CYOA - Psalm 137 - Positive Ethnocentrism

Psalm 137

1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept

when we remembered Zion.

2 There on the poplars

we hung our harps,

3 for there our captors asked us for songs,

our tormentors demanded songs of joy;

they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

4 How can we sing the songs of the LORD

while in a foreign land?

5 If I forget you, Jerusalem,

may my right hand forget its skill.

6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth

if I do not remember you,

if I do not consider Jerusalem

my highest joy.

7 Remember, LORD, what the Edomites did

on the day Jerusalem fell.

“Tear it down,” they cried,

“tear it down to its foundations!”

8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,

happy is the one who repays you

according to what you have done to us.

9 Happy is the one who seizes your infants

and dashes them against the rocks.

This choose your own adventure begins with Bob Marley. I cannot read this psalm without thinking about Bob, and "by the rivers of Babylon". It also triggers of memories my high school days when I went through a fad of listening to a lot of Bob and ended my sentences with "no worries" or "relax". Oh to be young and believe that everything would just work out if everyone chilled out and took the world a little less seriously.

Now, however, I longer know this psalm by the first verse, but by the last. Dashing infants on rocks, it is infamous for projecting an angry wrathful God who would be pleased with this. There is much that can and has been said about this psalm of lament. One could focus on the understanding of God, the cycle of call and answer that one finds in the Psalms, or the historicity of the exile. I, however, would like to comment on the ethnocentrism of this Psalm. Before one gets his or her panties in a bunch about saying things like this about the Bible, please step back and attempt to view this as objectively as you can, with as little emotion as possible (this being the complete opposite of how I believe one is to read psalms, as they are inherently emotional and illogical), by taking this approach one may see things in this Psalm that are often taken for granted.

I would like to point out the Jerusalem centrism in this psalm. It is all over, Jerusalem, Zion, and "you" are all used to represent the ethnocentric home of the exiled Jews who presumably wrote this psalm. I find that this nears humorous proportions when we sing the popular praise song "God of this City" in churches. If one were to read this psalm and then critically look at that song one would instantly recognize the inherent dissonance between them. If taking them literally, the Lord in this psalm cannot be the God of this city, as the Lord of the Psalm is for Jerusalem and implicitly against the other cities, "Babylon". So it only takes the a little comparison between our contemporary theology of praise music and the literal writing of a past age to see that at all time the God one is calling upon is inherently ethnocentric.

To take the first point a little further. I find verse 3 and 4 incredibly enlightening as the request is to sign a song of Zion (a mountain) and the response is about singing songs of the Lord. I find this intriguing as it reveals the tendency of God to be described tangibly as human, or as concepts humans readily understand such as mountains. Whatever one believe about the Bible being the word of God or not, and how one understand to read it, the stories in the Bible reveal a God that always works through humans. This is extremely comforting to some as it raises the status and responsibility of humanity as image bearers of God. Others, however, see the same evidence as humanity simply projecting itself as God. Too be honest, this might be closer to how I am currently understanding it, especially when one takes seriously the last verse of this psalm. This I do not think is all bad though. If everyone is projecting a God from his or her own point of view there will certainly be discrepancies, but there will also be overlap. Right now I am finding solace in some of the overlap after being confronted by a lot of the discrepancies, specifically my own personal projections of God and how they come into conflict or result in dissonance when confronting reality. The great thing I find when I read the Bible through this lens is the personalities that collide in their testimony and projection about God, they seem to be all over the map. A bunch of raging Jews in exile here is in Psalm 137 are contradicted a page later by the praises of David. It is incredibly humbling and also uplifting to understand that my own raging in life is adding to this dialogue that has been going on for thousands of years. What I say can be completely true in its moment and clash violently with something someone else says in the next moment which is also completely true. Then in that space, that bit of chaos, where something is said that neither of the two voices might have said. What might be being said as we are all raging or praising God is that there is something that is being raged about, and even through it might have just been projections to begin with there is something in that moment that exists outside of either person.

So I am quite happy to say that there are infants dashed against rocks, because it for me is a moment of emotion caught out of time and recorded, so that when others clash with it in our generation and generations to come there will be moments and glimpses of synergy where things exist by multiple witnesses. I am also happy this is included because it permits me to engage in culture widely. There are moments of dashing infants against rocks all around us in the world, real and perceived injustice occur leading to laments that near the cries of dashing infants. If these laments are not yours currently don't write them off to quickly. It might be the lack of these moments that have resulted in our inability to understand a dialogue from multiple witnesses as recorded in the text. I find these many voices helpful as it enables me to engage culture actively. I understand that there are many voices adding to the dialogue and that some of them may look harsh but as we see here there are equally harsh voices within the text as well. So when Lady Gaga proclaims pop music is our religion I can affirm and disagree with the truth she is stating. When her voice is dealing with issues the church is too afraid to dialogue about she may come off sounding like she is about to smash infants, but it is probably a voice we then need to pay all the more attention to. There will always be many voices from many sides, all equally ethnocentric, one must deal with them or revert to ignorant hypocrisy of pretending ones own ethnocentric position is the correct position, something the Bible does not even claim. Even though much of the Bible was indeed compiled within Palestine to be considered legitimate, there are other voices from the diaspora such as Esther or Daniel, or in the NT the Epistles or John's writing from Patmos. The Bible is one great mess of relativity and conflicting ethnocentric perspectives, and that is why it is endlessly intriguing to study as those perspectives will continue to clash and dialogue with our own ethnocentrism.