This is the ninth in a series of responses to Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer by Eugene Peterson (Harper & Row, 1989). I am currently reading this book for the fourth time, with each reading adding more underlines to emphasize the parts that are too good to forget. I am freely blending my own interpretive ideas with those expressed directly by Peterson, so don’t blame him for any nonsense that you find here.
Chapter Six – Metaphor (Psalm 18)
One debate I’ll never enter is the argument between literal creationist and materialists like Stephen Hawking who say that we can now explain the formation of the universe without recourse to a god-hypothesis. Neither side can muster enough evidence to present a convincing case for their view.
I will admit, though, that I sometimes get a laugh or two at the lengths to which some people will go to make their view sound plausible. One of my favorite Stephen Hawking ideas is that God did not create the universe, it created itself spontaneously. He seems to have convinced himself that this idea requires less faith than does the idea of a Supreme Being causing the creation of the universe. I’d say that, from a secular rationalist view, the two views are a tie.
Time and again in Scripture, especially in the Psalms, the cosmos is considered not only the handiwork of God but one of his ways of revealing himself to us. The Bible never argues for the existence of God because God is the starting point of all else, not the conclusion of any mental or physical process.
The Psalms, says Peterson, are grounded in the creation. The physical universe, he says, is the theater in which we live and pray. It provides the context for all our lives, including our spiritual life. “Dissociated from creation, prayer drifts into silly sentimentalism or snobbish mysticism or pious elitism.” Theologically, the foundation is that, “The Word did not become a good idea, or a numinous feeling, or a moral aspiration: the Word became flesh and went on to change water into wine and then wine into blood.”
Frequently, the Psalmists use metaphor to hold our thinking to the touchstone of reality. All the Psalms have at least one metaphor, which is “the characteristic language of prayer.”
Verse 2 of Psalm 18 reads, “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer. My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” have you ever been to the Rocky Mountains or the Sierra Nevada Mountains? If so, there may be lodged in your mind the image some great and awesome rock, such as Half Dome in Yosemite. Look at or remember that rock while you pray, “Lord, that huge rock is giving me a hint of your strength, your unshaken stability. Thank you, Lord, that you invite me to find safety and security in your great strength.”
There is nothing gained by trying to pray in holy sounding language. God is not impressed by our religious vocabulary. Rather than praying in rarified “holy” language that sounds a bit closer to heaven than is our usual talk, we need to “thicken [our prayer] with the metaphors of weather and geography and enmity into a spirituality of honest and actual experience.”
When I try to express faith, for example, my mind often goes to an early spring day high in the mountains. Most of the ground was still covered in snow but the air was warm and the sky perfectly blue. I found an old picnic table and sat to read my book and eat my favorite picnic food: a loaf of Shepherd Boy bread, a large chunk of Monterrey Jack cheese, two apples, and a Pepsi.
There were several small birds flitting around, coming closer and closer to my table. I put a few crumbs of bread at the far end of the table and was delighted when they came quickly to snatch them away. I put out more bread, then more again. Each time I put the crumbs just a little closer to me. After several minutes, I was simply holding the crumbs in my outstretched hand. They were timid but before long were even daring to stand on my hand and pick at the crumbs. I moved my hand closer. Still they ate my offering. I lifted my hand a bit and held it in from of my face. Timid and shy, they nevertheless alighted on my hand, just inches from m eyes.
Then I put the bread on my lips and help my hand against my chin. They hopped around on the table, flew up to glance at the new situation, returned to the table and chirped and chatted together until they had convinced one another that I was no threat. Soon I had two or three birds at a time eating bread crumbs off my lips.
I cannot begin to put into words how deeply honored I felt to be so trusted by these little creatures. The joy of that experience 50 years ago still lives in my memory.
And I ask myself, if I – a mere human in God’s image – was so deeply touched by the trust of those tiny birds, how much joy must our Father feel when we dare to entrust ourselves to him deeply enough to receive the blessings he has for us?
That’s what Peterson means by letting our lives, our hearts, our prayers be shaped by metaphors of the earth. When we learn from the Psalms to think metaphorically, we will be protected from becoming merely religious. And our Lord, the Creator of the rocks and the birds, will find his heart warmed by our trust.
Dwelling in Scripture 