Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Psalm 14


"There's no God." According to our Psalmist, only a fool would say such a thing. I suppose, then, I would be among the fools of this world. And, to be honest, I don't know if that's the most foolish answer to the evil that runs rampant in this world.


That's not a typical devotion-style statement, I suppose. I should probably be writing that I agree with the Psalmist and those nonbelievers out there are ignorant. How could anyone (anyone!) ever say that there is no loving God with, as the old song says, the whole world in hand? Well, honestly, it's not that hard.


The ten-dollar word for trying to reconcile an evil world with a good God is theodicy. It's a fancy way of saying that we have no idea why people fly planes into towers, why politicians start wars, or why the forces of nature can shatter dreams in the course of a few hours. But this doesn't mean people don't keep trying to explain it. And one very real explanation for it, according to many (and at one time myself) is, as the Hebrew literally says, "No God."


You can imagine that I don't take too kindly to being called a fool. Personally, I put a great deal of thought into my beliefs even during my atheist days when I determined that I didn't believe in anything. Saying that my conclusions were foolish is a bit condescending. In fact, I'm tempted to tell the Psalmist what lake into which he should take a plunge.


But then I began to look at the word we so often render as "fool."


For us, a foolish person is one who is someone who doesn't put a lot of thought into what they're doing. Perhaps they're ignorant. Perhaps they're running off half-cocked. Whatever, they're someone whose word shouldn't carry a whole lot of weight.


But the word we have here is not about ignorance or bad conclusions, but about worth. Particularly, it's a word that relates to a person's worth to those around them. It would, for us, be closer to the meaning if we were to say that the one who has nothing to offer others says, "No God."


This, of course, has an entirely different meaning for me. No longer is the Psalmist questioning my reasoning, but is instead letting me know that my well-formed thesis isn't doing anyone any good at all. In fact, while I think it's an explanation for the pain and suffering in this world, it's as worthless to the hurting as…well as water to those who are drowning.


What does this have to do with our daily life? Maybe you've never questioned God's existence. Or maybe you've never worried about why bad things happen in the world. But many of us have been tempted to explain those moments when the idea of a world "God so loved" seems at odds with the surrounding reality. And in those times the Psalmist comes to us again, reminding us how worthless such explanations are to those in pain.


God of every moment, help me when confronted by suffering in life to look for where you are rather than where you weren't.