Psalm 76:2
to will one thing
I cried to the Lord with my voice; to God with my voice, and he gave ear to me. (Psalm 76:2 DR)
In the well-known story of Job, Satan requests of God the ability to afflict Job to see if he is really righteous or not. Or better put, to find out exactly why he is righteous. After all, Job’s righteousness in deed is already established, and even Satan (which means accuser) doesn’t dispute that Job does what is right. Rather, his accusation goes even deeper—he asserts that Job’s righteousness is entirely self-serving, that he only does what is right because God rewards him for it and has protected him from adversity:
Doth Job fear God in vain? Hast not thou made a fence for him, and his house, and all his substance round about, blessed the works of his hands, and his possession hath increased on the earth? But stretch forth thy hand a little, and touch all that he hath, and see if he blesseth thee not to thy face. (Job 1:9-11 DR)
[As an interesting side note, the Vulgate here retains the circumlocution of Job not blessing God to his face, a way of saying to curse God without using the word curse, borne out of the same propriety which caused ancient scribes to use terms like Adonai rather than to write out the tetragrammaton of God’s name.]
As the story goes, God allows Satan to afflict Job and take all his possessions, yet Job retains his uprightness. To this Satan still probes for a self-serving interest:
Skin for skin, and all that a man hath he will give for his life: But put forth thy hand, and touch his bone and his flesh, and then thou shalt see that he will bless thee to thy face. (Job 2:4-5 DR)
Satan is allowed to do so but Job does not sin, and thus Satan’s accusation is proven false. Job’s righteousness is not only because of what he receives for it, but is borne out of his faith in the Lord and his confidence in his justice.
Yet at the end of the book Job nevertheless must undergo a final conversion, for God confronts him from the cloud and Job acknowledges his error. But if he did not fail the test of Satan (as God himself vindicates Job in this respect), then what does he repent of? In what does his conversion consist? Job’s words provide the answer:
I know that thou canst do all things, and no thought is hid from thee. “Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge?” Therefore I have spoken unwisely, and things that above measure exceeded my knowledge. “Hear, and I will speak: I will ask thee, and do thou tell me.” With the hearing of the ear, I have heard thee, but now my eye seeth thee. Therefore I reprehend myself, and do penance in dust and ashes. (Job 42:2-6 DR, quotes and italics added)
In Job’s response he enters into a dialogue within himself, taking quotes from God’s confrontation which summarize the confrontation and weaves them into his answer. It is not that Job spoke wrongly of God (as God acknowledges a few verses later) but rather that he has entered into mysteries he did not understand. He spends much of his dialogue in this book defending his righteousness, which he is right to do, but there is the sense in which he perceives his righteousness as somehow standing outside of God’s.
Job has been willing to suffer the loss of all he has, even to the point of death, and yet his faith in God is not shaken. Yet it his righteousness which is most important to him and which he will not surrender to God, as if it belongs to him rather than flowing forth to him from God as all his other gifts. This seems to be why Job vacillates between vindicating God’s righteousness and calling him to the docket; he cannot fathom how God’s righteousness and his own can coincide in what he has experienced.
For Satan and his friends perhaps have a point—if he is suffering all these things that the wicked suffer, how can he be righteous? Yet he knows he has not sinned. And while he is not willing to accuse God of evil, neither is he able to accuse himself of evil, since he has not sinned. There thus seems to be a disconnect between God’s righteousness and his own, and the only way he can see fit to resolve it is for God to bring his case and for one or the other to be proved unrighteous.
It is here that Job’s ignorance brings about God’s rebuke, for instead of finding his righteousness within God’s own, Job sets them against each other. This is the more subtle temptation that Job experiences, and the one that is actually nearer to the core of Job’s heart. It is interesting that Satan actually is not the one who directly brings this temptation; Satan assumed Job was as fickle as other men and would fold like them. But God sees deeper into Job’s heart and knows where the final issue lies, and while God does not tempt Job, Satan’s temptation inadvertently brings this final temptation forth.
In his mercy God confronts Job about his ignorance, and while this might seem a harsh confrontation after all that Job has experienced, if seen in light of the above considerations it is actually an incredible mercy and grace, as God provides Job exactly the clarity he needs to resolve the conflict in his heart. He finally is brought to understand that God’s ways are so much higher than those of man, that righteousness comes from God and God alone. Job has grasped at this in the dark his entire life, but now sees it in the blazing light of day, and comes to the precipice of decision: will he continue to vindicate his own righteousness over against God’s, or will he abandon himself to God completely?
Job’s righteousness is ultimately vindicated precisely by his acknowledgement of his ignorance and in his penance. He shows that his righteousness was not only skin deep nor was it even the core of his being and self-identity; when push came to shove and he was confronted with the ultimate reality of what was happening, when he was able to peer behind the veil for that brief moment of clarity, he demonstrated that God was the totality of his heart, that devotion could leap over his own ignorance and weakness and even—which was the hardest for Job—his own righteousness.
In this verse the Psalmist gives voice to this cry that echoes from all the righteous who suffer and experience hardship in this world. For while they may regret on the human level the suffering or loss, their confidence is ultimately not in God because of those things but because of who God is and because of his promises to them. Commenting on this verse, St. Augustine notes:
But many men cry unto the Lord for the sake of getting riches and avoiding losses, for the safety of their friends, for the security of their house, for temporal felicity, for secular dignity, lastly, even for mere soundness of body, which is the inheritance of the poor man. For such and such like things many men do cry unto the Lord; scarce one for the sake of the Lord Himself. For an easy thing it is for a man to desire anything of the Lord, and not to desire the Lord Himself; as if forsooth that which He gives could be sweeter than Himself that gives. (St. Augustine, Exposition on the Psalms, 76, 2.)
In other words, the accusation of Satan is far too often proved correct in that most of the time that we cry to the Lord we do so because of temporal concerns; very rarely do we desire God for his own sake rather than for the benefits he may provide. This is a constant temptation in the spiritual life, as the consolations that are sometimes provided can become points of temptation in which we engage in spiritual practices for those consolations rather than for love of God alone.
Purity of heart, Kierkegaard said, is to will one thing, echoing Jesus’ words who said:
Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God. (Matthew 5:8 DR)
The goal of the spiritual life is to desire God alone and for his sake alone. Our natural state is to fall under the accusation of Satan in which we seek God for other things, but part of our purification is to ever more loose ourselves from the things of this world so that God himself is our desire and great reward. We are constantly needing to leap over the things of this world, to avoid the stumbling blocks and chains that tie us down and prevent us from ascending unto God who is our righteousness:
Whosoever therefore does cry unto the Lord for the sake of any other thing, is not yet one that leaps over... He does indeed hearken to you at the time when you seek Himself, not when through Himself you seek any other thing. (St. Augustine, Exposition on the Psalms, 76, 2.)
In this animation I didn’t have a solid concept in mind, but it still often works out in retrospect that the animation fits the reflections that occur, or perhaps it’s in reverse. Who knows?
At any rate, I found a great profile shot and cut it out in Photoshop and then brought it into After Effects. Next I brought in an image of a Polaris timelapse and had it do a full rotation over the timeline. I duplicated it many times and added a time remap to each duplicate and added the loopOut() expression and then offset the duplicates and changed up some blending modes to give it some offset and visual depth and interest. I thought that the spinning would give it a bit of an off-balanced sense and a hint of confusion, which I think ties in well with what was written above.
I added a few ellipses with textures matted to the ellipses and added a bit of looping wiggle. Lastly I added in some text and applied some color correction.
Enjoy.
I cried to the Lord with my voice; to God with my voice, and he gave ear to me.
(Psalm 76:2 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: