Blogging the Psalms

Blogging the Psalms -- Psalm 104

Psalm 104

A wonderful psalm about the Creator’s involvement in His beloved Creation. I love it!

God is Creator. Nowadays, one is mocked if one believes that God created and ordered the universe and the earth. Those of us who believe this are considered simplistic.

Back in the day I used to watch Law and Order. Often the writers seemed to be on a mission to enlighten folks. This is a noble enough cause but often this goal makes the producers and writers of Law and Order reductionist with their stories. For instance, crimes that happen to black people generally happen because they’re black. Crimes that religious people commit generally happen because the person is religious. I suppose, some stereotyping is needed because some crimes tend to be stereotypical but one gets tired of stereotypes sometimes. Especially if there seems to be prejudice involved.

For instance, in one episode a female minister was depicted who said in passing of her old church secretary, “She has a simple faith. She believes everything she read in the Bible.” The implication was that the old church secretary was behind the times -- as if religious truth changes with the time-- and uneducated or at least not cultured. She said this in a pitying wistful “I wish I was as brainless and childlike as she is but I’m just too intelligent” tone.  

Aside from the problem that Hollywood tends to ignore the fact that the folks they are insulting are folks who are actually watching their shows, I sometimes can’t shake the feeling that Hollywood writers are trying to shame their religious viewers into coming over into the enlightened nihilistic faithless non-Biblical side? 

True simple faith is never simple. It is hard-earned because the world is full of lies, false truths, false evidences, wrong foundations, and seemingly logical assumptions that one must wade through. The Bible says the world cannot receive truth, and that is very true. Humans are prone to willful self-deceptions and convenient delusions, and faulty reasoning based on education, ignorance, culture, and love of sin. Often, sudden enlightenment comes when the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth, sheds light on some supposed truth we have long been convinced of. It is a paradoxical truth that people with simple faith can be quite cynical.

The Bible describes two kinds of simplicity. One kind which comes from being wrongly educated or miseducated by the world. A spiritually-slothful person is simple, for instance because they simply lazily breathe in what the world says. For instance, there are people who hate God, Jesus, and the Bible who have never studied Christianity. It’s just a kind of kneejerk dislike they picked up from the media or society. 

Or think of Christian believers who never learned to use their minds to study the Bible? This kind of simplicity, the Bible says, can be cured. But it is cured by the word of God; faith comes by hearing the word of God.

Then there is a different kind of simplicity which means purity, straight, untainted. This is a simpleness that has no double-mindedness, that understands how the world can taint a believer but which has managed to remain uninfluenced by the world. This is a simplicity that holds to God’s truth come what may. In a world of deception, many people can end up having a muddied or buffet religion.

Various verses in the Bible show the different kinds of simplicity

“For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them.” —Proverbs 1:31-33

“The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple.” —Psalm 119:130

“The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.” —Psalm 19:6-8