We need to recognize that whether we like it or not, the global community is in this crisis together. Our survival depends on learning to share the abundance we have—our natural and financial resources, as well as scientific expertise and creativity—in the fight to combat climate change.
Humans have grown exponentially in our propensity and power to conquer the earth itself. Despite being newcomers relative to neighboring species, humans usually behave as if we owned the place. But Psalm 95 speaks clearly: When we come into God’s presence—and there is no place God is more vividly present to us than in creation’s midst—the psalm says to come with thanksgiving, the polar opposite of greed.
If we read carefully, we discover that no psalm is off limits for the early church. They needed them. And so do we.
Liberal ethical tropes around “fairness” and “inequality” are not wrong. But they are not enough. Political theology needs the possibility of an absolute “No” in the face of injustice. It needs the decision.
Praise psalms may fail to raise our political antennae, but when we stop to consider what praise entails, we discover that praise makes the most daring political claims of all.
Psalm 14:1, though popularly employed to dismiss non-theists as foolish, is principally targeted against practical atheism, against those who believe that justice is without force in the universe and that all that matters is power.