O Jehovah, do not rebuke me in Your anger; nor chasten me in the heat of Your fury; have mercy on me, O Jehovah, for I am weak; heal me, O Jehovah, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled and You, O Jehovah, until when? O Jehovah, return, deliver my soul; save me for Your mercy’s sake. For there is no memory of You in death; who shall give thanks to You in Sheol? I am weary in my groaning; I shall make my bed swim in all the night; I melt my couch with my tears. My eye is dim because of grief; it wastes away because of all those distressing me. Depart from me, all workers of iniquity, for Jehovah has heard the voice of my weeping. Jehovah has heard my plea; Jehovah will receive my prayer. Let all my enemies be ashamed and greatly troubled; they shall turn back, ashamed in a moment. (Psalm 6:1-10)
…temptations involve feelings of doubt regarding the Lord’s presence and mercy, and also regarding His salvation. The evil spirits who are present with man at such times and who are the cause of temptation do all they can to infuse a negative outlook, but good spirits and angels from the Lord in every way disperse that doubting attitude, all the time preserving a feeling of hope and in the end strengthening an affirmative outlook. Consequently, a person undergoing temptation hangs between a negative outlook and an affirmative outlook. Anyone who gives way in temptation remains in a doubting, and sinks into a negative, frame of mind, whereas one who overcomes still experiences feelings of doubt; yet he who allows himself to be filled with hope remains steadfastly in an affirmative outlook. (Arcana Coelestia 2338)
In our exploration of Psalm 2 we saw that the Lord is never angry with anyone, and that in Him, who is Divine Love and Wisdom, there is nothing that even resembles fury. So the Psalmist’s cry, Jehovah, do not rebuke me in Your anger; nor chasten me in the heat of Your fury, is not a statement concerning the nature of the Divine. Instead it is a statement which captures the nature of the doubts that enter a person’s mind when in the midst of spiritual temptation, because for a temptation to be temptation, there must be doubt. So, the truth of this verse relates to the spiritual fact that when we enter into states of feeling distressed or anxious, thoughts then arise which cast doubt on what spiritual truths and principles offer us. For spiritual truths teach that the Divine is love and wisdom, and that from love by means of wisdom the Lord governs all things down to the smallest detail of each and every one of our lives, and that it is an impossibility for the Divine to be angry or furious with anyone. Now we may say that we believe this on one level but often we find another belief at work in how we respond when we are actually in a state of spiritual temptation. When states of anxiety grip us and we feel distant from God, false ideas flood in and the truths which we hold are twisted in our minds. For example, if God is the cause of all things then when something unpleasant occurs we can easily slip into thinking that God is unhappy with us, that we must have done something to earn his anger and displeasure, and so interpret what’s happening to us as some sort of rebuke or chastisement from Him.
We need to be aware of how the mind works when we are faced with states of difficulty in the spiritual life because this kind of understanding is able to sustain us in times of doubt, even though it may feel as if we are falling apart. In basic terms, our mind is motivated to find the reason for things. We are constantly in the question of why which becomes obvious when we are in difficulties. Why is this happening? Why me? are common human responses to adversity in life. And this is just the same in our inner life when we experience challenging states of mind – often our first response is to unconsciously begin to look for why we are feeling the way we are. This automatic unconscious nature is something that we need to be aware of because what is operating and capturing our attention at this point are the reasoning functions of the lower mind.
This level of mind is open to lower spiritual influences that are opposed to the spiritual life. Reasoning from this level of mind is based on an acceptance that how we feel is true, which opens the gate for thoughts to arise that look to confirm and justify the feeling, and so to justify the love that is driving it. We then fall into forming conclusions, like the Psalmist, who is in a state of having lost sight of what truths teach, and concludes wrongly that God is bringing these difficulties upon him because he has offended Him is some way.
