Review A God of Vengeance?
God of vengeance takes a hands on look at the darker side of Psalms. It’s revealing the darkness, anger and overall mess that people find themselves in. From everything being addressed as if God is responsible. Then Psalm about animals and powerful people being to blame? With intense visual imagery and constant downtrodden woes, the psalms are fixed on praising God regardless of circumstances. This book reveals just how heavy the psalms are. So much so that many people do not even read them. The immense build ups concerning people's experiences are often too much for people to grasp. Yet that is what the psalms are, an experience. As a reader you must allow for an emotional response to take place. A position must
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They take on more musical positions, but also through media. One of the more common psalms heard today is through the news. Whether on television or over radio, suffering is everywhere. Songs are written in response, but they don't really have any direct affect on the sufferer. This is except for the blessing that music can be. Which a psalm often is, and so long as it's heard it can have an impact. Psalms are also used in a variety of societal normalcy. People actually hear them often and are unaware. However for those who are aware, the psalms act as a reminder to take action. This action can be noted through doing something concerning the plight. It can also mean praying fervently for the needs of …show more content…
For the reader a simple question could be asked- is this really what they want? or are they just projecting deep emotions? I think that most of these writers are simply projecting. They are in such great need that they are literally crying out to God for help in violent ways. For the untrained eye though, or person who is foreign to violence the contents of such psalms can be alarming. So often people just dismiss what could potentially change their very lives. A new way to cry out to God and be free of such craziness that could potentially cause harm. There is also the element that people forget connected to Genesis. That chaos is very real and must be ordered through words and action. Put simply the world, and the powerful are chaotic and make chaos more potent. This in turn causes God’s people to pray for God to intervene because of its destructive driving force which can destroy people. Prayer is the connection to God, and everyone must do it. God, more than anything wants his people to talk to him. He wants to hear them and he wants to respond. God though need first for people to communicate. What is so shocking about the imprecatory psalms though is there content. It’s what God wants though. He wants his people experience to be communicated. God knows what people need, and he knows that people's words are powerful for them, and for others. People must speak and get all of the
Many people know the Christian God as happy, forgiving, and accepting of others. In the Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Jonathan Edwards’ sermon completely shocks and scares people by claiming that the Christian God is the only God, and if you weren’t to believe in him, you would burn in Hell and be destroyed. The tone of this piece in the eyes of Edwards is dedicated, passionate, and pro-Christian God. Edward achieves his purpose by using metaphors, repetition, personification, and visual imagery numerously throughout the sermon.
Between the covers of the book Night is the story of a boy who had to endure the constant threat of death. He had to watch as other perished, family, friends, strangers, everyone. Yet his God had done nothing. He remained unmoved and silent. How could a God he was taught to look upon when anguished allow such savagery to
St. Albans Psalter Psalm 68 is not long, but it does have lots of detailed material to study the author’s choice of language, and the power of the images that are being conveyed to the readers through an emotional and sentimental way. The simplicity of this psalm’s gives it power, since it expresses an emotional despair in a careful shaped prayer, which comes from a human being in what seems to be a life-threatening situation. In the image and the content, the psalmist’s travels an arc of desperation to salvation, in a vivid personal plea to Christ to save him from what seems to be a swirling vortex of hopelessness that threatens to pull him under forever.
In the first chapter of God Behaving Badly, David Lamb argues that God is unfairly given a bad reputation. He claims these negative perceptions are fueled by pop culture and lead many to believe the lie that the God of the Old Testament is angry, sexist, racist, violent, legalistic, rigid, and distant. These negative perceptions, in turn, affect our faith. Ultimately, Lamb seeks to demonstrate that historical context disproves the presumptuous aforementioned. In addition, he defends his position by citing patterns of descriptions that characterize God throughout the Old Testament. “Our image of God will directly affect how we either pursue or avoid God. If we believe that the God of the Old Testament is really harsh, unfair and cruel, we won’t want anything to do with him” (Lamb 22). Clearly, they way Christians choose to see God will shape their relationship with Him.
