A Least Favorite Bible Passage

This is one of my (Bill) all-time least favorite passages in the Bible. I share it today because as I’ve been reading Tim Alberta’s masterful book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, these are the sorts of passages that have often been quoted by those who want to mingle church and state.

May the praise of God be in their mouths
    and a double-edged sword in their hands,
to inflict vengeance on the nations
    and punishment on the peoples,
to bind their kings with fetters,
    their nobles with shackles of iron,
to carry out the sentence written against them—
    this is the glory of all his faithful people. - Psalm 149:7-10

These violent passages are often taken out of context and used to justify all sorts of behavior that we’d never see a hint of in the life of Jesus. So what do we do with this sort of bible passage? (and there are plenty of them!) There are a couple of things I find myself doing, and perhaps you have another approach (I’d be glad to hear it!).

The first thing is that I always allow myself a healthy does of suspicion when someone uses a passage like this to justify some sort of action. Hardly ever is the action one that is enacting the love of Jesus. Virtually always it’s an action of othering and vilifying someone else. Jesus encountered plenty of religious types who tried to use scripture to inflict some sort of violence against another (for example the men he caught in hypocrisy in John 8). This suspicion gives me the permission to redirect my attention away from the violent use of scripture and towards Jesus.

The second thing I find myself doing is showing empathy towards the author of this (and other) violent passages. I know what it’s like to get angry. I know what scary thoughts go through my mind; I know what awful emotions run through my veins. In some ways, the author of this Psalm is more honest and authentic than I am - they write it down and talk to God about it. I spend my time pretending I’m a virtuous person, and my anger leaks out on others.

What do you do with these passages when you read them or when others seem to be using them for political gain?