I’m currently reading through the biblical book of Judges. It’s full of fascinating stories, but a bit hard to know what to make of, spiritually speaking. One of the most memorable tales is that of Jael. Jael invites one of her husband’s allies, a military commander named Sisera, to hide in her tent for safety when he is being hunted by the Israelite army. When he has fallen into an exhausted sleep, she hammers a tent stake through his head.
Judges devotes an entire chapter (Judges 5) to a victory song. It is raucous and over-the-top, full of wild boasting. There is something almost comical about its lavish praise for a housewife who brutally murdered a man in his sleep. The song takes a particularly dark turn in the final verses, where it revels in the thought of the dead man’s mother gazing out her window, waiting longingly for a son who will never return. Throughout all, God is zealously praised for being, the worshipper must assume, the mastermind of the victory.
In a time when everyone believed that victory in war was a sign of the favor of their gods, the song makes perfect sense. But viewing it from the distance of nearly 3500 years, I find myself wondering what God made of it. Did God revel in the credit, or roll his eyes and sigh at the braggadocio? Was God pleased to be praised for a skull with a hole and the tears of a faraway mother? Or were God’s thoughts on this seeming victory, and God’s involvement in it, more complicated than Israel was inclined to suppose?
But once I begin to ask such questions, a second set of questions present themselves, more disturbingly close to home. How many things have the rest of us celebrated—even praised God for—that God may not be so eager to have credited to heaven? How many times have we praised God for blessing us with abundance that is actually the fruit of unjust systems God opposes? How many times have we praised God for putting our people in power when that power was achieved by deception and distorted desires that are deeply anti-christ?
To be very clear, I am not speaking here of any one particular group. I cannot help suspecting that this kind of error is rather universal. We are all likely praising God for things that God would not claim, projecting our own corrupted desires onto God’s face. We are all so very certain that God is on our side and against our enemies, that ours is the righteous cause. How rarely we see the breadth and complexity of God’s full investments. How rarely we weigh the depths of God’s compassion for our enemy’s mother.
The more I think about it, the worse such false praise seems. Not only are we misunderstanding the true heart of God, we are rubbing God’s nose it, and calling this worship. We are sullying God’s reputation by attributing deeds God would not own. Yet it also seems clear from the biblical story that God is willing to be so sullied. God’s patience and humility extends to even this—bearing with our tragic misjudgments, accepting our flawed and broken praises, remaining in close relationship with us even amid our deepest errors.
I’m so grateful to God for receiving ancient Israel’s broken praises as well as ours today. But I also find myself wanting to learn to praise God more for the things that God celebrates in God’s self. I want to honor God for the things which God finds most worthy of honor. It’s a fascinating exercise to sit down and try to see and name that which is lovely and good and most often unpraised about God’s engagement with the world as revealed in Jesus Christ:
God, we praise you for your patience, against which we chafe and rebel, but which has spared us all a thousand times.
We praise you for loving what is lowly and despised and seems to the rest of us unlovable.
We praise you for seeing, and knowing, and seeking our wholeness and not merely our comfort.
We praise you for providentially working in history toward long-term good over short-term gain.
We praise you for all that you have been willing to lose for love, and the losses you permit in us so that we, with you, can overcome evil.
We praise you for your presence in the darkness, and the unique gifts that grow where you are the only light.
We praise you for the humility shown in your willingness to be misrepresented and misunderstood while remaining for us, and associated with us.
God, deliver us from the idols revealed by our distorted praises. Teach us to worship, as Jesus says You desire, in spirit and in truth.
