Psalms 17-20

[wolfpurplemoon]

Psalm 17: Someone who is trying to impress the Lord with how rigteous he is
Psalm 18: A celebration of God-inspired war and the rigteous smiting of enemies
Psalm 19: This one tells us that the laws of God are perfect and right, so a passage in the bible confirms that other passages in the bible are true, can't fault that circular thinking!
Psalm 20: Some people praising the Lord who trust in him rather than their chariots or horses.

Sorry for the three posts today everyone, I was away for a couple of days and am now caught back up with my reading plan!

Comments

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

There's an Anglican service called Evensong. It's sung evening prayer, often very beautiful. BBC Radio 3 broadcasts it live from various cathedrals: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tp7r

Anyway, there's always a prayer for the sovereign, and it's taken right from the end of Psalm 20. The cantor sings "O Lord, save the queen," and the choir responds with "And mercifully hear us when we call upon Thee."

Now, you'd think that with all this prayer, the Royal Family would enjoy better health and longer lives than the lumpen proletariat. Francis Galton tested this hypothesis back in 1872. As you might expect, no statistical difference was found.

[wolfpurplemoon]

It's not just those prayers, our national anthem is practically a prayer for the Queen as well! I love that someone tested if the praying worked in 1872, shame it didn't have any effect on the use of prayer in this country.

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were in the UK.

Both my wife and I are premier-league Anglophiles. I lived in Kempston, Beds. back in the mid-seventies. It was there that I converted to Anglicanism.

Actually, you might consider yourself fortunate in having a state religion. If you consider religion as living organism (something I touched on in my sermonette today - http://bill-sheehan.livejournal.com/138973.html), competition strengthens it. Here in the States, our vaunted separation of church and state has yielded thousands of denominations and sects, each more virulent than the last. The C of E, like the monarchy itself, is an anachronism. There are certain rituals (birth, marriage, death, the Queen's Christmas message), but it's otherwise irrelevant.

[wolfpurplemoon]

Oh yes, it definitely dampens religion to make it state sanctioned.

I hardly know anyone who came through school with the state mandated religious assemblies and religious education on the curriculum that actually holds any sort of serious belief in it all.

You are right about the irrelevance of the church in this country, and in fact we are most likely to mock seriously held religious beliefs in our public figures.

I'll pop over and read your post!

Psalm 19 - best verses are v. 7-9

[lyric thinker (from livejournal.com)]

David is the author of ps 19, he is simply stating his views on God in his place in time which was roughly 3,000 years ago. Other circular references as you call them were either before David's time, or in somebody else's words.

Plus Psalms are songs, and just about every song I've ever heard from the Beatles to Metallica or anywhere in between repeats lyrics.

Point being, I'm not trying to discredit your circular reference, only provide what I hope is some useful perspective. Hopefully it is received that way by you and/or your readers.