Psalm 139:14

No matter if Solomon or someone else wrote the Book of Job, it was not written by Job nor was there anyone who stenographically recorded Job and his friends’ speeches.

The Psalms, therefore, are to be seen in a similar light: inspired, though (obviously) not the direct word of God. Unlike Christ’s words in the Gospels.

We read:

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

Why, then, should the Psalmist’s words be seen in a different light? There are people born with horrible diseases, children with disfigured faces.

Let us accept, therefore, that while the Psalms may be inspiring and certainly one of the most important parts of our Holy Scripture — even pocket Bibles often include them along with the New Testament —, not every verse carries the same weight as the direct words of God.

I despise my body, just like Kierkegaard did. Further, in his Journals, Kierkegaard pointed out that the New Testament has to be read against the Old Testament. One example he gave was the Psalmist. Instead of wishing for the destruction of the wicked and those who persecute us, the Christian even ought to pray for them (like St. Stephanus, for example).

To top it off, the way we come into the world is nothing noble at all, as I wrote elsewhere. Even if people may claim to marvel at the “wonder” of pregnancy, it remains an unclean act, and shallow physical beauty is what most people find attractive.

It is a slap in the face that should give us pause, to use Andy Nowicki’s words (cf. his Considering Suicide).

Or another example: Ecclesiastes (12:1):

Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;

I obviously had no pleasure in my youth either, this is mostly a figure of speech; apart from childhood, the only time I felt “good” or had “pleasure in my days” was that one year after what evangelical Christians call being “born-again”.

I side with Gómez Dávila once again:

Religion is the only serious thing, but one need not take seriously every declaration of homo religiosus.

The heart does not rebel against the will of God, but against the “reasons” they dare attribute to it.

Christianity, when it abolishes its ancient liturgical languages, degenerates into strange, uncouth sects.
Once contact is broken with Greek and Latin antiquity, once its medieval and patristic inheritance is lost, any simpleton turns into its exegete.