Abstract
. . . Every religion which does not affirm that God is hidden is not true. Vere tu es Deus absconditus—truly you are a hidden God. (Blaise Pascal, The Fundamentals of the Christian Religion, Section VIII, 585)
In the whole of the Bible, nothing speaks more to the hidden nature of God than Psalm 88. Known as a psalm of lament, it follows the pattern of other such psalms by registering various complaints before God and pleading for God to acknowledge and remedy them. But in this psalm, God is not listening. In fact, God is nowhere to be found.
This psalm opens with a very personal address, making it clear that the speaker has a relationship with God. The speaker seems to have no doubt that God can heal his longstanding troubles should God choose to do so. The speaker is desperate for God to intervene. He makes three urgent and passionate pleas, each appealing directly to God: “God of my salvation . . . I cry out in your presence” (v. 1); “Every day I call on you, O Lord” (v. 9); “I, O Lord, cry out to you” (v. 13).
The speaker (to whom I will refer as “he,” for convenience) feels that his life is over, that he has already entered into the region of the dead. His use of three different terms for that region—Sheol, the Pit, and Abaddon—underscores that feeling. Like the dead, he feels utterly cut off from God, from friends, from neighbors, and from life itself. But what upsets him the most is his belief that this is all God’s fault. After describing what it feels like to be among the dead, he accuses God of putting him there:
You have put me in the depths of the Pit . . . . Your wrath lies heavy upon me and you overwhelm me with all your waves. You have caused my companions to shun me; you have made me a thing of horror to them. (vv. 6–8; emphasis mine) Your wrath has swept over me; your dread assaults destroy me. You have caused friend and neighbor to shun me. (vv. 16, 18; emphasis mine)
As Walter Brueggemann and William H. Bellinger, Jr., point out, these verses accuse God of infidelity and of betraying the trust and confidence of the psalmist. Thus the speaker grieves not only over a threat to life but also over a sense of abandonment by the very one on whom he counted (Psalms [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014], 379).
Having called God to account, the speaker then employs a rather unusual tactic to try to persuade God to act on his behalf. He boldly declares that God’s failure to act would not only have dire consequences for him; it would have dire consequences for God:
Do the shades rise up to praise you? Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your saving help in the land of forgetfulness? (vv. 10–12)
The speaker’s point is that, as a dead person, he is of little value to God. Therefore, God must keep him alive so that he can continue to praise God and bear testimony to God’s steadfast love. It is a daring act of gamesmanship. But it doesn’t work. And so, the speaker is left with that most universal of questions: “Why do you hide your face from me?” (v. 14).
Psalm 88 is an honest acknowledgment that the prayers of the faithful often go unanswered. In this way, it functions much like the book of Job. But there is a marked difference between the two. While Job doesn’t get answers to his prayers, he at least has the privilege of being heard by God. In Psalm 88 there is no indication that God hears anything that the speaker has to say. Remarkably, God’s lack of hearing, God’s hiddenness, doesn’t lessen the speaker’s faith in God. To the contrary, it leads him to pray even more fervently.
Many of us, of course, are as familiar with unanswered prayer as the psalmist. Like him, we have experienced the hiddenness of God. Like him, we have found ourselves asking the universal question: Why? Why would God cause something terrible to happen in our lives or in the lives of people we know and love? Or, at the very least, why would God allow such terrible things to happen? Or, why would God not intervene to take care of the problem?
Those of us who are pastors see people struggling with questions like these on a regular basis. Truth be told, many of us struggle with these same questions. Like the psalmist, we turn to God for the answers, but God doesn’t seem to be listening. Nicholas Wolterstorff speaks for many of us, too, when he says: “To the ‘why’ of suffering we get no firm answer. Of course some suffering is easily seen to be the result of our sin: war, assault, poverty amidst plenty, the hurtful word. And maybe some is chastisement. But not all. The meaning of the remainder is not told us. It eludes us. Our net of meaning is too small” (Lament For A Son [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987], 74).
Ann Weems lends her powerful voice to our experiences with the hiddenness of God in her book Psalms of Lament (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995; excerpt below used by permission). Like the author of Psalm 88, she calls for God to come out of hiding and mend her troubled heart. And just as remarkably, she also demonstrates a resilient faith in God even though God does not answer her prayers. “Lament Psalm Twenty-two” (pp. 40–41) is a prime example:
I don’t know where to look for you, O God! I’ve called and I’ve called. I’ve looked and I’ve looked. I go back to my room and sit in the dark waiting for you. Could you give me a sign that you’ve heard? Could you numb my emotions so I wouldn’t hurt so much? I walk in circles. I rock in my chair. I pour a glass of water. I look out the window. I walk to kitchen. I open the refrigerator; there’s nothing I want. I close it again. I turn on the TV. The voices are too loud; the faces are too loud. I mute the voices; I turn off the faces. The silence is my friend; the silence is my enemy. I go upstairs. I lie on the bed. I get up again. I walk to the window. No sign of you! I’m dying, O God, without you. O God of wonder, you can change it all. You can distract me from thoughts of death. You can fill my days with purpose. You can make the nights shorter. You can let me find you. Don’t hide from me any longer, O God. O God, you reveal yourself to those who call upon your name. Blessed be my God who does not fail me!
Therapists know that when one is suffering, one must first learn to give voice to that suffering before one can regain any sense of health and wholeness. Giving voice to the suffering often involves deep questioning—questioning one’s self, questioning others, and questioning God. Therapists also know that pat or premature answers to such questions do not help. It takes time, often a lot of time, before one can come to terms with suffering. And it takes time to accept the fact that, for some questions, there are no answers.
No one is exempt from suffering. And no one is exempt from the inevitable questions that come with suffering; no one, not even Jesus. When Christians think about the hiddenness of God in the face of human suffering, do they most likely think about Jesus hanging on the cross and crying out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46)? Like the psalmist, Jesus has questions for which there are no answers. Nevertheless, he also keeps faith and cries out to God, hoping, no doubt, that God is listening.
Like Wolterstorff and Weems, I have had the terrible experience of losing a son. Like them and so many others, I have joined with the psalmist in asking: Why? Why did this happen? Did you have anything to do with it, God? And if not, then why didn’t you intervene before it was too late? Like them, I am still waiting for answers.
To paraphrase Brueggemann and Bellinger, it is clear that the God of the Bible is no reliable antidote to the suffering and the evil that are in the world, yet we are most mindful, as was the psalmist, of our need for God (Psalms, 382). And so, like the psalmist, we wait and we pray as an act of faith, hoping that God is listening.