Finer Than Gold, Sweeter Than Honey: The Psalms for Our Living.

A.J. Pell is editor of the Canadian Evangelical Review and an instructor
of Liturgy, Anglican Studies Program, Regent College, Vancouver.

Anglican priest and prolific writer Herbert O’Driscoll turns his attention to the Psalms, the biblical book that has played a major role in Christian worship throughout the history of the church, and which is still used weekly, even daily, in the liturgical denominations. Each psalm receives equal treatment, approximately 1½ pages of brief reflection in which O’Driscoll seeks to bring out a theme or insight to help the average Christian begin to grasp something of the psalm’s essence.

Right from Psalm 1, the postmodern reader recognizes that O’Driscoll knows his/her mindset, which has few boundaries: “We are immediately in a black and white world. … We find this troubling.” But he doesn’t always challenge more troubling examples of contemporary thinking. The cry for bloody revenge at the end of Psalm 137, which echoes a prevalent 21st-century response to the bombings in the London Underground or the levelling of the World Trade Center, is met with a tepid “this would be a very bad recipe for Christian behaviour.” While this failure to confront a problem passage can be ascribed to the limits O’Driscoll sets for his reflections on each psalm, the reader wonders whether once or twice he could have stepped outside those limits to confront difficult ideas and emotions.

By using the translation of the Book of Psalms from the Canadian Anglican Book of Alternative Services, the author has chosen a translation few have in their own homes and which, when compared with such mainstream Bible translations as the Revised Standard Version or New International Version, is at times suspect. But he has helped the modern reader see two aspects of the psalms that she/he may very easily overlook: the strong faith and the God-centred hope of their authors that sustains them even in desperate circumstances.