WHO ARE WE when we’re with other people? What do we let them see of our inner life, our thoughts and emotions, our hopes and desires, our pride and our shame? Even when we’re among other Christians, does it feel safe to be honest?

And how do we pray, especially when others hear what we say? Sometimes, there’s a bit of a performance issue involved; we feel the need to “get it right.” We fall reflexively into churchspeak, using words and phrases that we would never use outside the church context.

And above all, we keep it nice, polite, genteel. Ranting and raving are not allowed, and negativity has to be recast into some more acceptable form. After all, what would people think?

Or more importantly: what would God think?

Then we stumble across the so-called imprecatory psalms, the psalms in which the poets curse their enemies, sometimes taking it for granted that their enemies are God’s enemies. As we saw in the previous post, the words can be harsh and filled with disgust. There’s no attempt to pretty up the language; it’s an honest expression of hatred.

Imagine praying that way at church.

As Christians, we follow a Lord whose ministry of compassion embraced people whom the religious elite held at arm’s length. Jesus was routinely criticized for enjoying table fellowship with outcasts. One of his inner circle was a former tax-gatherer. He healed people in a way that would have made him ritually unclean, touching a leper or taking a dead girl by the hand. And he took upon himself all the righteous punishment due to humanity for the curse of sin.

So how, as Christians, are we supposed to take the curses we read in the psalms?

Psalm 139 can help. While some curses are left hanging (again, Psalm 137 is the prime example of this), the violent language in Psalm 139 should be read in the context of the rest of the psalm. Here are the words again, this time, with the final two verses included:

If only you, God, would slay the wicked!
    Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
They speak of you with evil intent;
    your adversaries misuse your name.
Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord,
    and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
I have nothing but hatred for them;
    I count them my enemies.
Search me, God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting. (Ps 139:19-24, NIV)

If the hateful words were taken away, the psalm would be consistent and coherent. The prayer, “Search me, God, and know my heart,” is a direct echo of the way the psalm began: “You have searched me, LORD, and you know me.” The psalmist, in other words, is only asking God to do what God already does. It’s a prayer of open-hearted submission to the God who already knows all anyway.

But this is also the first mention of what the New International Version translates as “anxious thoughts.” There’s no hint of this in the rest of the psalm; the tone throughout is filled with worshipful wonder. So to what “anxious thoughts” is the psalmist referring?

The word is only used twice in the Old Testament, both times in the Psalms. Here’s the other use of it (where it’s translated as merely “anxiety”), with a few verses added for context:

Who will rise up for me against the wicked?
    Who will take a stand for me against evildoers?
Unless the LORD had given me help,
    I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death.
When I said, “My foot is slipping,”
    your unfailing love, LORD, supported me.
When anxiety was great within me,
    your consolation brought me joy. (Ps 94:16-19)

In both psalms, the reason for the psalmist’s anxiety is wicked enemies rather than, say, an upcoming job interview. For that reason, I’d argue that we not only need the final prayer in Psalm 139 to read the curse rightly, but vice versa: we need the curse to read the prayer rightly. The two go together.

Thus, I would read the flow of the psalm this way. First, the psalmist marvels at length over the omniscience and omnipresence of God. These aren’t just theological abstractions to the poet, but the reason for the psalmist’s deep sense of being intimately known and loved. Second, however, the psalmist’s wonder at everything that’s right reminds him of everything that’s wrong, just as the worship of the righteous God should have its flip side in the horror at sin. The psalmist knows full well that there are many people in the world who speak blasphemously about God and love violence instead.

But then, finally, the psalmist becomes aware that his own hatred may not itself be pure. He wants to be righteous, not hypocritically self-righteous. And thus the poet actively opens his heart to God, asking for God to root out any hurtfulness in him.

So let it be said: God can handle “ugly” but honest prayer (or for that matter, ugly words set to music). We speak our hearts but also open them to God. And as we’ll see, when we open ourselves in that way, we must be willing to listen when God tells us we need to change our hearts.