Spiritual Christianity asks us to step into a practice of conscious attention in life. This involves learning how to bring spiritual or higher truths to bear on our lower states of life so that we are able to be more conscious of when lower levels of mind are active and casting doubt on what spiritual truths teach. The more aware we are of how this level of life captures our attention so that we lose sight of truths, the better prepared we can be in being able to work with the Lord in order to have them managed.
We also need to realise that the only way we can be strengthened in spiritual principles from the Word, and so in the spiritual life, is through experiencing spiritual temptations or difficulties, along with the doubts they draw out. This idea of drawing out doubts is a very important point. Temptations do not cause us to doubt, they merely highlight states of doubt that already exist in us due to the false beliefs that we hold onto and cherish. The process of temptation is the means by which these false beliefs are brought into our conscious awareness, drawn out, so to speak, into the light that truth offers so that we may see them and acknowledge them for what they are. The appearance is that temptation causes us to doubt because our experience of the process is that the doubt follows on from temptation. But this is an appearance. Doubt exists because of the false beliefs that we hold onto, and so inner conflict arises when the truths we are seeking to live from are attacked by the falsities that exist in our lower mind.
The spiritual meaning of verse two reveals a growing understanding of what belongs to the process in the midst of temptation.
…have mercy on me, O Jehovah, for I am weak; heal me, O Jehovah, for my bones are troubled.
One of the goods that results from temptation is the implanting within us of a sense of our utter dependence on the Word as the Lord for our life. For even though the work of struggling with doubt feels like ours, it’s all the work of the Lord and the process of coming to experience this in these difficult times is what instills the very truth that the Lord as the Word is who He says He is. This truth is the Divine in us and it is this which fights for us and pushes back against the things that are opposed to the spiritual life. This is why the Psalmist says,
have mercy or be gracious to me O Jehovah for I am weak
Here is an acknowledgement that in and of ourselves we are unable to lift one finger in support of our spiritual development but are utterly dependent on the truths of the Word to direct us. The call for healing, …heal me, O Jehovah, for my bones tremble…again speaks of how limited our own understanding of things is. Since all things in the Word describe spiritual realities in natural terms and the bones of the body forms its support structure, we can think of the bones as the basic mental structures around which our mind or sense of self is formed. The trembling of bones then represents the fragility of our sense of self when falsities and doubts attack those spiritual principles and truths that have yet to be fully integrated.
Commitment to Spiritual Christianity as a life practice may not be the most attractive pursuit from a natural perspective, as can be seen from our reading of the Psalm, but its appeal is not to what is lower in us but to what is higher. When we respond to truths, a higher level of life is awakened within us but our sense of self that is attached to what is lower resists this. This lower self seeks to undermine and pull down the higher levels of consciousness that the Word offers us. In the work of regeneration, the process of seeing this activity of the lower mind ultimately works to strengthen what is spiritual as our sense of self is extracted from these lower realms of mental life and planted in the goods and truths of the Word as the Lord instead.
When we know this, then we can be strengthened in this knowledge which is seen in the Psalmist’s final response to his predicament…
Depart from me, all workers of iniquity, for Jehovah has heard the voice of my weeping. Jehovah has heard my plea; Jehovah will receive my prayer. Let all my enemies be ashamed and greatly troubled; they shall turn back, ashamed in a moment.
Here we see that the experience of struggle and temptation has led to a new found confidence and trust in the Lord – that He does hear us and receive our prayer when we yield to truths as the basis for our spiritual life. Not that the Lord sets conditions on our being heard but spiritually, we have a sense of being heard, when adverse conditions recede and more favourable conditions begin to advance. The natural lower mind interprets favourable changes in its conditions as its prayer having ‘finally been heard’, but the spiritual higher mind knows that the Lord always hears. The spiritual mind also knows that whether the conditions are experienced as unfavourable or favourable, patience must be exercised so that the process might be seen through to completion and that the enemies of the spiritual life might be turned back at the precise moment which corresponds of course, to the Lord’s perfect timing.
Let all my enemies be ashamed and greatly troubled; they shall turn back, ashamed in a moment.