What kind of world do we live in?

World as Image; Image as World

By: Andrew Kern

The church prays Psalm 3 thus:

Lord, how are they increased that trouble me! 

Many are they that rise up against me. 

Many there be which say of my soul, there is no help for him in God.

Selah

But Thou, O Lord, art a shield for me;

My glory, and the lifter up of mine head.

I cried unto the Lord with my voice,

And He heard me out of His holy hill.

Selah

I laid me down and slept;

I awaked; for the Lord sustained me.

I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people,

that have set themselves against me round about.

Arise, O Lord; save me, O my God:

For Thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek bone;

Thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly.

Salvation belongeth unto the Lord:

Thy blessing is upon Thy people.

Selah 

I'm going to speculate that most of this blog's readers are Christians and that they have prayed this prayer many times with an overflowing heart, reciting or reading it. I suspect that those readers who are not Christians or at least are not religious (in the sense that life makes sense because it is ordered by transcendent principles) find this prayer offensive at points.

So I want to ask a question that raises a lot of questions but might help us understand a little bit of what our Lord is inspiring the Psalmist to reveal about reality and our place in it. It's a simple question, but I'll ask it two different ways.

First way (practical): do you as a Christian really have the right to pray this prayer unless, say, you are living under the oppression of a Stalin or ISIS?

Second way (analytical): would it be legitimate to take the "ten thousands of people" as a reference to demons?

These actually are both the same question in the end. Both of them are really asking a very large question: what kind of world do we live in? Is it a world in which the material surface of things is all there is and the only ones you can consider your enemies are people who actually are trying to hurt you? Or is there something else, some other realm that is just as real as the material realm, of which the material realm is a manifestation, but not an exact likeness.

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