HOLY PSALM OF DAVID (ZABUR) FOURTEEN

When he wrote this psalm, David was feeling frustrated and oppressed by those who attacked and harassed his nation.

1 Only fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.”  They are corrupt and their actions are evil; not one of them does good!  2 The Lord looks down from heaven on the entire human race; he looks to see if anyone is truly wise, if anyone seeks God. 3 But no, all have turned away; all have become corrupt. No one does good, not a single one!

Wow!  Are we to take these words literally or look to see what God’s Spirit is saying? If we look, we can see that some atheists for example do better works than some Christians and people of other faiths. Is David saying that no atheist does good?  I don’t believe so.

David goes on to state (v.2) that God sees the entire human race and looks for anyone who is truly wise and seeks to know God and he concludes that all have turned away from God’s Spirit (at some time in their lives) resulting in them being less than perfect however you may look at it (v.3)! The same statement (viz., 14 v.1-3) is repeated in psalm 53 and is quoted again from the Greek version by the NT prophet Paul (Rom.3 v.10-12) who goes on to clarify that ‘All have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Rom.3 v.23)!’ 

So, on the face of it, David was condemning himself and everyone else regardless of whether or not they have faith in God.  From verse 3, we can see that when David spoke of all being corrupt, doing evil and not doing good, he was including those who don’t believe in an intervening God (verse 1) alongside the whole human race including those who do believe!  We can all identify with this notion to a degree, since we all know we do wrong and do not always act in kind and forgiving ways to all other people. Yet we do recognise that we and most other people also do some altruistic good in the world.  So, we need to see this psalm as an anguished cry by David about the wickedness that he saw in the world around him. As he goes on to state: -

4 Will those who do evil never learn? They eat up my people like bread and wouldn’t think of praying to the Lord. 5 Terror will grip them, for God is with those who obey him. 6 The wicked frustrate the plans of the oppressed, but the Lord will protect his people. 7 When the Lord restores his people … Israel will rejoice.

So, it is in the context of verse 4, that David has described those who don’t believe in God as foolish, since as he states, (v.6b) God will protect his people.

We are left with the question what does Scripture mean by implying here that no-one does good?  I believe we need to understand this as, ‘no one does good all of the time.  Clearly, we also need to affirm that many people do good a lot of the time and most people do good some of the time, even if there are a few highly self-centred people who seldom do good for anyone!  In terms of God’s perfection, every one of us desperately needs the grace of God to live by.

A poem inspired by Psalm 14

O God of grace, help us do good

All ways and not for some of time!

We pray for grace – Christ showed the way -

Grace gives us strength his love to mime.

A prayer: - Lord grant us strength your way to go! Amen

mjk 11/12/17 c.mikereflects