Mean God

Psalm 10

November 12, 2023 • Mount Pleasant UMC

As we’ve already mentioned this morning, yesterday we celebrated Veteran’s Day, a time when we rightly celebrate those who have served our country in the armed services in order to secure and protect our freedom. My dad is a veteran of the Army, and I am very grateful for all like him who have served faithfully and honorably. And we should all be grateful because we love our freedom. Sociologist Robert Bellah, in his famous book Habits of the Heart, found that for Americans, “freedom was perhaps the most important value” (qtd. in Comer, Live No Lies, Apple Books edition, pg. 185). The problem we have today, though, is that we have a distorted idea of what freedom is. We have defined freedom as the ability to do whatever you want, and today that means, basically, “Don’t tell me what to do, and don’t get in my way or stop me from doing what I want to do.” So on one hand we hold this idea that human beings should be allowed to do whatever they want, but then we are devastated when things like the wars in Ukraine and Israel happen or when systemic racism shows its head or even when things like addictions and compulsive gambling and financial fraud and adultery and environmental damage happen (cf. Comer 185-186; Goldingay, Psalms for Everyone—Part 1, pg. 34). That’s when we cry out, like the psalmist in today’s reading, “Why, Lord, do you stand far off?” (10:1). We want people to have this “do what you want” freedom—as long as they do what we think they should. But, friends, we can’t have it both ways. And that’s one place where the practice of lament can help us deal with the difference between how things should be and how they are.

Last week we begin this series on lament called “Minor Key,” a series which Pastor Rick says very few preachers would be brave enough to preach! But lament is all through the Bible, and especially in the psalms. At least a third of these songs in the official hymnbook of Israel are laments, prayers that represent difficulty, challenge and pain in the experience of God’s people. But lament has become a lost practice, a lost art. We somehow have come to the conclusion that to lament is to be faithless toward God. We have this idea that we’re supposed to just be positive, as if that’s the evidence that we’re trusting God. But the psalmists and others in the Bible who lamented were not being faithless or untrusting. If anything, they learned through the practice of lament to trust God more deeply, to stick with God even when it seemed like he was mean. So last week we talked about the first movement in lament, which is turning toward God, staying in the conversation. This morning, we’re going to look at the second movement, which is complaining, something we know a lot about these days!

The arrival of and pervasiveness of social media has turned complaining into a national pastime. Log onto Facebook or Twitter (or “X,” as it’s known today for some reason) and you will usually find people you know complaining about this or that. It doesn’t matter how big or small the perceived infraction or inconvenience is, we quickly take to social media to let everyone know of our displeasure or our disgust. Some are complaints about things that have happened or circumstances. Others are passive/aggressive complaints about someone the complainer hopes will see it. But none of that is what the Bible means by complaint. So let’s turn to Psalm 10 and see what Biblical complaint might look like and how we might learn to pray by complaining.

Like most of the psalms, we have no idea what the setting was or what prompted the singing of this song. The only thing we can sort of determine is that the author, who is unnamed, has gone through some sort of suffering. And when people go through suffering, though a time of trouble (as he says in verse 1), we usually have one of two responses. Some of us give into anger and denial. Some people blame God for the suffering that has come into their lives, and they become angry and bitter toward God. Some even progress to rage or even to an outright denial of the faith that once meant so much to them. Their pain paves the way to disbelief. Others react in a completely different way, what we might call the way of stoicism. These are the folks who will tell you, even in the worst of circumstances, that “everything is fine.” They try to hide from the pain, at least in public, because they don’t want to seem weak or dependent. Maybe these folks were told as a child to suck it up, be a man, big girls don’t cry, or something like that. But neither of these responses are true Biblical complaint (cf. Vroegop, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, pgs. 43-44).

Instead, this psalm tells us first that we can bring our questions. The psalmist starts out with a question. He doesn’t sugar coat it. He doesn’t play nice by starting with complementary words. He gets right to his question: “Why, Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (10:1). The psalmist is concerned and frustrated about evil and injustice, particularly with evil people who seem to get away with whatever they want to do. Does that resonate with us today at all? Of course it does. It’s been true for all of human history. And so the psalmist, in whatever situation of injustice he has found himself, turns to the only one he knows who can and, in his estimation, should do something about it. He turns to “the Lord.” This is important; it matters who we take our complaint to. Not to social media. Not to our neighbors or family. The psalmist goes to the Lord.

