban or murdered by ex-spouses; the farmers committing suicide because their farms will not feed their families; what about the sheer accumulated misery of humankind? How can anyone who has a heart even think of being merry and joyful, righteous or otherwise? Now that everyone on this overcrowded and overheated planet is deemed to be my neighbour, how can I not be devastated every single day? How dare I be merry and joyful?
I believe – and yes, in the sense of faith – that such a question puts us before some basic choices. Seeing all this, we have to make up our minds. Either 1) there is no God; 2) there is a God, but he is monstrous in uncaring or evil; 3) there is a God of love, and we are getting something wrong. If our faith opts for 3, then we have to figure out what we are getting wrong.
The “neighbour” may be the clue we need, as it will send us back to the parable of the Good Samaritan. He – remember – was a businessman on a business trip. Seeing the wounded victim he stopped, took time and energy to administer first aid and set him on his own horse, then took him to the nearest inn, told the landlord to look after him and said he would pay the bill on his return. He then continued his business trip. His “neighbour” was not someone of his own tribe or nation, but it was not someone 1500 miles away either. It was someone who turned up. An inconvenience, but not a sacrifice. What, then, is the answer? Faced with the world’s misery, the answer seems to be: Live your life and keep an eye open for need. If there is need on your way, stop and do what you reasonably can to take care of it. If and when it goes beyond your capacity, get help. If there is not at this time need on your way, carry on while staying alert. And as for distant miseries, pray to the Father that he may find and send Samaritans in other places. And having done all that, be merry and joyful; for joy and merriment are gifts of God it is ungrateful and graceless to refuse.
image: dancing at a Lebanese wedding
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