God on Trial

Lift up your hands to him for the lives of your children
Who faint from hunger at the head of every street

Look, Oh Lord, and consider:
Whom have you ever treated like this?
Should women eat their own offspring?
The children they have cared for?
Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?

Young and old lie together in the dust of the streets
My young men and maidens have fallen together by the sword
YOU have slain them in your anger;
YOU have slaughtered them without pity.
Lamentations 2:20-21

So I've been reading this OT theology book for a few months now. It says some really profound things in very blunt language. By blunt I mean it shakes you up, but doesn't really pierce below our defense mechanisms. Scholarly language is like that. So allow me to sharpen one of the claims that it makes: Christianity has made itself irrelevant to the world by sleeping with stoic philosophy.

Lamentations is a book of the Bible that makes some strong accusations directly at God. "You have slain them. . ." "You have slaughtered them without pity." This is a far cry from the earlier OT claims that God is merciful and faithful!! Were it not in our Bible, I have little doubt we would consider such writing to be completely heretical. How are we to take such audacity that would indict God?

But, then again, what should we make of the audacity of those who would imagine God needs us to protect him from such charges? The truth is, he is presented with such charges every day. The single mother in the conservative church. The homosexual who has received beatings from "Christians". The child who was sexually abused by a father. The mother who watches her son come home with a flag over his coffin. What of the greater tragedies? Pol Pot's killing fields. The ecclesial butcher shops of Rwanda. The tens of millions who vanished in Siberia. The lists go on. We criticize Jewish temples that don't believe in God, yet fail to see that many are descendents of holocaust victims. We gasp at neo-pagan Europe, but forget it is built on the scar tissue of WWII. The world has always been full of indictments on God. It will continue to be this way. What should we say? Should we come to his defense? Does he need us to?

In the book I mentioned earlier, the author claims one of the greatest losses to Christian faith has been the loss of the lament. In the name of reverence we have declared true emotion to be unsanitary in the sight of God. We have canonized stoicism. Kathleen O'Connor has an amazing quote, "Without coming to grips with our own despair, losses, and anger we cannot gain our full humanity." Emotion is vital to our being. To repress them is to live in denial. I believe God is more insulted by us gritting our teeth while saying everything is ok, than he is at us turning to him in accusation. Accusation may hurt God, but has he ever shrunk from pain?!

Lamentations is a book that I now realize has a great deal to teach us. Christians desperately need to learn that God does not need our defense. When people indict him, whether for neglegence or malicious intent, he allows it. Our own Scripture does so.

Our response should be this: don't let people stop with accusations. Don't assume the case is closed. If screaming is necessary, let them scream. If weeping, let them weep. God is not so offended by our mourning or our fury that he shuts the door on us. The church has too often played the role of Peter. We draw our sword to save the life of our Lord. Yet we forget that God does not fear death. We prevent the world from crucifying him and condemn them to hell in doing so. Those who swing the whip and drive the nail are the ones who are cleansed by his blood. They are the ones blessed to fall at the feet of the ressurrected Jesus.

When people assail God with the evils of the world, we should pray. We should cry. But ultimately we should urge them not to stop talking. Not to give up on God. The verse preceding the ones I sited above reads, "Arise, cry out in the night, as the watches begin; pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord." Those who hurt need God to know. Those who blame God need to let him know. We should not be so arrogant as to defend God. Instead the church again needs to be a place of lament. A place where pain is not hushed up, nor numbed by pseudo-theology, but is expressed with the fullness of human emotion. I think we would be refreshed to see such a place, for it is there that the Spirit of our Lord comforts and heals.