The name there in the Hebrew text is “Yahweh,” which in most English translations is “LORD” in all capital letters. It’s the name God gave to Moses as his personal name, and it means (as best we can tell), “I Am.” This is the God who is, who is everywhere, who is always present with his people and who has, in the past, delivered his people from suffering and struggle. In other words, this is the God who has the power to do whatever he wants to do (cf. Goldingay 35). He is the creator, the one who made it all and has control over it all. It matters who we take our complaint to, and the psalmist makes a distinct choice to bring his complaint to Yahweh (Vroegop 45-46). because his complaint has to do with God’s character. The God who should be close, who should be paying attention to his people, seems “far off” and “hidden.” In other words, the psalmist is telling God that God is not being very God-like. From the psalmist’s vantage point, God is not doing what the psalmist thinks God should be doing. Whatever is happening, God has not shown up—at least in the way the psalmist thinks he should.

But here’s what I want us to notice and remember: God can handle our questions and God can handle our complaints. The psalmist knows this and that’s why he can come to God and say whatever is on his mind. It does us no good to pretend everything is okay when we pray. I had a friend named Jim who prayed the most beautiful prayers. His tone exuded reverence and he had the King James language down pat. I don’t say that to make fun, because Jim was always the go-to prayer person at our breakfast meeting. When Jim prayed, you knew you were in God’s presence. But Jim would never have thought about praying the way the psalmist prays. For him, you didn’t question God and you didn’t challenge God. And most of us pray like Jim, even if we don’t use King James language. We sort of keep this distance from God, even though we don’t mean to. But we’ve been taught somewhere along the way or we’ve gotten the idea somehow that you don’t question God. The psalmist never got that memo. He already knows what we need to learn: God can handle our questions. God can handle our complaints. God can take it when we ask him why he allows violence in the world, or why our loved one died and it seemed like he didn’t do anything, or why our children strayed away from the faith. And Psalm 10 is not the only place where the singer questions God. Listen to these other examples. Psalm 44: “Awake, Lord! Why do you sleep?…Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression?” (44:23-24). Psalm 88: “Why, Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me?” (88:14). And, of course, there is Psalm 22, the psalm Jesus prayed from the cross that we’re going to look at next week: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (22:1). God can handle our questions. God can handle our accusations. He already knows anyway, which means if we try to hide it, we’re lying to him. So ask your questions.

We can also express our frustrations (Vroegap 50). We can give voice and name to our pain. The psalmist does this repeatedly in the first part of Psalm 10. It’s almost like his frustration grows as he prays through it. “In his arrogance, the wicked man hunts down the weak” (10:2). The wicked man “boasts about the cravings of his heart” (10:3). “In his pride the wicked man does not seek” God; “in all his thoughts there is no room for God” (10:4). Basically, the psalmist is frustrated that since God has not immediately responded, the evil ones are emboldened. They “curse, lie, threaten, and deal perversely (vv. 7-10), convinced that God does not care” (VanGemeren, “Psalms,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 5, pg. 124). The psalmist feels powerless; that’s part of his frustration. The other part is that he knows the ones who is powerful, and that one seems to be doing nothing.

And when that happens, that’s when it can feel like we serve a mean God. I have never forgotten encountering the message that I was a mean Dad. I can’t remember what I had said or done, but Rachel had taken her white board and written on it, “Daddy is mean,” and placed the board right at the bottom of the stairs where I would see it when I came down. No idea what I did, but I’m guessing that in her sense of justice or the way things should be, I had not done the right thing. I either had refused to act on her behalf or I had withheld something she thought she needed. And there was the declaration in marker: “Daddy is mean.” It makes me think of how many times we leave the proverbial sign at the door of our hearts that says, “God is mean.” When we don’t get our way, when it seems God is not acting on our behalf, when it appears that he is far off, we decide God is mean. And you know what? It was okay Rachel said that to me and it’s okay when we say that to God. Express your frustration. It’s okay.

The reality is that God has given us free will. We can make choices. God does not control what we do or who we are. And sometimes human beings make choices that are harmful to others or to the world. And then we ask God why he doesn’t intervene, but think about what it means to be a parent. “Parents do not intervene every time their children have an argument; they know that children need to learn to sort things out for themselves” (Goldingay 35). God has given us freedom, but it’s not the freedom to just do whatever we want. The freedom promised in the Bible is a freedom rooted in love—love of God and love of others. That should sound familiar! The freedom that God gives us is permission to choose the good, to do what love requires. And when people abuse that freedom, that’s what leads to a broken world and to our complaints. But rather than blasting it out on social media, what if there is actually a healthy way to complain? One shown to us by the Biblical writers?

