(Editor’s Note:  During the Lenten season, we have invited guest writers to post reflections here at Mere-O.  Micah Hoover is an engineer by day, and a blogger by night.  He posts Kierkegaardian-style meditations on the Christian life at his blog Mere Devotion.  We are happy to have him here.)

Children were asked to describe God in a survey.  One child described God this way:

I think He’s an old man with a long, gray beard. And He sits
on a throne like a king, and drinks all the Dr. Pepper He
wants.

Adults forget the difficulties of being a child. Children are given few options in their choices, and they are responsible for much less than adults.

Children describe God as a being who does whatever he wants and takes total responsibility for His choices. This is a radical notion to them, like something they cannot fully grasp.

Perhaps God seemed radical to all of us when we were younger. Instead of acknowledging the radicalness of God, many adults try to defend him in a way that belittles and undermines His power.

For example, I read a commentary once on the episode in the Bible where the Ark of the Covenant was about to fall. In the story, a man named Uzzah (who was not a Levite) stretched out his hand to steady the ark, and he fell dead.

The twenty first century reader struggles to understand these passages. Such readers say to themselves that there is some defect in the translation or even in the Scriptures -when they are the ones full of defective thoughts.

The commentary on the passage claimed that the man’s death was like dynamite or a nuclear bomb. It wasn’t that God chose for the man to die… it’s just like when TNT is ignited or uranium is slammed together.

Such commentary, of course, leaves open the possibility that God wanted to save the man, but he was too weak and powerless on his own to do anything about it. Or maybe he was just too shy. Or it was just the nature of the ark.

The politically correct God described by this age never chooses for anyone to die. He never chooses for people to lose their homes, or to get sick, or to read newspapers that are racially-tinged. He would stop all of this if he could, but he’s too weak (or he leaves it up to us, or he’s bashful, etc.).

And the politically correct God never drinks more Dr. Pepper than the government permits him to drink. He never drinks more than his accountability partners allow him to drink. He never drinks more than everyone else so he doesn’t look selfish.

And he never drinks more Dr. Pepper than his nature allows him to drink.

But is this the real God? Is this God who lets things happen without ever intervening the same God who delivered the children of Israel from Egypt?

Is this the God who told Moses to call him “I am”?

Perhaps the divine subjectivity is the most offensive claim of the Bible to us.

We take issue against anyone who is not able to provide external explanations. We want to hear people defend themselves saying, “I filled out all the paperwork”. We want to hear them say, “I did this because that’s what everyone else wanted me to do.” Or to hear them say, “I was just following the System, the pattern of this world.”

But then Job or Peter or somebody approaches God and says, “Who or what is responsible for this?” And the fullness and completeness of God answers back:

I am.

The radical answer that offends and scandalizes us is that God does whatever he wants to do. His divine subjectivity has laid the foundations of the earth. All the scientific rules and objective principles of physics hold together so long as Christ allows them to.

The preachers cannot polish him into doing anything. The theologians cannot confine him into the doctrines they invent. The Hollywood directors cannot invoke him with their talented actors and costly scripts.

God is not a formula, so that scientists and mathematicians could manipulate Him like an equation. God is not a history book so that we could revise him as the scholars revise history. God is not a politician that He should be bribed by the company of famous people or money.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
Romans 11:33-34

God is spirit, and he demands that those who come to him worship in spirit and in truth.

And He drinks all the Dr. Pepper He wants.

Sometimes conservatives are right to feel about silly or ashamed of their values and beliefs: the old Bill Gothard-esque penchant for oversized down jackets and dressing children in matching outfits or the thankfully short-lived movement to ban interracial dating at Bob Jones University.  But these days, it’s the orange sunglasses and the cowboy hat  of U2’s Irish cowboy that have got to go.

Celebrity aid to Africa was amped up to new levels in 2006 when Bono went on tour with a promise to “make poverty history,” while promoting his ONE Campaign to fight social injustices.  Following in his footsteps, Madonna and Angelina Jolie decided to save Africa by adopting its children and exporting them to the notoriously safe haven of family values…Hollywood.

