This is a challenging quote, and one that the relentless positivity of the modern age would have you dismiss without so much as a reading. But there are still those who understand what a high price we pay for this kind of denial.
The reference to the Psalms is a specific reference to Psalm 12, its opening words especially, although there are many other Psalms that cry out with the same desperate sentiment:
Help me O Lord
For there is not one Godly man left
The faithful are vanished from among the children of men
For those unfamiliar with this Psalm I can't think of a better introduction than the astonishingly beautiful and lachrymose Parish Psalter setting which you can find on this YouTube page.
I did transpose this Psalm for my work Selah! Loving the Psalms but in retrospect I think I should have left it as it is.
Psalm 12 cannot easily be humanised, because there is no longer any living human that is worth crying out to, only a remote and silent God who may not intervene in this world no matter how much She might yearn, or rail against our suffering.
There are echoes of this sentiment in much more recent Psalms. Paramore's song The Only Exception is a good example: the singer describing a callous and unloving world, and her sole hope in a single loving man.
That's a very romantic proposition but also a terrible one, the singer stalked by the crushing prospect that if this man should let her down then she no longer has any hope.
Despite its plaintive opening plea Psalm 12 is not a hopeless prayer.
It contains express hope that the wrongs described might be ameliorated, by some power stirred by these injustices, rising up in indignation at the comfortless troubles sake of the needy, and because of the deep sighing of the poor.
Perhaps that is where this Psalm can be humanised, in its hope for the righting of such wrongs: that rather than rely upon the agency of a distant God, we might find a loving and humane solution to the loneliness and alienation of the modern world.
P. Julian
24 September 2018
After a while Jesse stopped trying. He forgot any thought of love and went on through life resigned, and lonely, and as he grew out of his childhood the strange mercy that had always anointed him grew more and more remote. Jesse walked alone without any consolation and he began to doubt whether there was any love left in the world. This conviction that nobody will allow, this desolate truth that has been cried out in Psalms and other supplications since the beginning of history. Jesse came to expect very little of women, and although he nursed his life along he almost entirely forgot that there was something, somewhere in the deep heart of the world, something that loved him and wanted him to be happy.
For a limited time all of my books are available to read (Free!) online. Go to my books page and follow the links.
Psalm 12
Help Me O Lord (Salvum me Fac)
Help me O Lord
For there is not one godly man left
For the faithful are vanished from among the children of men
They talk of vanity, every one with his neighbour
They do but flatter with their lips
And dissemble in their double hearts.
The Lord shall root out all deceitful lips
And the tongue that speaketh proud things
Who have said: with our tongue will we prevail
We are they that ought to speak: who is lord over us?
Now for the comfortless troubles sake of the needy
and because of the deep sighing of the poor.
I will up, saith the Lord
And help every one from those that swelleth against him
And will set him at rest.
The words of the Lord are pure words
Even as the silver that from the earth is tried
And purified seven times in the fire.
Thou shalt keep them, O Lord
Thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.
The ungodly walk on every side
When the they are exalted the children of men are put to rebuke.