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Giving God an Earful

by James Barringer  
11/02/2009 / Christian Living

Life is not really all I hoped it would be, lately. "Welcome to the human race, Jim," you say, "so nice of you to finally join us."

Kidding aside, my recent move to Florida has in some ways been much better than I had anticipated, but in other ways, it hasn't been as good as I was thinking it would be. I'm a little dismayed at how long it's taking to graduate from my secular job - which I had envisioned as a temporary, transitional job - into full-time ministry. It kills me to do that job, for a high schooler's salary, knowing that it bears absolutely no relationship to what I want to spend the rest of my life doing. It's piddly, trivial, and every time I go I have to fight the feeling that I'm just wasting my life. In a man's mind, a lot of the time, if he can't perceive that he's doing something useful or valuable, he feels terrible, almost worthless, because a man's sense of value is tied very tightly to pragmatism.

There's more I could say, but the upshot is that I ended up really taking God to task one night, telling him in no uncertain terms just how upset I was at everything that was (or, more accurately, wasn't) happening. The next morning, feeling a little guilty, I apologized to him, but immediately took back the apology. I wasn't really sorry for speaking to him that way, because I had been honest with him.

Many people are scared to give God an earful, to stand up to him too boldly, as if we need to show him the same kind of artificial respect that we might show the queen. It's silly to think that God would ever be upset by us admitting in words something that we're already feeling in our hearts, especially given that he already knows our hearts, already knows everything we're thinking before we say it. Does he want to be kept at arm's length; does he want us to censor ourselves for fear of angering him with our true feelings, or does he want an authentic relationship with us?

He's certainly entitled to that kind of artificial respect, should he desire it. He's the king of the universe, so he could definitely demand that we treat him as such, coming to him only on bowed knee, groveling. Indeed, that's the way that we ought to be approaching him at all times. But his amazing grace means that he listens to us even when we treat him as if we're the kings and he's the servant. He's entitled to respect because he's the monarch, but even when we don't bring respect, he still listens. He lets us approach him with anger, and he doesn't hold our ignorance against us, because he's less interested in receiving respect (even though he deserves it) than he is in a genuine relationship with him - and indeed, if we have a genuine relationship, the respect will come in time, and at that point it will not be artificial.

Proverbs 29:11 says, "A fool gives full vent to his anger." I spoke foolishly to God. My normal human sense of cause-and-effect tells me that if I treat God wrongly, he should either punish me, or at the very least not listen to me - yet he doesn't. When Habakkuk went to God, accusing him of laziness for letting injustice flourish on the earth, God answered him, not in anger but matter-of-factly. Habakkuk gave God an earful, and God still answered him. Observe also that God allowed the Psalms to be preserved in the canon; many of those poems include David crying out, with all his heart, demanding that God move quickly to save him, or simply groaning about how things are going in his life. Do we need more proof that God wants full, open, honest communication with us?

As I said, we don't really have the right to talk to God that way. Honestly, we don't have the right to talk to the king of the universe at all - tiny, insignificant, flawed, pitiful creatures that we are. We should be absolutely nothing to him, but he values us anyway, gives us his ear, allows us to rage at him, lets us give full vent to our anger and expose ourselves for fools. And he doesn't let this break our relationship with him. He loves us intensely, so strongly that no words could ever describe it. He wants nothing more than to scoop us into his arms so he can make us all more like Jesus.

If I was more spiritually mature, I probably wouldn't feel the need to speak to God the way I did. But the fact that I shouted at him and he didn't slam the door in my face makes me love him more, makes me want to know him better, and makes me want to achieve the very spiritual maturity that I'm talking about. I'm still his child; he's still my father. One day when all this is in the rear-view, I'm going to laugh at what a fool I was, but even more than that, I'm going to marvel that God continues to accept me, in all my foolishness, and continues to use me in his plan.

Jim Barringer is a 38-year-old writer, musician, and teacher. More of his work can be found at facebook.com/jmbarringer. This work may be reprinted for any purpose so long as this bio and statement of copyright is included.

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