A cliché is a phrase that is used so widely in a community that it ends up being used for an ever widening set of meanings. Everyone assumes they know what it means, but the precision of its meaning has been lost, so it becomes an empty phrase. We Christians unfortunately do this with a good number of Bible verses, using famous ones promiscuously to salt our conversation with authority, but neither the speaker nor the hearers often consider the precise meaning of the verse.
It’s not exactly “prooftexting” since it’s not usually connected to actual logical proof. It’s more like using verses as a celebrity endorsement for a specific bath soap.
One of these Christian clichés is from Psalm 46: “Be still and know that I am God.” Most of the times I’ve heard this verse from the pulpit (or the soapbox), it’s just spoken in passing and used as a self-interpreting truth. But what does it really mean to “be still” in this sense? Under what conditions should we “be still,” and under what conditions should we “be busy?”
One group connects this verse to the contemplative Christian doctrine of passive spirit-to-spirit interaction between human and God. They believe that our doctrines, words, mental pictures, and personal desires (along with our cell phones, etc.) constitute a “noise” that must be shut off for our spirits to have communion with God, which they say is the center and end goal of true Christianity. For them, stillness is central and activity is peripheral and optional, the Mary and Martha of the spiritual life. However, is this the “be still” of Psalm 46?
As many commentators have pointed out, the “be still” here is a slackening of the hands, a ceasing of work, even a “weakness.” So it seems that it does call us to cease our works and our attempts at helping God, but the context does also call us to a specific activity: it tells us to “know that I am God,” which is further developed to say that we should know that “[God] will be exalted among the nations…[God] will be exalted in the earth.” That is, we are called to a stillness that is an expression of faith in God’s invincible nature and His future victory in this particular battle.
While being still, we are not to empty our minds but to fill our minds, specifically with the truth that God has won, is winning, and will win the victory over all the opponents. Even when the world seems to be crashing down—“though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea”—we should be actively trusting that God’s victory stands firm. God has communicated the truth about His character from the beginning and in every generation and to every person—it’s our duty to take that revelation and use it to stir up faith in our hearts.
But what about the second question: should we be still at all times? Psalm 46 doesn’t give us the answer to this question. It is focused on the absolute truth of God’s sovereign work on the behalf of His people and our responsibility to actively trust Him, not on the question of humankind’s other duties. But the full counsel of scripture shows and teaches the balanced (or cyclical) relationship of actively trusting (“be still”) to actively working. Stay tuned.