Webster’s online dictionary defines a psalm as, “a sacred song or poem used in worship”. dictionary Clearly, when Joseph Smith translated the plates, he wasn’t given a musical score to accompany 2 Nephi 4. Thus, we will analyze the poetic nature of the passage. Often times we think of poetry in a very limited sense. We imagine rhyming, rhythmic language, or alliteration—but poetry is much more. Doctor Steven P. Sondrup says, “Poetry can be viewed more broadly and taken to include all those utterances in which language artfully and significantly draws attention to itself by the intensification of its own linguistic and formal properties”.1
The question of why bad things happen to good people has perplexed and angered humans throughout history. The most common remedy to ease the confusion is to discover the inflicter of the undeserved suffering and direct the anger at them: the horror felt about the Holocaust can be re-directed in the short term by transforming Adolf Hitler into Lucifer and vilifying him, and, in the long term, can be used as a healing device when it is turned into education to assure that such an atrocity is never repeated. What, however, can be done with the distasteful emotions felt about the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Surely the citizens of those two cities did not themselves directly provoke the government of the United States to deserve the horror of a nuclear attack. Can it be doubted that their sufferings were undeserved and should cause deep sorrow, regret, and anger? Yet for the citizens of the United States to confront these emotions they must also confront the failings of their own government. A similar problem is found in two works of literature, Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and the book of Job found in the Tanakh. In each of these works a good man is seen to be suffering at the hand of his god; Prometheus is chained to a rock by Zeus who then sends an eagle to daily eat Prometheus' liver while Job is made destitute and brought to endure physical pain through an agreement between God~ and Satan. To examine the travails of these two men is to discover two vastly different concepts of the relationship between god and man.
Introduction Psalm 19 is a very special Psalm because it clearly proclaims the glory of God as revealed through God’s creation and by God’s word. Psalm 19 describes how the glory of God and the knowledge of God’s attributes can be seen and understood through the natural revelation of his creation. Psalm 19 also describes how the special revelation of God’s law more specifically proclaims God’s character and provides wisdom, joy, and light to those who live by that law. The special nature of Psalm 19 was noted by C.S. Lewis in his book Reflections on the Psalms; Lewis stated “I take this to be the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world.”
N. T. Wright’s The Case for the Psalms: Why They Are Essential reminds us of the differences found within the importance of God’s time, space, and matter in comparison to our time, space and matter perspectives. In our limited human capacity we as human kind take our miscues from the human perspective when chasing after the material gains of this world as we put our prayerful meditations and relationships to God on the back burner of our lives while redirecting our energies toward the relationships we cultivate with our wealth. If we as Christian cultivate our relationship with God we will be recognize the wealth we seek can only be found in our relationship with Our Father and Our Savior Jesus Christ as He is the provider of our wealth. He sees clearly our needs providing for them daily. If we could see the realities of our time, spac...
Such is the greatness of these characters' vengeful natures that only through the divine is there an end to this violent circle of vengeful retribution. It is through the chorus of the Argive Elders that one begins to see the significance of the increasing role of vengeance as an underlying theme in the trilogy. In volume one the chorus speaks of "Atreus' sons and their quarrels" (18) and the discontent of the citizens because "their voice is dull with hatred" (18). Already, the outsider begins to understand the setting of events for which this trilogy will exemplify.... ...
Psalm 89 of the Book of Psalms, advocates the message of consequentialism, foreground by man’s relationship with God, with direct lin...
Psalm 113 reads like a 1st century pep talk for those with spiritual burnout. The writer makes his case for the Lord by pointing to the many ways that God earns our praise. These nine verses of scripture are saturated with three specific reasons to praise the Lord – He is Su...
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God , "The God that holds you over the
Today’s culture is one where people like to do as little work as possible. Even when it comes to reading our own scripture, The Holy Words of God, a lot of people like to look up one verse and reference it to something without knowing what the rest of the passage says. Psalms 109 is no exception, it is one the more widely misused passages as of late. A popular verse from Psalms 109 is verse 8 which reads “Let his days be few; and let another take his office”, this is seen in reference to our current president, but what people fail to realize is what else David is actually praying. This paper is going to go through Psalms 109 and unpack it verse by verse to show the true meaning of what David was praying and to give us a new look at how to pray.
Psalm 43 is a cry to God: “Judge me O God and plead my cause against