Taking a very short break from the series In Search of the Soul, here’s a talk I gave at Church a few nights ago. It was on Psalm 69 and the subject of lament. Nothing too intellectually deep, but hopefully something to chew over. Enjoy.
Glenn Peoples
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Kenny
Well done.
Glenn
Thanks. One thing though, I think I got the title of Hitchens’ book wrong. It should be “God is not Great.”
Joey
Wow. That was something I think everyone will need to hear at some point in their lives – I could have really used it a year ago myself. Very well done.
Glenn
Thanks Joey.
There’s something else I want to add because of some of the feedback I got on Sunday night. I wish I had mentioned it during the talk.
There’s a temptation for some Christians to hear this sermon, and to reply by (what I take to be) trivialising the kind of struggles that people wrestling with God can and do go through. The reply might be something like: “Yeah, I know what you mean. Some people think that God will make your life all rosy. But it’s not like that, and they need to get realistic.”
That is very far from anything I wanted to say in this talk. I was really getting at the legitimacy of lament in our lives and worship. That aside, there are people in this world striving to follow Christ who lament because of their difficulties, but not at all because they expect their lives to be “rosy.” Think for example of a battered wife who says that she just wishes that God’s presence and help would be a little more present as she suffers on in her violent marriage. Or think of a person who wants to get out of the life he’s in an press on in the Christian life, but he just wants God to be with him in as he struggles with his heroin addiction. Peoples like this are really out there in the world (obviously). Don’t even dream of saying to these people that they just need to wake up and realise that Jesus doesn’t promise to make their lives filled with sunshine and butterflies. That’s not what they’re complaining about!