Quote:
Originally Posted by awareness
Psalms seems to slip in and out on expressing Christ. It's hard to hold to both Jesus and bashing babies against stones. It produces cognitive dissonance ; that has to be dealt with, one way or another.
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The OT is a violent place, for sure. But I don't see why I, even as a Christian, should be uncomfortable with that. To me that is like being uncomfortable with evolution because big, nasty dinosaurs chewed on each other with sharp teeth. It is what it is; deal with it.
The way the NT writers dealt with it, as I understand, is allegory.
"Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children." In other words, we draw understanding of past events by looking at them with the spiritual lense of born-again believers, who are of course supposed to not be violent, physically. But there
is a violent struggle in the New Testament: it is in the unseen and eternal realm (e.g. Matt. 11:12; 2 Cor. 10:4). So Psalm 137 may have relevance, allegorically (and obviously
not physically).
Quote:
Originally Posted by awareness
One reaction is to just dismiss it as "not being the Word of God." Another is to twist it into a metaphor, that means dealing with the little rebellions, by metaphorically bashing them into stones. Witness Lee went with the former.
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I have two problems with WL dismissing the word. One is that he loved allegories: why just dismiss the word here? Why not try to see something? Given his penchant for metaphor, the question seems relevant.
Two, why does WL think God suddenly becomes physically violent again, at the end of the NT? I am referring to the book of Revelation. Suddenly God starts slaughtering people again. WL basically said, "The age of grace is over -- time for blood". I find that more uncomfortable, as a Christian, than the statement in Psalm 137:9.
I know some Christians also interpret Revelation allegorically. So when the text says "frogs" or "blood" they think it means something spiritual. But WL took it as physical, and literal, as many Christians do. I would prefer to interpret both Psalm 137:9 AND the book of Revelation metaphorically. Not saying that's right, just that it is an option, and my preference.
But the question remains: why did WL the obsessive allegorizer refuse to allegorize in the Psalms. It really seems out of character.