We’re all beginners when it comes to prayer.* And hopefully we always remain amateurs in our praying, since the word “amateur” originated from the French word for “lover.”
There aren’t many of us who like being life-long novices. We like mastery. But prayer eludes mastery. We can mature in it, but we never arrive.
But for those who, like me, often feel way beyond ourselves in prayer, we’re not completely on our own. We have some tools to work with.
We aren’t left to muddle about on our own. Sure, we can and many do. But we don’t get very far on our own. And we end up impoverished if we do.
We need some help here. The 150 psalms in the middle of our Bibles are our starting point. I won’t stray beyond the Psalms here, but we have thousands of years of prayers to draw on as well. There is a wealth of prayed history to draw from, but for now I’m limiting myself to the Psalms.
The Psalms themselves point the way forward for amateur pray-ers like me. Psalm 53 does so, strangely, by being almost word-for-word the same as Psalm 14. (Go ahead and click the links for 14 and 53 and see for yourself.) There are some minor differences between the two where Psalm 53 modifies what was in the original Psalm 14, but other than that this is sheer plagiarism.
And I love it.
(By the way, this isn’t the only place the Bible plagiarizes itself. But that’s a topic for another post.)
When Book 2 of the Psalms (Psalms 42-72, often called the Elohistic Psalter because of the tendency of the psalms to use the word Elohim or “God” instead of Yahweh, most likely in an attempt to avoid using the Name in vain) was being gathered together, its compiler had access to Psalm 14. We don’t know if he had access to all of what is Book 1 of the Psalms (Psalms 1-41) or just to Psalm 14 alone. All we know is that Psalm 14 was included in Book 2 and the rest of the Book 1 psalms weren’t included. Perhaps it was a favorite of the compiler. Perhaps it had become popular among the people or among the priests because of its catchy tune. We don’t know. All we know is that it shows up twice and neither version got edited out when the final compilation of 150 psalms was finalized.
It’s important that the psalm was copied word-for-word and that it was modified, because it gives us permission to both plagiarize and to improvise. Plagiarism and improvisation are the twin requirements for good praying.
Plagiarized prayer helps us step out of ourselves, with our obsessions and narrow foci, and gets us into the language and concerns and theology of others.
We all tend to pray the same prayers over and over again. It’s as if we were trying to paint landscape of wildflowers but only used two colors.
One worship leader rejected the idea of liturgies where the prayers of others were read in worship, believing the only true prayer is spontaneous. But when a member of the congregation recorded the worship leader’s prayers over a six month period and gave him the text of what had been prayed, he was appalled to discover that he prayed the same prayer almost every time, with very little variation.
We all have repeated prayers and liturgies, even if we don’t acknowledge them. How much better, then, if we are intentional about them? How much better if we pick rich and wonderful prayers we’re going to copy instead of simply spouting the same thing over and over.
Psalm 53 does exactly that. It steals Psalm 14.
But it doesn’t stop there. After plagiarizing, it modifies what it has copied.
Now, for some, this is a significant problem. What does this say about authorship? Both psalms claim to be authored by David. But Psalm 14, with its use of Yahweh, sure sounds a lot more Davidic than Psalm 53. So, does that mean there was a pretty free hand used in editing the psalms? Is David’s authorship somehow compromised by editing out the divine name and the other edits?
And what’s up with replacing Yahweh with the milder and more generic Elohim? It reminds me of people who avoid saying the name Jesus, preferring to refer to him by the title Christ. There’s a distancing that’s going on here. Names are always more personal than titles, and Yahweh is far more relational than Elohim/God.
And why would there be pretty much the same psalm twice in a collection of 150 psalms? Wouldn’t the final compiler have noticed? Were the five books of psalms already so established they couldn’t be changed to replace a duplication with something more original?
As interesting as these questions are (and there are scholars who have followed them down many rabbit trails), I believe they miss the point.
The Psalms are the one book of the Bible that we’re intended to improvise on. We are supposed to take them and modify them according to our circumstances and needs.
As a collection of prayers and songs, the goal of the Psalms is to get us started in our praying and singing. Stopping without improvising is like cooking a meal and never eating it.
So, when Psalms 14 and 53 begin by stating, “The says in his heart, ‘There is no God,'” we are free to improvise.
“Lord, where am I a fool who proclaims faith with my mouth but whose heart is often godless in my fears?”
“Master, save me from my foolish culture which believes its real Savior is the next technological advance, not you.”
“I want to live with a God-soaked heart and mind today, so fill me with your Spirit.”
Originality in prayer is over-rated. Plagiarizing takes me into territory I would not have explored in my praying. Improvising draws out a personal response to the different territory. When I do both, I find myself fully engaged with God.
*I plagiarized that statement from Eugene Peterson and I’m pretty sure he plagiarized it from someone else.