Blessed, or Cursed?

In my previous post I mentioned that I had something to say about the context around Jeremiah 17:7 - in that post I only talked about the "blessed man", but there are some things about him that we didn't see because we didn't look at the verses about a very different person the chapter tells us about: the "cursed man"!

Jeremiah 17:7 is actually part of a larger snippet of Bible poetry that starts at verse 5 and ends at verse 8. Take a look:

Thus says the Lord:

“Cursed is the man who trusts in man

and makes flesh his strength,

whose heart turns away from the Lord.

He is like a shrub in the desert,

and shall not see any good come.

He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,

in an uninhabited salt land.

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,

whose trust is the Lord.

He is like a tree planted by water,

that sends out its roots by the stream,

and does not fear when heat comes,

for its leaves remain green,

and is not anxious in the year of drought,

for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

Jeremiah 17:5–8 (ESV)

This is what is known as poetic "parallelism". The first stanza and the second stanza contrast with each other: the former is about someone who is "cursed" and the latter is about someone who is "blessed". The reason you want to be able to recognize this is because sometimes one half of the parallel passage will contain useful information the other half does not.

For example:

“Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord.

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.

We know a number of things about the "cursed man" from this:

• He trusts in "man" (mankind) - so his focus is what human beings are able to accomplish.
• He relies on his own "flesh" - his own ability - to get things done.
• His heart turns away from the Lord.

We only are told two things about the "blessed man":

• He trusts in the Lord (he acts in a way that reveals that he trusts the Lord).
• He puts his trust in the Lord (his trust has a home with the Lord - it stays there).

But because these are contrasting parallel passages, we can infer several other things. The implications for the "blessed man" are that he also:

• does not put his trust in what mankind can accomplish, but what God can accomplish.
• does not rely on his own ability to get things done, but knows that God can do things he cannot.
• His heart turns toward the Lord.

And, of course, the implication for the "cursed man" is that he does not in any way put his trust in the Lord.

Some other contrasts that we can infer using this method (inferred parts in italics):

The Cursed Man	The Blessed Man
Like a shrub in the desert	Like a tree by water
Shall see no good come	Shall see good come
Shall fear when tough times occur	Shall not fear when tough times occur ("heat comes")
Is afraid he may run out of what he needs	Is always confident that he is well supplied (not fearful in "the year of drought")
Can only do so much before he comes to the end of his own strength	Is always able to do good ("Does not cease to bear fruit")
Lives in a parched, uninhabited "salt land" (nothing can grow in salted soil)	Lives in a place of bountiful supply surrounded by friends

For the record, I'm no Bible scholar - I only know what I've picked up over the years from hearing and reading things written by people with a lot more Bible education than I. But I think it's good to be able to "read between the lines" and discover those extra tidbits that God has left for us to pick up on!

The Psalms: Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful

I've been reading a book called How to Read the Bible as Literature, and it has really opened my eyes to some things about the Scriptures. For example: I've discovered that the Psalms are not boring.

What, you say? The Psalms? One of the most beloved books in the whole Bible, boring? Containing the only chapter of the Bible (except The Lord's Prayer) that some people even know about? Yep, that's the one I mean. Now, as a musician and songwriter, I love the Psalms at least as much as most people, and probably more than many (heck, I even have an honest-to-goodness favorite Psalm!), because I feel a kinship with David and the other Psalmists, but I've also spent a lot of time reading in the Psalms and thinking, okay, here we go again, David is whining about his enemies again, hey wow what a surprise, a happy ending, blah blah blah. After a while you do start thinking, didn't I just read this Psalm two chapters ago?

Let me ask you something. Has it ever occurred to you that most popular-style songs. including the stuff you hear on the radio and even the Chris Tomlin songs you sing at church, are very tightly structured? Most pop/rock songs have this structure: verse 1 - chorus - verse 2 - chorus - bridge (a section with different music, either sung or instrumental) - chorus? There are infinite variations on the theme... for example, the song may start out with the chorus and then go into the first verse, or there may be an additional third verse, or the chorus may happen twice at the end... but that's the basic structure songwriters look at when they put pencil to paper. Now that you know that, you may start to notice things about songs that you never noticed before (particularly the presence of a "bridge" section). That structure is not there to limit creativity in any way; in fact, the main reason it's like that is to keep the song interesting for its whole 3 or 4-minute length while still having something that repeats many times (the chorus, and usually other elements as well) so that you can come away singing the song you heard. And for a songwriter, it gives you something to kind of help you get started. It's like arranging your stuff in a new house or apartment; you know you have this room and this room and this room, so you know basically where the furniture needs to be, and then you work your magic inside of that. The structure is not a requirement, but it is beneficial to everyone involved.

