The Bible contains a number of imprecatory or cursing psalms. The Lutheran lectionary carefully skips verses with curses in them. Here’s a sample of one in which the psalmist prays for God to curse his enemies.

“Let their table be a trap for them, a snare for their allies.
Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and make their loins tremble continually. ”
(Psalms 69:22-23)

Is it a good thing that we skip those verses? Author Kathleen Norris isn’t sure. She sometimes reads psalms to children who are surprised that people in the Bible express emotions like anger. It turns out they aren’t so different from regular people.

Norris has children write their own poems. “Once a little boy wrote a poem entitled ‘The Monster Who Was Sorry.’ He began by admitting that he hates it when his father yells at him: his response in the poem is to throw his sister down the stairs, and then to wreck his room, and finally to wreck the whole town. The poem concludes, ‘Then I sit in my messy house and say to myself, “I shouldn’t have done all that.”’”*

What’s striking is that the boy expresses his anger, but then comes to regret where his anger led him. That’s called repentance.

Many spiritual guides advise against acknowledging anger. I wonder if it would be better to recognize the anger within us that drives us to vengeance, but repent of that anger rather than allow it to consume us. Maybe reading the cursing psalms is a healthy thing after all.

Read Psalm 5 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne

*Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace, pp. 68-70.