Apparently, God Didn’t Major in PR.

I read Habakkuk today. Crazy book. Prime example of God’s unique strain of attractive, untamable wildness. I think 2:20 sums it up: “The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent.” Here’s my unscholarly paraphrase of the book:

Habakkuk: God, are you seeing this? The bad guys are winning! How can you just sit there and watch while evil prevails? Aren’t you going to do something?

God: It’s worse than you think. I’m personally raising up those evil people to punish Israel.

Habakkuk: How can you do that?! Why would you tolerate these people? You know they’ll only worship their own strength at the end of the day. Answer me!

God: The judgment is coming and the wicked will pay for their crimes. I will have justice. But you must wait. “Though it linger, it will certainly come and will not delay” (2:3).

Pause…

Habakkuk: …I can see that in your timing, you will come with horrible anger, sifting the hearts of people; rescuing the righteous and destroying the wicked. “I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled. Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us. Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines… yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my savior. The sovereign LORD is my strength” (3:16-18).

God doesn’t pander to people. He doesn’t scramble to salvage His reputation. He is obstinately, unapologetically Himself. I find He is very honest with us when we hit rock bottom and cry out to him. “Yes. Your fears are justified. You are going to lose your house, your job, your loved one… Now what? What will be your response? Will you find strength in me or pursue your own strength?”

When I’m in a season of depression, doubt, and questioning, He usually doesn’t “answer” my complaints in the way I want. Clearly, His motto is not, “The customer is always right.” He doesn’t wring His hands or bustle around pulling together inspirational maxims to placate us. (Sometimes Christians get really self-helpy on each other.) Rather, he speaks the truth and watches to see our response.

If our hearts can accept his sovereignty and wildness, then his brutal honesty will refresh us and give us a painful but sure way out of our spiritual paralysis. Put another way, “The truth will set you free.” (I think the same is true with emotional healing...

But if our hearts will not accept His sovereignty and wildness… if we prefer a tame God who will be our savior but not our Lord, who must answer for all his actions and explain himself to us… Then our hearts will harden and our depression will deepen and perhaps we will find some happiness and strength in ourselves or our other relationships for a time. Maybe we’ll learn to follow our hearts or stand up on our own two feet.

But in the end I think it’s a doomed path; one that gets narrower and narrower for all eternity until our choices are all made for us in the worst way. I think it’s a less-honest path and ultimately a less liberating one, even if it feels liberating now.

And truth be told, I’d rather “risk it” with God than risk it on myself. The God-follower says, “even if my life is dry, and stark, and painful, I have cast my lot with the Lord. I have no other Strength besides Him. Even if all the promises seem to crumble and I am led weeping to the altar to surrender Isaac, the son of promise, I can do nothing else… I will do nothing else but trust the power and promises and character of God.”

“Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of life.”

I believe it’s a blessed path; a narrow and non-intuitive one that gets wider and wider for all eternity and a more liberating one in the end.

I told a friend the other day, “I’m terrified that this one area of my life will be really difficult and painful for the next several years.” To which my friend replied, “Yes. That area of your life will very likely be painful and difficult for the next several years….” After which I felt a strange relief. “Oh,” I thought. “Well okay.” And in a sense, it felt good to have someone say, “Your fears may be justified. But that doesn’t mean you have to live in fear.” I can’t totally explain it, but somehow it’s liberating and it helps me move beyond the paralyzing dread to a humbler place of relying on God.

I think God just built us that way.