The Bible is a book. It is an inspired book, yes, but still a book, and as such, it contains book stuff... there are many different literary genres in the Bible, and that's what How to Read the Bible as Literature is about. The Psalms are, as pretty much everyone knows, poems, and we believe that they are also songs. But they don't fall into our verse -chorus - verse - chorus - bridge - chorus structure, do they? With a few exceptions, there is rarely even any repetition of lines at all. But that doesn't mean that there is no structure; in fact, there are any number of "types" of poems in the Psalms, and they each have well-developed structure. For example, the book gives the following 3-part basic form for what it calls a "Praise Psalm":

1. The introduction to praise
1. a call to praise the Lord
2. naming the people who are being called to praise
3. mention of the mode of praise
2. Development of the praise
1. poet gives a motivation/reason to praise
2. list of praiseworthy acts or qualities of God
3. Conclusion (which often takes the form of a prayer or wish)

The book lists these Psalms as examples of the praise Psalm: 18, 30, 65, 66, 96, 97, 103, 107, 124, 136, 139.

Now, during my lifetime as I've read through the Psalms (and I have read through them all, a number of times), I've sometimes found myself in a "here we go again" mode: "Here we go again, David is telling somebody to praise God. God is this, God is that, yadda yadda. Oh, and he hopes everyone will praise the Lord. Ho-hum." I think sometimes I subconsciously got the idea that there was a lack of originality there. But I realized today as I was reading my book that it's not a "lack of originality", but a "strong use of structure" that I was sensing, and in many ways it was the exact opposite of a "lack of originality". I suspect the next time I read through the Psalms (in a few months on my Bible in a year readings!) I will have a different perspective. The Psalms are not randomly-strung-together rantings and cooings; they are thoughtfully-structured, carefully constructed works of art. Art created through inspiration from God. The separate sections each have meaning and function, and understanding those functions is key to understanding the art itself. I can hardly wait to discover the riches I'll find there!

Lenses

by Michael Jones

And there in my dream, I saw a table.
On the table was a swirling cloud,
Moving and changing,
Pulsing with energy,
And I knew it was my life.
Looking straight at it I could make out nothing.
It was constantly evolving,
Reorganizing,
Developing and dissolving,
With the details always just out of reach.

But next to my life were five viewers,
Hand-held like a detective's magnifier,
With lenses five different colors.
I knew in my dream that if I used them to view my life,
They would help me see the truth.

I picked up the rose-colored glass.

Through it, I saw my family and how much they love me.
I saw that I have been blessed with food to feed them and
Money to buy things for them.
I saw my good friends, my favorite movies,
My talents and my joys,
My happinesses and my comforts.
And I also saw my blissful, willful ignorance of poverty
Illness
Hunger
Violence
Need
And I put down the rose-colored glass.

Then I picked up the sepia-colored glass.

Through it I saw my childhood, with all its happy times.
Summers playing outside
Shooting water pistols
Playing games, bought and invented
But I couldn't see the sad and hard times I remembered.
No confusing homework
Snubs by girls
Loneliness
Fear of the monsters under the bed
It was comfortable but it was a lie, so I put down the sepia-colored glass.

Then I picked up the glass with the blue lens.

I could see the day my dog died
The day my grandmother died
The days my hope died
I saw report cards with bad grades
Myself crying at night and not knowing why
Favorite toys broken
Not getting the job
That miscarriage
The friend who cheated me
The associate who used me
The year without a job
The deep, dark vortex of depression
I couldn't live without happiness — I put down the blue glass.

I hoped for better luck with the glass with the crystal-clear lens.
The handle was white, and it cast a light of its own.
And when I looked at my life in that harsh light,
I saw it with a brutal
Crystal
Clarity.
I saw that I sometimes hate, even to the point of fury.
I saw that I desire, even to the point of covetousness and sometimes lust.
I saw that I am prideful and sometimes look at others with disdain.
I saw that my selfishness often overrides my generosity.
I dropped the lens like it had just come out of a fire.
It was then that I noticed that it was nicked and scratched
Like it had been used as a weapon
And the lens, though crystal-clear, was distorted
And the whole thing smelled of sulfur.

The last glass scared me a little bit.
The lens was transparent, but it was blood red.
The handle was wooden, with a cross-beam, almost like a sword hilt.
For some reason, it seemed to me
In my dream
That this lens would show me the WHOLE truth
Not the par
tial
tru
th
...like the others.
The pieces of the truth were terrible enough;
How awful would the WHOLE truth be?

But I picked up the blood-red lens.
The lens of The Whole Truth.
And what I saw astounded me.

I saw the things that bring joy to my life: the people who love me,
My talents and my joys,
My happinesses and my comforts.
I saw the happy times of my childhood and my adulthood,
And I also saw the sad and lonely times.
I saw deaths, physical and emotional.
I saw my gaping flaws of character
That cause me to fail time and again.
And I saw the deep, dark depression that sometimes seeks to consume me.

I saw all of those things.
But it was as though they were covered with blood,
Overpowered by blood,
Eradicated by blood.
Made irrelevant.
Ancient history that never happened.
The handle was not just the hilt of a sword;
It was also something else.
And as the blood dripped down from the crossbeams
And covered my pathetic attempt at leading a good life
I knew that I was being cleansed,
Forgiven,
Regenerated,
Revitalized,
Given another chance.

And I knew I would fail again.
And again.
And probably many more agains.
But I knew that the blood-red lens would not only show me the truth,
But it would change that truth
And make me whole.

And then I woke up
And closed my Bible
And how about that?
It was all true


Copyright ©2009 by Michael Jones