Let me give you four keys to Biblical complaint, the first of which is to come humble. Or, as one author put it, “check your arrogance at the door” (Vroegop 52). I think of the story of Job, who went through terrible suffering and pain, and then spent many chapters in the Bible complaining about it. Well, not complaining in the right way. He spends most of his time saying how innocent he is and that he should’t have to suffer this way. He’s a lot like we are, actually. At the end, God shows up and gives Job a tour of the universe, basically saying, “You can question me when you can understand all of this. When you’ve created a universe, then we can talk.” And Job responds for the first time with humility. He says, “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know…Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:3, 6). He realizes that he has no idea what God is actually up to, which is something it often takes us a long time to realize. I hear people asserting that God is doing this or that but the fact is we simply don’t know. God’s ways are higher than ours and we can’t ever fully understand them (cf. Isaiah 55:8-9). So, “it is fine to challenge God to take action to punish people for their wrongdoing” (Goldingay 35), as long as are humble enough to know that it is God’s place to actually do that and not ours (cf. Deuteronomy 32:35). Come humbly.

Second, pray the Bible. If you worry about having the right language to complain to God, turn to the Scriptures which is where the best language is anyway. The lament psalms are there for a reason; they were persevered to give voice to the difficult times faced by God’s people. You might want to memorize Psalm 10, or Psalm 77 that Pastor Rick focused on last week, or one of the other lament psalms that have, for millennia, given language to the pain of God’s people. Start by praying the Bible. These words were given to us for a reason.

Third, be honest. Like I said a few moments ago, God already knows what’s going on in your life. He knows your pain, your fears, your frustrations. He is a God who can empathize with our weaknesses, because in Jesus he became one of us. The letter to the Hebrews says he was tempted in every way we were (cf. Hebrews 4:15). He knew the heartache of loss, of betrayal, of evil people who seemed to get away with whatever they wanted. The Bible says God is a loving Father, and like a good father, he doesn’t force his way into the lives of his children. He waits to be asked. He wants to be asked. “God longs to be invited into my brokenness, anxiety, fear, and shame…I can only be helped in his presence” (Fabian, Holy Vulnerability, pg. 8). So be honest; tell God exactly what’s on your mind and in your heart. Honestly tell him all of it.

And then, finally, don’t just complain. This is the problem with social media. Let’s say you complain about something that happened. What happens next? Of course—others pile on. The first person says, “Yes, that same thing happened to me, and I will never go back there.” And then the next person says, “I can’t believe that happened. Let me tell you something I’m mad about.” And on it goes. Complaining like that does no good; in fact, we often just end up stuck there and “complaint was never meant to be an end in itself” (Vroegop 53). The purpose of Biblical complaint is twofold, I believe. First, it’s to connect us to God more deeply. As we confide in him, we begin to sense his presence and that leads us to the second purpose, which is to turn our eyes upward and outward, to gain a new, different and better perspective. That’s what happens to the psalmist in almost every lament psalm, including this one. After the psalmist has gotten the complaint out of his system, listen again to the perspective he gains: “The Lord is king for ever and ever; the nations will perish from his land. You, Lord, hear the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed, so that mere earthly mortals will never again strike terror” (10:16-18). Once he has spent time baring his soul before God, he gains a true perspective on the God he has always known was good.

Biblical complaint should then propel us to not just complain but to look for ways to do good, to make a difference in the world around us. When we gain a new perspective, it propels us to live in a different way. This made me think of the “general rules” for the people called Methodist, set out by John Wesley a long while ago. We’ve talked about these before, so maybe you remember them, but quickly, the three “rules” for our tradition are these: do no harm, do good, and engage in practices that help you love God. This psalm made me think in particular of the first two and the way they mirror each other. It’s not enough to just not do harm, we’re also called to actively do good. It’s not enough to just complain; we’re called to try to address the things that are wrong in the world. We’re supposed to be the hands and feet of Jesus, doing what Jesus would do if he were here in the flesh. Encourage the afflicted. Listen to the hurting. Defend those who are alone and beaten up by life. Don’t let evil ones win the day. If we move in this direction, then Biblical complaint and lament will have done its job in us, and ultimately in the world.

The end of this psalm tells us something significant, I think. The fact that he gets a true picture of God means that, as he has poured out his complaint, his lament, to God, it has been enough. He has found the connection to God that he longed for in the beginning. And we know that because of the clear view of God he has by verse 18. The hope, the desire is that as we lament, we too will be given a clear vision of who God is, that he is close to the brokenhearted and near to those who cry out. He is not far off. He is not a mean God. He is the one who walks with us in times that are good and days that are difficult. He is with us, always and forever. That is a truth you can count on. Let’s pray.