Of all the superhero movies churned out over the last two decades, the ones arising from the Marvel Cinematic Universe have dominated. And the centerpiece of those movies is a band of characters who call themselves the Avengers.
In a hilarious side story, two of the Avengers end up stranded on a world of lost and unloved things: Thor and the Hulk. Feeling unloved and unwanted by their colleagues in the Avengers, they talk of starting their own band of superheroes. And when they discuss what to call themselves, the best they can come up with is the Revengers. It’s obvious these two aren’t the brains of the Avengers. They can’t come up with an original name. They’re stuck on a theme: vengeance.
Back further in time, way back when I was in junior high, I visited a friend’s youth group. And during some long forgotten game, I remember an attractive and competitive girl declaring, “Vengeance is mine, saith Kendra, I shall repay!” I didn’t know the Scriptures well at the time and was unaware of the passage she was intentionally misquoting, but the scene stuck vividly in my mind.
Hers was a wrath I didn’t want to mess around with.
When I tried using the phrase at home with my own name in place, my Mom was quick to set me straight. I wasn’t substituting my name for Kendra’s name, I was substituting it for the Lord’s name. And that was strictly forbidden. It is the Lord alone who is to take up vengeance. As a Christian, I am to have none of it.
It seems the Avengers (and their sub-team, the Revengers) have an excess of guts and hubris, taking on a job belonging to God alone. But I guess it’s not much of a stretch for superheroes to think of themselves as gods ….
Psalm 94 picks up on this biblical theme of the Lord as the one for who vengeance is allowable. In fact, Psalm 94 starts with the assertion that our God is an avenging God.
The LORD is a God who avenges.
O God who avenges, shine forth.
Rise up, Judge of the earth;
pay back to the proud what they deserve.
How long, LORD, will the wicked,
how long will the wicked be jubilant? (Ps. 94:1-3)
Human revenge has a nasty flavor to it. But it’s understandable that we’d want to take revenge at times. We want those who have hurt us to feel the pain we’ve felt.
I remember reading The Count of Monte Cristo when I was in fifth or sixth grade and marveling at the lengths a man would go to in order to exact revenge on someone who has severely wronged him. And in more recent years, director Quentin Tarantino has built a career around revenge as the main theme of his movies.
As understandable as our desire to avenge ourselves may be, the Scriptures are consistent from beginning to end that revenge is no business for God’s people. It is forbidden because we do it so badly. Instead of an eye for an eye, we take off the offender’s entire face. Proportion is quickly lost.
In college, a housemate and I got into a little prank war. Well, it started out little. It ended when I came home and a packet of 2,000 ladybugs had been released in my bedroom. Because of that, I know from experience that it’s impossible to sleep with ladybugs bouncing off the walls of your room. A ladybug or two are cute, but when dozens of them keep landing on you, they begin to feel malevolent and creepy. Even so, when I was told that a dozen snakes had almost been purchased instead of the 2,000 ladybugs, I quickly quit the prank war, having been utterly defeated.
But not only do we get proportion wrong, we get justice wrong almost entirely. Only God sees clearly and completely. Only God gets justice right.
It’s ironic, then, that people are often hesitant to leave vengeance in God’s hands. We may do it badly, but we’d rather do it ourselves than turn it over to God and risk the possibility that he might not do anything at all, that he might forgive what we’d like to see repaid and painfully so.
It’s in this setting of God as the only true Judge that Psalm 94 asserts vengeance as landing squarely in his jurisdiction. It may not be my job to repay anyone for the wrongs they have paid out, but there is one whose job it is to do the repaying. He’s the Judge of all the earth.
There’s just one problem. I have no control over when or how or how much he pays out his judgments on the wrong-doers in my life. And he’s often so maddeningly slow at it, almost never dealing with things in the time frame I want them dealt with. And so we find ourselves in company with the psalmist, wondering how long the wicked with continue to be jubilant, how long they’ll laugh and carry on, having a good time while good people suffer.
The unnamed psalmist lays out his complaint:
They pour out arrogant words;
all the evildoers are full of boasting.
They crush your people, LORD;
they oppress your inheritance.
They slay the widow and the foreigner;
they murder the fatherless.
They say, “The LORD does not see;
the God of Jacob takes no notice” (Ps. 94:4-7).
There really are bad guys out there. There are people who oppress the weak and vulnerable among us and get away with it, since the weak and vulnerable lack the means to defend themselves. The language used to describe what they do is intense — they crush, they oppress, they slay, they murder. Economic injustice viewed through a Torah lens sees it as murder since it endangers the lives of the poor. But not only do they get away with it, they brag about getting away with it. And they flaunt it in God’s face, acting as if God doesn’t exist or as if he’s a doddering old fool who doesn’t notice what’s going on under his nose.
But as much as God seems to be blind, the psalmist knows it’s not true. So, the psalmist steps back and does a little theology to discern was is true and what is not. (Yes, theology is practical!)
Take notice, you senseless ones among the people;
you fools, when will you become wise?
Does he who fashioned the ear not hear?
Does he who formed the eye not see?
Does he who disciplines nations not punish?
Does he who teaches mankind lack knowledge?
The LORD knows all human plans;
he knows that they are futile (Ps. 94:8-11).
What a lovely piece of theological rhetoric!
