Psalm 8: God on Trial
J’accuse - the ultimate ruler is ultimately responsible
When we study Psalm 8 during the Days of Awe, how can we not think of judgement? Read on their own in 2020, Psalm 8 serves as an indictment of God for entrusting the world to humanity.
As I read this Psalm, I hear the prosecutor starting with fawning praise in 8:2, before reading the charges.
During a time when people are unable to leave their homes due to the air quality, when their homes may burn at any time; when people are even too self-centered to wear a mask to protect others, how can we use the words “glory” and “majesty” to describe humanity, unless it’s sardonically? The author of the psalm prefers to describe humanity as “infants and toddlers” in 8:3.
How could an omniscient power entrust anything to us?
When God shirked responsibility of maintaining creation, and allowed humanity to treat it with indifference, God becomes ultimately responsible for the damage incurred.
It follows that God is liable for the birds who are the first to feel the effects of air pollution, and for the fish are the first to die from the effects of climate change on the oceans (8:9). That same God is liable for the wild beasts who are victims of deforestation and human greed, with whole species going endangered and extinct. God is liable for the near extinction of the oxen who have all but disappeared from the US and Europe (8:8).
We are incompetent guardians of the world God created. We have ruined a perfect place. We have murdered billions of divine creations. God should have known better.
When the prosecutor arrives at her closing argument, she repeats her initial fawning praise, but in a question form, to remind the jury, “How can you call God’s name majestic throughout the land? How could the songbirds praise God, if they can’t even breathe?”