Country Music and the Psalms

I haven't written anything for awhile, mostly due to the fact that I have been tremendously busy these last couple months. However, tonight I managed to find a few spare minutes to write some stuff down. I sometimes get into a mood where I just want to listen to some sad country music. I'm not sure why, all the time. It's not as if I'm depressed or anything, there's just something about listening to sad country songs and spending some time in introspection.

I was thinking about sad country songs (or any other sad songs, for that matter), and how similar they are to a lot of the Psalms. Now, when we read the Psalms, I think we mostly like to read the ones that are very encouraging. Maybe the old favorite, Psalm 23, which arouses a deep comfort in the image of God as a shepherd. Or maybe when we've sinned we like Psalm 51 where David asks God's forgiveness for his affair with Bathsheba. I love those Psalms and the messages of encouragement they bring to me and everybody else when they read them. Tonight, however, I was thinking about some of the more depressing Psalms. The ones in which the Psalmist cries out for justice and vengeance on his enemies. The ones that sort of make us uncomfortable to read (For example, in Psalm 137, the Psalmist basically says "It's going to be great for the guy who throws your babies into the rocks and kills them!"). There are a lot of those Psalms that are really uplifting and encouraging, but there are also those that are just downright depressing or offensive. They are called the Imprecatory Psalms.

What do we make of these Imprecatory Psalms? I believe that all scripture is inspired by God and is useful for faith and practice, even these Psalms that do not necessarily leave me with a feelings of hope, forgiveness, and love for my enemies. Do these Psalms, such as Psalm 137, mean to say it is perfectly alright to wish evil upon everyone who wrongs me, or that it's fine to throw babies on rocks? Not at all. What these Psalms tell me is that God is big enough to handle our problems. What the Psalmists were feeling when they wrote these Psalms calling out to God to curse and destroy there enemies is something that each one of us is perfectly capable of feeling; most of us probably have felt that angry and upset at some point. That's part of being a human in this world that is still rife with sin. I watched a video clip of Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann discussing the Imprecatory Psalms, which I shall attach. He makes the point that Christians often don't use these Psalms because we Christians, of course, never ever feel the way the psalmists do. Right? However, in these Psalms which are depressing and angry, we have the psalmist being real with God. God is a God of truth. He is truth, and he loves the truth. The truth is, we people don't always feel we can tell the truth to God when it comes to how we are feeling about the problems of the world. However, God knows how we really feel, and what we really want. So why not be honest with Him?

Bringing this back to country music, many people I know say they don't like country music because it can be so depressing. It's all about you're woman leaving you, or it's about people getting depressed and drinking, they say. Of course, not all of it is, but there is a fair share of the music that does contain those elements. However, there is something therapeutic about listening to it at times. There is something about listening to a sad country song that just makes you feel better about your situation, whether it's bad or good at the moment. It gives you a kind of resolve to weather the next crisis. In other words, it connects with what is real in life at some level. The Imprecatory Psalms do the same thing. They're sad and make you wonder if the psalmist just went out and hanged himself after writing it, but it connects well with reality. You can relate to those feelings in the country music or the Psalms. Sometimes I just like to listen to sad songs and think. In the words of Elton John, "sad songs say so much."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDfzzJD8IpI