Search Me

           If only you, God, would slay the wicked! Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!  They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name. Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you? I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies. Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:19-24)

          Steam of consciousness thinking. As a literary art form, it supposedly began with Dorothy Richardson’s Pointed Roofs in 1915. Therapists had been using it for at least a couple decades before that, but it’s supposedly been around for 150 years. Like so much else about modernism, what’s new isn’t really new. David seems to have composed his songs using stream of consciousness. “God is omnipresent! God is omnipotent! God is Immanent! Oh God, kill these horrid people who bother me. They disgust me. Make sure I’m not like them.” I can understand completely why he would think that way. I’m not sure why he would write that way for public performance (inspiration might have something to do with it, or different ideas about what makes a song good.)

          But I’m glad he did write them this way, because his “shatter their teeth” verses have taught me that God can handle my anger. He doesn’t live in fear of it. It doesn’t overwhelm him the way some people have told me it overwhelms them. It’s safe for me to be angry around Him. I can even take my anger with Him to Him. And sometimes, David’s “shatter their teeth” passages are in different places in the song, places that show his working through the anger and back into a right place with God.

          That maybe what’s happening in the last verse. “Search me… try me… lead me…” I used to hate and fear that verse. If God were to search me, He’d find all the garbage I don’t want Him to see. He wouldn’t approve. He’d turn his back and walk away, abandoning me…  It took a long time to get past my abandonment issues and actually deal with the concepts of the rest of the psalm. He’s omniscient. He’s omnipresent. He’s omnipotent. He’s immanent. He knows. He loves. And because I am either so desperate or so desperately in love with Him, I have come to agree with David. I want God to search out and destroy the offensive ways He finds in my heart. I want Him to deal with and comfort my anxious thoughts. I want Him to lead, even if it’s through the valley of the shadow of death – especially if it’s through the valley of the shadow of death. In fact, one of the ways I’ve found I can gauge my spiritual health is by whether I can pray prayers like that aloud.