Who Rules the World, Really?

In 1967, Paul McCartney sang, “I’ve got to admit it’s getting better, a little better all the time.” On that Beatles track, John and George sang a response: “It can’t get no worse.” That response was an honest lyric in the 1960s—and many may feel it’s still an apt description today. At the end of the twentieth century, there was a cultural narrative of progress. A quarter of the way through the twenty-first, there is a narrative of disappointment. Elections don’t excite us so much as depress us. “This was all supposed to be fixed by now!” we may hear people say. “Why won’t anyone talk about the real problems? I thought things were getting better all the time!” In the Bible, the Second Psalm helps us understand what’s going on. It challenges us to decide a very important question: In what, or in whom, are we prepared to place our ultimate trust? Earthly Opposition The opening stanza of the psalm puts the problem this way: There is earthly opposition to God and to His design. Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,“Let us burst their bonds apart...