Dying orphans, the shattered dreams of children-turned-soldiers, and the heartbreaking cries of a young African widow don’t just play well in the Academy; they also turn in breathtaking ratings for major media outlets, celebrities, and not-for-profit organizations that still manage to keep their staffs paid and happy.  Cynicism is not my favorite attitude, but I’m beginning to wonder if the reason the poor will always be with us has to do with the fact that human hubris hinders truly sacrificial love.  That and the poor turn remarkably lucrative profits for charity concerts, campaign advertisers, and international development and “non-profit” organizations.

Cynicism aside, there are other plausible explanations for the Western infatuation with the poverty-stricken continent.  It could be that the collective soul of America and the wealthy West are the underlying cause of the continuation of poverty and pain in the developing world.  It could be that our communal desire for catharsis and absolution is standing in the way of development and progress.  It could be that we need a little less sentimentality and a lot more business sense.

Compare our response to Africa with the notoriously unsentimental, no-nonsense, Chinese government.  While we play the altar call music one more time and pass the plate, Chinese investors have begun treating Africans like business partners and are turning profits that benefit both parties.

Consider this remarkable report from free-lance blogger Jennifer Brea:

While Americans are pestering their leaders to Save Darfur–an unlikely prospect absent full-scale military intervention–the Chinese are busy building roads and hydroelectric power dams. China believes Africa is a huge economic opportunity and deals with Africa like a business partner. The Chinese see Africans the way many would like to see themselves.”

In a previous article she cites some amazing stats: total trade between China and Africa nearly quadrupled from 2000 to 2006; Chinese trade and investment are a driving factor in Sub-Saharan Africa’s record 5.8% growth rate; China accounted for $900 million of $15 billion in foreign direct investment to Africa in 2004.

Leaving aside the eyebrows this should raise for American citizens concerned with national defense, we should pause and note that free trade on the capitalist model, which takes into account human personality, creativity, dignity, and accountability, is able to do more than doling out handouts to an enforced beggar-class will ever accomplish.

Take a look at the results and ask yourself which is going to provide lasting change in the lives of the bottom billion…emotional catharsis rocking to U2 angst and buying a MakePovertyHistory bracelet, or very unglamorously studying viable business alternatives and then opening up a market with African trading partners.  I think the answer will be determined by the results you’re looking for.

Hat tip to Jordan Ballor for highlighting Time’s 10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now.

Mention the country of Turkey and most people think of exotic carpets and rugs, crusader castles and the Blue Mosque, Ottoman potentates, and the missionary journeys of the apostle Paul, but I submit to you that these are mere accidental images, nothing more than the deceptive work of extravagant and over-zealous poets and tour guides.  The crusader and the saint and the poets who extol or damn them, are fringe elements to the central symbol of the Turkish people: the entrepreneur.

The Turkish entrepreneur is hard to distinguish from the general populace at first glance.  He dresses like his companions, spends a good deal of his free time drinking hot, excessively sugared tea from a tiny glass, and will chat amiably on a variety of subjects of national and local interest.  The odds are in favor of him wearing a black-bristle moustache and a stern smile.  He most likely works hard to provide for his wife and two to five children, while keeping a few of his earnings aside to bet on his favorite soccer teams.  What makes the Turkish entrepreneur stand apart from his peers are his unfathomably deep wells of creativity, his keen eye for a profit, and the flexibility with which he adjusts to changes in the market.

Kahrahman is something of a fixture at the Hodja Inn.  Every gentleman who has spent more than one night in the officer’s quarters has been greeted on his jaunt towards the dining hall with a loud smile and “good morning!” followed immediately with a blunt but reasonable, “Shoe shine, friend?”  Kahrahman successfully used this simple business opener for years to ply his trade as a boot and shoe polisher for Air Force officers.  The man can make boots shine like glass, and probably outshine the best efforts of the most dedicated military Training Instructor.  His genius, however, is not in his skill (the trade is a fairly easy one to master) but in his ability to find, keep, and match his skill to the market demand.

