The Hypocrisy of “Selah”

This morning as I was reading the Psalms, I came across the word “Selah” in the text a few times more than I think I normally would. If you have a Bible with footnotes you’ll read that the meaning of the word is uncertain. It’s unknown. And that it’s very likely that it’s some kind of musical or liturgical term or direction. So, rather than trying to guess at the meaning of the word, our translators simply preserve it by transliterating it for us.

This is a beautiful thing for those who honor God’s Word. There are many things in Scripture we do not understand, and many things in Scripture that are somewhat ambiguous. Since we believe in the verbal plenary inspiration of Scripture—the doctrine that every word of the original manuscripts was inspired by the Holy Spirit—we ought to be committed to preserving the meaning of actual words. And when we don’t know what the words mean, it honors God simply to transliterate them.

Unfortunately, as my senior pastor has been fond of pointing out, the preservation of the word “Selah” is nothing more than hypcrisy on the part of many modern Bible translators. “Selah” is a safe word. It’s kind of sweet sounding, really. It’s where I pause to sip my coffee, sigh (because I subconsciously turn the word into onomatopoeia when I see it), and gaze out the window for a few moments before returning to my reading.

Narcissism Lite

There is so much chatter on the nature of humility today that it’s hard to know what to listen to and what to avoid. We should all want to be humble, right? Of course we should. We’re commanded to be humble.

This should go without saying, but we need to be careful and discerning when we’re tuning in to lectures on humility from men who live in one of the most narcissistic cultures the world has ever known (ours). If we’re not careful, we’ll end up buying a repackaged, rebranded, socially sweet version of narcissism. In fact, this is largely what has happened.

Most of the drivel over “humility” in the church today comes from those who feel the pain of being rejected or disrespected in whatever circles they run in—from the water cooler to the academy. The common wisdom asserts that the blame for this falls at the feet of proud, ignorant, neanderthal, “older brother” Christians who really need to learn some humility. Our man-fearing, image-obsessed, appearance-oriented sophisticates then take it upon themselves to be first in line to reprimand their poor brothers for their pride. And all this while assuring their water cooler mates how very far from Fred Phelps they are in their own personal view of the Deity.

You see the problem…