Psalm 37 (part 2): what of the upright?
I wrote about this psalm yesterday, and today, I want to develop another idea found in it. The upright are defined in all sorts of ways in this psalm, and they’re exhorted to “do good”, or to “do right”. The thing is, how do we know when we’re doing right or wrong? Do we have some innate compass of our own, that will let us know that? Nowadays, folks would have you believe it. They say, “follow your heart”, or “your heart is true”. But how does your heart know? By itself, it’s nothing. We know very well if we examine ourselves deeply, that most of our desires are not something we’d want to advertise, and our motivations for doing things aren’t always what we’d want others to believe. And that’s to be expected - we’re just fallible people, born in sin. We can’t make it on our own.
The point I’m trying to make is, of ourselves, we aren’t doing so well at choosing what’s wrong or right. We can follow our hearts, but they’re not a true compass, regardless of what others might be saying. Well, the answer is in this psalm, and you see, back when it was written, if someone said, “follow your heart”, it was understood that this was also true: “the law of his God is in his heart, his foot will never slip.” (verse 31) Now, they’ve forgotten about the Law of God, but without it, our hearts are empty. They have no internal compass.
Well, what is God’s law, you ask? I encourage you to read it when you get a chance. It’s not long, and you’ll see it’s the foundation of just about every moral and ethical principle we consider good nowadays. It’s found in Exodus 20:1-17, and it’s called The Decalogue. These Ten Commandments are what define an “upright” man as referred to in this psalm. The author of this psalm assumed it was a given that an “upright” man would obey the commandments, and that they would be in his heart.
