Southside RPCNA is where Ben Manring questioned the qualifications of an elder candidate. This past Sunday (6/17), Pastor David Hanson preached a sermon on Psalm 109. It shocks me that a pastor can read exactly the opposite into a passage of scripture than what seems to be the intent, but, when it comes to taking pains to justify spiritual abuse, even the Bible takes the back seat.
I quote this Psalm in its entirety because you will need to read and re-read it to remove the spell of cognitive dissonance that Pastor Hanson wants to cast over his members and listeners.
Psalm 109 (NASB)
O God of my praise,
Do not be silent!
For they have opened the wicked and deceitful mouth against me;
They have spoken against me with a lying tongue.
They have also surrounded me with words of hatred,
And fought against me without cause.
In return for my love they act as my accusers;
But I am in prayer.
Thus they have repaid me evil for good
And hatred for my love.
Appoint a wicked man over him,
And let an accuser stand at his right hand.
When he is judged, let him come forth guilty,
And let his prayer become sin.
Let his days be few;
Let another take his office.
Let his children be fatherless
And his wife a widow.
Let his children wander about and beg;
And let them seek sustenance far from their ruined homes.
Let the creditor seize all that he has,
And let strangers plunder the product of his labor.
Let there be none to extend lovingkindness to him,
Nor any to be gracious to his fatherless children.
Let his posterity be cut off;
In a following generation let their name be blotted out.
Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord,
And do not let the sin of his mother be blotted out.
Let them be before the Lord continually,
That He may cut off their memory from the earth;
Because he did not remember to show lovingkindness,
But persecuted the afflicted and needy man,
And the despondent in heart, to put them to death.
He also loved cursing, so it came to him;
And he did not delight in blessing, so it was far from him.
But he clothed himself with cursing as with his garment,
And it entered into his body like water
And like oil into his bones.
Let it be to him as a garment with which he covers himself,
And for a belt with which he constantly girds himself.
Let this be the reward of my accusers from the Lord,
And of those who speak evil against my soul.
But You, O God, the Lord, deal kindly with me for Your name’s sake;
Because Your lovingkindness is good, deliver me;
For I am afflicted and needy,
And my heart is wounded within me.
I am passing like a shadow when it lengthens;
I am shaken off like the locust.
My knees are weak from fasting,
And my flesh has grown lean, without fatness.
I also have become a reproach to them;
When they see me, they wag their head.
Help me, O Lord my God;
Save me according to Your lovingkindness.
And let them know that this is Your hand;
You, Lord, have done it.
Let them curse, but You bless;
When they arise, they shall be ashamed,
But Your servant shall be glad.
Let my accusers be clothed with dishonor,
And let them cover themselves with their own shame as with a robe.
With my mouth I will give thanks abundantly to the Lord;
And in the midst of many I will praise Him.
For He stands at the right hand of the needy,
To save him from those who judge his soul.
Hanson: Psalm 109 teaches us to distrust ourselves
After claiming that our sense of justice is inherently God-given "he will write the law on our hearts", Hanson then flips the script (is there some Reformed playbook?) and talks about how our innate desire for justice is somehow evil. "We want to be legislature, judge and executioner." This is a false dichotomy. Our inherent sense of justice is not de facto vigilante justice. This is a horrible caricature, and perhaps it speaks more about the pastors' hearts who preach.
[8:55] Psalm 109 calls you and me actually to a certain distrust of ourselves in these matters and instead to a trust in the righteous courtroom of God. ... And so Psalm 109 is given so that we would not trust our own courtroom, but instead that we would have this model to trust the judge, the perfect judge.
[10:17] in verses 1-5 we a call here that entrusting your case means, and begins with, distrusting yourself. [He repeats this for emphasis]
I had to read and re-read verses 1-5 to find this sense of self-doubt. Still can't find it. In fact, Hanson has to conveniently ignore the self-doubt when he points to the ultimate fulfillment in Jesus. [43:00] Does Psalm 109 mean that Jesus distrusted himself? Of course not! So this entire point has to be held in cognitive dissonance. This Psalm is all about self-doubt for us, but not for Jesus.
If Hanson had to honestly engage with this text first from the perspective of Jesus, it would be obvious that he is adding to scripture his own evil desire to manipulate and control through self-doubt.
Hanson: Psalm 109 says our hurt is insignificant to God
[11:55] And notice here that what is described is an extreme evil. That the case that David has to deal with in the courtroom of his brain is not 'you know there was a meeting on Friday at work, and my boss blamed me for keeping the breakroom a mess when in fact it's my coworkers.' And therefore I'm going to pray and sing this way.