The senseless are supposed to take notice. What irony! Fools think of themselves as wise. Hilarious! In biblical thinking, a fool lives as if there is no God, whereas a wise person lives with a continual sense of God.
Wisdom isn’t so much street smarts as God smarts.
And then the psalmist skewers those who live badly because they think badly about God. (Bad theology leads to bad living.) They think he doesn’t hear what they say. But as the ear-maker, how could he not hear their boasts? They think he doesn’t see what they do. But as the eye-maker, how could he not see their crimes? They think he doesn’t do anything. But as the one who humbles unjust nations, why would he not do the same to individuals? They think he isn’t too smart. But as the one who has taught us everything we know, how can he lack knowledge?
God knows. Our plans are an open book before him. He doesn’t see in part. He sees all. Even the motives within us which we don’t understand ourselves are naked before him.
And our plans? We don’t see how riddled with holes they are, but he does. The God who sees and knows and understands and acts is who we’re dealing with.
It’s stupid to treat God as stupid.
So, how does God treat his people, those who orient their lives toward him?
Blessed is the one you discipline, LORD,
the one you teach from your law;
you grant them relief from days of trouble,
till a pit is dug for the wicked.
For the LORD will not reject his people;
he will never forsake his inheritance.
Judgment will again be founded on righteousness,
and all the upright in heart will follow it (Ps. 94:12-15).
As someone who pushes past speed limits when driving, I feel a bit of anxiety when tailed by a police car. Justice and judgment are things I expect to go against. And as someone who has never had to call the police for protection or be protected from the police or plea for a judge to support my cause against the abuse of the powerful, I don’t tend to hear the word “judgment” as something positive to look forward to.
But those who are abused, who are stolen from, who are beaten down, who are slandered, who are crushed financially, physically, sexually, legally, or in any other way by those who are more powerful, they are the ones who hear the word “judgment” as a welcome ally and friend.
Judgment has to do with rescue, with restoration, with hope, with relief, with the end of fear, with the end of suffering. For those who suffer, judgment is a gospel word.
To be disciplined by God isn’t to be spanked (though it may include that from time to time). It has to do with taking a disordered life and giving it new order so it matches the kind of life God intended for us in the first place. It has to do with hearing God’s words and letting them reorient our lives.
Who will rise up for me against the wicked?
Who will take a stand for me against evildoers?
Unless the LORD had given me help,
I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death.
When I said, “My foot is slipping,”
your unfailing love, Lord, supported me.
When anxiety was great within me,
your consolation brought me joy (Ps. 94:16-19).
The psalmist asks for an advocate, a lawyer to press his case in court. If he’s to receive justice, he needs his day in court.
The psalm then quickly shifts tenses, moving from what’s needed for the present to what’s been experienced in the past. And what’s been experienced is help. What is needed now is what was received back then. A death sentence was expected back then, but God advocated and won the day.
We see similar backward glances throughout the Psalter. When it doesn’t seem certain God will come to our aid because he seems to be taking he sweet time to do so, we look backward to similar circumstances.
Looking backward is essential to biblical faith. Passover and other Jewish festivals commemorated God’s deeds in Israel’s history. The Lord’s Table does the same thing as we celebrate communion. In these cases, we pull ancient stories into our present to reorient ourselves and to remind ourselves that the God who saved us in the past is the same who saves us now.
Just as we lack perspective with justice and vengeance, we lack perspective when it comes to our daily trials and God’s intervention in them. We need the perspective of history — both personally and collectively as God’s people — because we have no perspective on the present, being immersed in it.
Can a corrupt throne be allied with you—
a throne that brings on misery by its decrees?
The wicked band together against the righteous
and condemn the innocent to death.
But the LORD has become my fortress,
and my God the rock in whom I take refuge.
He will repay them for their sins
and destroy them for their wickedness;
the LORD our God will destroy them (Ps. 94:20-23).
As the psalm circles back around to its initial concern that God would both protect those who take refuge in him and crush those who crush the innocent, it starts with an important political question: Can corrupt politicians be allied with God? Can those in power who cause suffering by their policies count God on their side? The rhetorical answer is implied but emphasized by what follows. And it’s a definitive NO!
Living in a country where many politicians still claim a form of Christianity in order to sway pious constituents to vote for them, we’re used to the corrupt claiming to be allies of God. And too often we fall for these empty claims, hoping their claimed godliness is real and they will lead from that godliness. But just because a verse is quoted or a Bible lofted in front of a church building, it doesn’t mean that politician is allied with God.
Psalm 94 makes it clear that God has the weak and vulnerable at heart. If we are ever to get justice right, we have to look at God and follow him into what he considers just and right. And that means taking the side of the weak and abused and ignored and trampled on and marginalized.
This means the elderly, the unborn, the disabled, the immigrant (legally or otherwise), the mentally ill, the racially/ethnically marginalized, the unemployed, the handicapped, the single-parent families, the bereaved, the financially poor, and so on. To be allied with the biblical God of justice is to advocate for these and against those who would promote systems that frustrate justice, that work against the weak and poor, that protect the abusers instead of those they abuse.
The biblical God is a God of justice and therefore a God of vengeance. It is the height of folly to work against his just cause, for those who deal out injustice will receive his judgment.
I may not be an Avenger (and that’s a good thing). But God is.