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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
July 27, 2003
Yea, though I walk
"Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies." This is one of the "hard lines" in the Psalms -- hard to understand for a person coming to the Bible with glib post-modern expectations of what he will find there. Many such must expect everything in the Bible to be "lovey-dovey"; for that is what they've heard preached directly or indirectly from the pulpits of the mainstream liberal churches. "Whatever you do you gotta love everybody." And there are few restrictions on the "whatever you do" which means the "gotta love" is cheap cheap cheap and shallow. I chose the line because it is from Psalm XXIII The Lord is My Shepherd the one psalm everyone still knows. The idea comes across clearest in the wording of the 1650 Scottish Psalter which is metrical and delightful to sing: "My table Thou hast furnish?d / In presence of my foes; / My head Thou dost with oil anoint / And my cup overflows." Now think about this fine old Hebrew sentiment for a moment which I will now translate into plain contemporary language: "Let my starving enemy watch me eat." Even the idea of praying for oneself has been mostly banished from the post-modern mind which assumes that such a thing must be intrinsically selfish. This is because that mind is focused exclusively upon the person at prayer and does not notice the other party in the communication. The other party is God and the selflessness that is commanded of the praying Christian is only secondarily towards his neighbour. Nor can it be correctly phrased towards his neighbour if it is not primarily directed towards God. It is to God one humbles oneself not towards another human being. The latter kind of humility is not "godly" at all; it is instead one of the many kinds of idolatry. Note this paradox: that people who are self-obsessed assume that the pursuit of self-interest is intrinsically wrong. Not wrong when it leads to some specific evil but wrong in itself. This lying to themselves is at the root of their vanity their narcissism: they are so self-obsessed that they deny even their own self-interest. I know that is itself a hard thought to assimilate but worth the mulling for it helps explain so much of the politics today -- in church and out -- that is loosely called "liberal"; the fay rhetoric which declares "our side" must be in the wrong since we are acting in self-interest or even self-defence. It is near the root of all the nonsense of "multiculturalism" in which we abase our own culture in order to admit the claims of all other cultures while confusing between the individual and the collective thus blinding ourselves to what is truly common to all civilized men. The issue was put front-and-centre this week when U.S. soldiers in Iraq managed to kill Uday and Qusay Hussein the ex-tyrant's two despicable sons. I won't even argue with those who say the Americans "should have taken them alive" -- for that is a view so inconversant with the known facts as to betoken dementia. Superhuman as they may sometimes appear not even the U.S. 101st Airborne can take alive people determined to die avoiding capture. For the sake of Iraq however -- for the whole people as opposed to some small and malignant minority of Saddamite or Islamist terrorists -- it was better to kill Uday and Qusay outright than preserve them for whatever information they might or might not impart. This is because they were monsters whom the whole country feared and with cause. So long as they remained alive every Iraqi could imagine they might find a way back to power. A crucial part of the rebuilding of Iraq is being free of such monsters -- of knowing the nightmare is over. Across Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq people exulted in the news. And they were right to exult for the same reason they were right to exult in the liberation of their capital city on April 9th. No possible future even under American tutelage could be as bad for the great majority of them as the future under Saddam Hussein would have been. And the only news better than that of the deaths of Saddam's sons and heirs would be the death of their father. May he be killed soon. Likewise it was right for Americans and all lovers of liberty to exult in two profoundly rightful killings. Justice was served in an instance where mercy could only have been granted at the price of injustice. The Christian had every business going to church to thank God for this deliverance from evil. He has every business feeling joy that God has delivered. His prayers if for the souls of the malefactors may remain private; they cannot be publicly understood. We pray instead in victory for the souls of all the many thousands the tens and hundreds of thousands of innocent and helpless victims that these tyrants tortured and killed. And for their survivors who can now sleep in the knowledge that justice is served. And the words of that prayer might well be those of the Psalmist: "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over." For it is in such moments as this that we discover the meaning of the hard lines; and the joy in them -- the joy of God's mercy working in this instance for the people of Iraq. The joy for the Americans in having been the instruments of God's mercy. It is not "sick" to express this joy. It is instead both natural and proper. It is rather "sick" not to dance as the Psalmist danced in the deliverance of his people. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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