This is a tactic, like sin leveling. So, yes, David is angry at being hurt, but David was really hurt. Our little hurts just don't matter like this! The implication is that our little hurts don't matter to God, and if they don't matter to God, they don't matter to the church, and if they don't matter to the church, then you should accept it and move on.
Hanson: Suck it up or you're sinning
[13:30] And right there in a nutshell, right there in one verse [Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice] Paul has summarized exactly what the courtroom of my brain and your brain says that when you have made all these false, wicked accusations against me. When you've drug my name through the mud, I am free and justified in my bitterness. I am free and justified if I decide to be angry and wrathful and burst out against you. I am free and justified if I choose to gossip against you.Keeping on the theme of our little trauma being insignificant, Hanson goes on to explain that even if our trauma is big like David's, we still have to essentially suck it up. The quote may sound insignificant, but we have to understand that "anger" and "gossip" are redefined and weaponized in the RPCNA.
Hanson: Justice is between you and God alone
[17:40] Distrusting your own courtroom and entrusting your case to God means, verse 1, that we come to God alone. Notice David's disposition here. What is the court of appeal? It's not his own court, and it's also not the court of public opinion. Most of us are ethical enough to say that it would be wrong for me to do something malicious in turn. You said something unkind to me, therefore I'm going to race out to the parking lot and key your car. I think most of us are clear that that is not the biblical response. But we will struggle a lot more with you said something unkind to me that is completely out of line and I'm going to make sure that at least six other people in the congregation know about it. But David here takes the matter to the Lord and the Lord alone.
Hanson: David isn't asking for specific judgment, just general principles
[25:21] And actually what's happening here in verses 6-20 is that David is just praying God's law back to God. God I am being grossly mistreated here. Here is my case, and by the way, here is what you have promised in your law will happen to those who deal this way. You have outlined that this is your justice.
[33:20] Lord you repay them according to your standard of righteousness, your standard of justice. So entrusting our case to the Lord means not trusting ourselves, first of all, and secondly means trusting God's standard of right and wrong. God's standard of perfect justice.
Hanson completely ignores the language of verses 6-20 and turns it on its head. The "imperative" part of speech means "the form of a verb that is usually used for giving orders". David is saying to God, do this! do this! Yes, David is, in the Spirit prophetically speaking what will happen to his accuser, and what will happen to Judas, but the example here is not a mere recitation of statutory law in the hopes that something will stick.
Hanson's implication is that David is saying, "God, if this is a class 2 felony, then your law says he should get 5-10 years in jail. God, if this is a class 3 misdemeanor, your law says he should be fined up to $500." David is saying, God! I want this guy to be in jail for 10 years!
It's problematic for Hanson to flip the script yet again and say that this David somehow just tossing the offense into the wind and hoping for something to stick. Instead, David, a man after God's own heart, is demanding his rights before God. It's not, "Hey God, it'd be nice if you put him in jail for a few days," but "YOUR LAW says that he gets 10 years, and you'd better get it done or you're not true to your word!"
Hanson: Psalm 109 says we have to hand it all to God because we're depraved
[40:50] Those are reasons why we can say that it is good and appropriate for us to sing and to pray Psalm 109. Psalm 109 removes the court case from my courtroom and says "I know I'm totally depraved. I know I miscarry justice. God, I turn this over to you. It affirms God I'm trusting your law, your rules, your penalties, and not mine."
Hanson: Now forget everything I just preached when it comes to Jesus
[42:40] And they said we know that Psalm 109 applies to us right now, because Psalm 109 is really talking about the approach that Jesus had to the courtroom that really mattered. And it's in Psalm 109 that we read 'let another man take his office' and they identified in a particular way and appropriately so, recorded by the scriptures, that Psalm 109 was talking about the relationship between Jesus and Judas Iscariot. And so Psalm 109, we know, is actually a psalm that would have been on the lips of our savior and that scripture tells us explicitly applies to him.
2 comments:
I especially appreciated his observation that "David here takes the matter to the Lord and the Lord alone" rather than, say, writing it down for all posterity.
That was an interesting piece in the Bloomington (I think) paper. The idea that it's somehow wrong to preserve the evidence of a wrong to rehash it ad nauseum. But, the same people probably talk about how wonderful it is that the Bible doesn't sugar coat sin and we have an historical account of these things to learn from.
Reading the stuff these people write vs. what they do might lead someone to believe that what is really important to them isn't any sort of integrity as much as it is self-validation and collecting power.
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