On Psalm 109 and Faith

[flippyshark]

Not exclusive, but fundamentalists of all stripes have certainly perfected the art, at great cost to humanity.

Even the venerable C.S. Lewis thought psalm 109 was horrible:

"In some of the Psalms the spirit of hatred which strikes us in the face is like the heat from a furnace mouth. In others the same spirit ceases to be frightful only by becoming (to a modern mind) almost comic in its naivety. Examples can be found all over the Psalter, but perhaps the worst is in 109.

The hatred is there--festering, gloating, undisguised--and also we should be wicked if we in any way condoned or approved it, or (worse still) used it to justify similar passions in ourselves."

I believe Lewis' sentiments are probably shared by the vast majority of practicing Christians, (at least, those who actually bother to read the Bible at all) but then, why do they continue to venerate these ancient writings? I know I went through many years of cognitive dissonance myself before I abandoned the whole enterprise.