I've had this running round my head for a couple of weeks.

Back at the beginning of the year I decided I'd read the bible through again. I've done it a couple of times before - no biggie - but it's good to make sure you see the bits that don't often get a visit in normal circumstances. For me that includes Psalms.

I have an issue with Psalms.

While vary a bit, the common theme is "God, you're all powerful, come and kill my enemies and bless me above others".

Reading through this section is something I've struggled with more than at other times as the apparent self-promotion and desire to destroy opposition has been much more noticeable than before.

As a result of a visit from Ron and Mary MacClean (from Winnipeg) a few years back we went through a phase of refocussing on God-oriented worship and stopped singing a lot of the songs that focussed on I, me and us. Yet here are the psalms, absolutely full of I, me and mine. On top of that I'm trying to understand how it was OK for all these to call for the physical death and destruction of those that rejected God.

Now I accept there is more to this than meets the eye. At the time of writing it wasn't unusual for an enemy to expect to kill and maim their opponent, so in this respect the literal death of one's enemies might well bring peace and rest, yet it still didn't sit right with me. A recent post by Marc also had me thinking. His point from reading Justo Gonzalez book was that Jewishness was fine with the early church. I have some significant reservations over that. I'd suspect that they were having to do a considerable amount of re-interpretation and adjustment of their understanding for just the reasons above.

So back to why are these psalms in the bible? I dunno!

However I do wonder if they're there because they are an authentic expression of how the Jews saw God and man from the time of David through to after Israel's return from captivity in Babylon. If I 'squint with my spirit' I can see the canon of scripture in Psalms, but there's something in them that grates. Or maybe, as some of the right-wing evangelical Christian Americans I've discussed stuff with might suggest: I'm just a soft and wishy-washy liberal with no moral backbone, and the death and shame of one's enemies if perfectly fine by God? I dunno - still working things through.