wfn.org | Arguing with God: Theologian calls for Christian prayers of doubt, sorrow and outrage

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Note #7179 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

30-May-2002
02197

Arguing with God

Theologian calls for Christian prayers of doubt, sorrow and outrage

by Alexa Smith

MONTREAT, NC - Prof. Dan Migliore is worried that Christians may be neglecting their prayers.

Not their prayers of praise or thanksgiving, but their prayers of lament - those that articulate anguish, or, like the psalmists of old, take God to task for being silent when the world is hurting so deeply.

That's what Migliore told his listeners in a workshop titled, "The Prayer of Lament in Christian Theology," one of 23 offerings during the Montreat Conference Center's third annual "Reclaiming the Text" Conference, which focused this year on Recovering the Language of Lament.

"My basic concern ... is for freedom and honesty of prayer, and all that this freedom implies for our understandings of God and of ourselves," said Migliore, a systematic theologian at Princeton Theological Seminary. "If in Christian life we cannot express our doubts, our faith will be half-hearted. If we cannot shed tears over loss and waste, our laughter will be hollow. If we cannot express our outrage against injustice, our commitment to God's reign will be lukewarm.

"If we cannot argue with God, we cannot be brought to deeper understanding."

But even Migliore agrees that arguing with God is easier said than done.

The Jewish spiritual tradition of arguing with God, depicted in memorable accounts of Biblical quarrels involving Abraham and Job, among others, has largely disappeared in Christian spirituality and prayer.

The lament-laden Psalter - full as it is of cries of loss and anger, and even a thirst for revenge - was suspect in the judgments of Augustine and Luther. Calvin also put more emphasis on patient endurance of suffering than on protests of God's absence in times of despair and loss.

They rejected the ages-old tradition of questioning God and complaining that He ought to "act like God" and start remedying the suffering and injustice that shatter lives.

Yet the Biblical tradition, in Migliore's view, holds that the people of God may protest injustice and urge God to act to end suffering - not just as individuals, but as communities of faith.  The covenant itself creates space for such prayers.

"When events seem to challenge the validity of the covenant promises; when sufferings that are endured seem far to exceed what could be construed as discipline or training or chastisement; when the God of the covenant is experienced as painfully silent or deeply hidden in the midst of outrageous evil; (then) the people of God cry out in their loneliness and sense of abandonment," he said. "Some may dare to argue with God. However difficult it may be for us to grasp, in the Biblical understanding of the covenant relationship between God and God's people, arguing with God in times of distress ... has its rightful place."

Migliore based his comments on his earlier paper, "Arguing with God: Resistance and Relinquishment in the Life of Faith."

Asking God to act, he said, is for humanity's sake and for God's sake as well.

"Injustice, violence and death contradict the character and purpose of God. When evil, injustice and death prevail in the world created and ruled by God, it is not only humanity that suffers, but also the glory of God that suffers," he said.

Migliore said he interprets Jesus' dying wail from the cross - "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" - as inseparable from a larger question: Why has God abandoned the reign that was initiated in Jesus' ministry of justice, mercy and reconciliation?

He argued that crying out in the midst of distress is not evidence of a loss of faith, "but the expression of faith in a wounded form."

"God wants honesty rather than pretense in our prayer," he said. "God invites us as covenant partners to stand before God with all that we are, experience and hope for, so that it is truly we ourselves who are there, in all of our distress and hope, and not a camouflaged or make-believe self."

Prayers of lament, he said, remind God to be God and remind Christians that God is God. In other words, such prayer reinforces faith. Migliore noted that Jesus also cried out, "Father, into your hands I offer my spirit." 

"Not one of these (cries) is complete without the other, but both hold together in utmost tension until the drama of redemption is complete," he said.

He noted that Christian communities are required to rail against how the world goes awry, even while submitting to God's timing for his triumphant reign of justice, forgiveness and love - and leaving their hatreds and thirst for revenge to God as well.

Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable practice of arguing with God in the face of injustice, pain and death, he said, can benefit the Christian community by giving voice to the suffering that renders some people speechless.

Putting human pain and complaint into words, he said, gives God an opportunity to work with impulses that could be destructive if they were not acknowledged, such as the desire for vengeance.

"As those summoned always to call upon God, we are given the freedom to pray," he said. "That precious gift includes the freedom to praise the goodness of God, but also to argue with God when evil and injustice seem triumphant."

Migliore said the Biblical models of Rachel's weeping and Mary's Magnificat might help today's Christians find ways to combine pain and prophetic utterance into modern prayers of lament.

Why add protest to the Christian repertoire of praise and thanksgiving?

Loosely paraphrasing Luther, he said Christ must be found in the dirtiness and messiness of life - or theology is useless.
"However difficult it is, if we cannot relate faith in God to the horrendous evils that have shattered us all in the 20th Century  maybe we ought to give it all up," he said.
	
Migliore is a co-author, with Kathleen Billman, of "Rachel's Cry: Prayer of Lament and Rebirth of Hope," published in 1999 by Pilgrim Press.
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