Psalms for a Saturated Soul: An Ancient Guide to Emotional Health

 

 

Introduction: A Perplexing Paradox

Maybe, like me, you’re a bundle of paradoxes. 

On one hand, I bear God’s image. I have a marvelous capacity to cultivate beauty, experience intimacy, invent solutions, make promises, show mercy, resist evil, build culture, and encounter wonder. On my best days, God’s glory is profoundly displayed in my life. Humans can be quite magnificent, really一just a little lower than the angels.

On the other hand, I have this inescapable sense that I don’t reflect God as I should. The mirror of my life gets smudged and tarnished. I have a dreadful capacity to corrupt beauty, shatter intimacy, create problems, break promises, exploit the vulnerable, be tempted by evil, destroy culture, and become jaded with wonder. Humans can be quite awful, really一just a little higher than the devils.

There is a fickle fragility in my soul. I flit back and forth between peace and anxiety, joy and sorrow, obedience and disobedience, forgiveness and bitterness. Like termites in a wooden boat, my inconsistencies gnaw holes in my soul一then as I frantically bail water to remain buoyant, discouragement gushes over me. Can you relate?

What do we do about the frustrating duality of our souls? Proposed solutions abound.

Moralism says effort is the solution. If we can be good enough一through religion or neighborliness or parenting or profession一our positive behavior will outweigh our bad behavior. But this places an oppressive burden to perform that’s easily squashed by our next messup (which is likely imminent). 

Mysticism says contemplation is the solution. But meditation isn’t medication, and sometimes silence makes our failures scream louder. Mindfulness plus good Karma minus bad Feng Shui does not equal zen.

Psychology says that healing from trauma inflicted by others is the solution. This is immensely important and can be instrumental in helping someone heal. Counseling  has certainly been of great help to me. But secular psychotherapy has no category for the biblical doctrine of sin, which scripture names as the greatest threat to human flourishing. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

"The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of man. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this. In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner."

Individualism posits “being yourself” as the solution, as Polonius advises Hamlet: “To thine own self be true.” If nothing else, this mantra exasperates our sense of duality. Much of the time, we’re unsure of who we are or who we want to be. In response, individualism sometimes celebrates the paradox within, blurring the lines between right and wrong. But impropriety leads to insecurity, leaving us with the burning question: To which self should I be true?

The Psalms: Formation not Formula 

Enter the Psalms一the hymnbook of God’s people. The psalms don’t offer simple formulas to solve the paradox of our souls. Instead, they employ the language of formation. They give us permission to be in flux, while simultaneously pointing us to the unchanging stability of our Creator. The Psalms let us rant and weep, sing and scream, laugh and lament一all with an eye to heaven, knowing that our help comes from the Lord (Ps. 121:1). As a trellis prods a vine sunward, so the Psalms turn our souls God-ward. In real life, confusion and confidence often go hand-in-hand, thus the Psalms speak powerfully to the intricate anatomy of our souls.

As you read the Psalms, it’s immediately obvious that God doesn’t want His people to pretend. The God of the Bible wants His people to be brutally honest with themselves and with Him. He’s not interested in platitudes or pseudo-peace. Religious charades might fool others, even ourselves at times, but God sees our souls as they truly are.

Souls of the Saints

In the modern world, we often think of the soul as the immaterial part of you that flies off to heaven when you die. But in biblical theology, your soul (hebrew: nephesh) is your whole person, including your will, mind, emotions, and body. Thus the Psalms speak directly to our souls, expressing the vast breadth of human experience, as Calvin notes:

"I have been wont to call this book not inappropriately, “An Anatomy of all Parts of the Soul;” for there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror."

When reading the Psalms, we discover we’re not alone. We suddenly realize, with a sigh of relief, that the path we’re on is well-worn by the saints before us. Our bloodied knees don’t make us freaks; they merely signal we’re on the path of formation. Satan would have us believe that, because we struggle, we’re unworthy of Christian fellowship. The Psalms retort: No, these are the normal growing pains of a child of God. 

Walter Brueggemann says that when we read the Psalms, the experiences of the psalmist interacts with our own experience:

"The work of prayer is to bring these two realities together一the boldness of the Psalms and the extremities of our experience一to let them interact, play with each other, and illuminate each other."

In other words, we don’t just read the Psalms; they read us. They unlock the prayers, petitions, and laments of other faith sojourners, revealing the sacred solidarity of saints from every age. They have found God to be both present and good, even when their souls were disoriented or faint. They testify that indeed there is hope for you and I, because God is good and ever-present.

A Community of Souls 

The church is a community of souls, therefore it’s not only about individual health, but the collective health of the entire bride of Christ. The church I lead and the family of churches I am a part of are not as fluent as we should be in the language of the soul, and it has hurt us. We are fairly fluent in the language of Christology, ecclesiology and missiology. But there is a hesitancy around psychology and sociology because they can be so subjective. “Let’s stick to gospel truth,” we tend to say. But in protecting the gospel (which is right), we’ve neglected how it applies to soul care. After all, Christ is the great physician who gives rest to our souls (Matt 11:28).

The past year has provided a rude awakening about the consequences of neglecting communal soul health. In November 2021, I sat with six other leaders from our church network. There was a furrow-browed sobriety around the table that day. Two of our dear friends and leaders in our movement had just stepped down, in part, due to patterns of emotional and relational unhealth. Though relieved we had escaped the spectacular moral scandals so prevalent in the headlines these days, we were nonetheless heartbroken. How did we get here? 

We felt blindsided by a threat we didn’t know existed. Like the quiet-footed foxes ruining the vineyard in Song of Solomon, emotional unhealth had covertly crept into our leadership team. We didn’t notice until it was too late. We often do wolf-checks, but rarely fox-checks. Foxes seem less destructive than wolves, but left to their own devices, they’re just as deadly. Maybe we looked the other way because of the giftedness of these leaders. Fruitfulness can cover a multitude of foxes. Until it doesn’t. 

In the past ten years, we’ve seen the gospel advance in encouraging ways through our family of churches, yet we concluded around that table that Jesus was using this crisis to lead us away from hubris towards humility, away from a self-confident swagger towards a God-reliant limp. We resolved to self-audit our souls more seriously and to build a sturdier culture of accountability. With sage-like wisdom, my friend Rigby Wallace articulated our conviction: “In this next season together, the gospel must advance along two frontiers: to the outermost parts of our world and to the innermost parts of our souls.” 

The writing of this book was commissioned out of that conversation. This isn’t for church leaders only; it’s for anyone who longs for their soul to thrive, not merely survive (3 John 2). This book is for those who believe the gospel impacts all of life一the Savior who forgives sins is also the Good Shepherd who restores souls. This book is for those whose unstable emotions ache for the commanding calm of Jesus’ words and Spirit. This book is born out of some teaching I’ve done from the psalms, but more importantly, it’s a book born out of God’s work in me. Into my paradox, he continues to bring peace. 

May the gospel advance not only to the outermost parts of our world, but also to the innermost parts of our souls.  

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