Recently the Air Force switched it’s standard Battle Dress Uniform (BDU) to the updated Airman Battle Uniform (ABU).  The ABUs are intended to function in any battle environment and include suede leather, easy-care boots that require very little attention from the warrior who is too busy saving the world to stop and polish the toes and heels of his footwear.  The general who made the change had nothing but the safety and well-being of his troops in mind, I’m sure, but his uniform policy threatened to undercut Kahrahman’s thriving shoe shine business.

A socialized economy may have resisted the prudent change from BDUs to ABUs, arguing that the net benefit of a time-efficient, versatile uniform didn’t outweigh the social cost of putting smooth leather shoe polishers out of business.  After all, Kahrahman and his friends had devoted a large portion of their lives to mastering a specific trade and, the argument would go, were now so confirmed in their vocation it would be unreasonable and unkind to allow the whim of a military leader to put them out.

Op-ed papers would clamor for restitution and justice, claiming that unless the government created a safety net for the shoe shine guild our streets would be filled with the unemployable boot polishers and their young families.  No doubt images of school children drop-outs flooding the streets as beggars or filling dangerous factory jobs to help their families make ends meet would be flashed on internet pages and be included among the Associated Press’ top photos of the year.  Special interest groups and compassionate charity organizations would lobby for government subsidies for shoe shiners, and Kiwi and other major polish manufacturers would look for government handouts to keep their businesses afloat amid the turmoil of the sharp drop-off in demand for their products.

Not so among the indefatigable Turkish entrepreneurs.  Kahrahman continues to greet the 21st century officer with his loud smile and canned pitch.  As far as is visible to the outsider, he hasn’t suffered from the declining boot polish market.  His moustache remains as black and bristled as his shoe brush once was and he continues to provide for his wife and children a steady income.  His business plan, while a simple one, provided room for a shift in the market.  Now he comes to work each day with a stiff leather brush, a can of scotch-guard, and a simple rubber cleaning solution.  The fifteen minutes he used to spend spit-shining leather to a glassy hue have been cut to a five minute job that includes dirt and stain removal and leather protection, increasing his productivity by 60%.  And he accomplishes all of this without the slightest support from his government.

A simple lesson in the remarkable adaptability of the human spirit that makes the imposition of external controls masquerading as compassion doubly lamentable.  Not only do those controls fail to produce their stated ends, they also rob men of their right to face challenges, struggle, and know the exhilaration of victory.

Editor’s Note:  During the Lenten season, we have invited other writers to join us to help remove the pressure to produce content from us regulars.  On that note, I am pleased to introduce Cate MacDonald, a friend, a graduate of Biola University and the Torrey Honors Institute, and a current student at the Institute for Spiritual Formation.  She keeps a personal blog at misscate.com and will be blogging here periodically for the near future.

Fasting is a troubling discipline. It pretends to be to be about something other than it is. When we fast, we remove food or another source of material comfort from our lives in order to… well, I suppose it is there that the trouble starts.

Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure,

and oppress all your workers.

Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight

and to hit with a wicked fist.

Fasting like yours this day

will not make your voice to be heard on high.

Is such the fast that I choose,

a day for a person to humble himself?

Is it to bow down his head like a reed,

and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?

Will you call this a fast,

and a day acceptable to the LORD?

For an unrelated purpose, I was assigned to read this passage in Isaiah 58 two days before Ash Wednesday. The prophet seems to be saying that a fast filled with contention and anger, mourning and false humility is no fast at all. Well, Isaiah, you make no sense. I “call this a fast” when I am not eating what I would like to eat in order to focus my energy and my body on the sustenance the Lord provides. That is the discipline I have been taught, that is the discipline that thousands (millions?) of Christians are participating in throughout the world these coming weeks. Have we missed something?

Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of wickedness,

to undo the straps of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry

and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover him,

and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,

and your healing shall spring up speedily;

your righteousness shall go before you;

the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;

you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’

It appears that the Lord has chosen a fast that is no fast at all. He does not tell us what to give up, but instead what to do. The fast the Lord has chosen is charity, justice, and generosity. And so this makes me wonder, what exactly are we supposed to be fasting from after all? I don’t know. It doesn’t say.

In fact, it seems that fasting is irrelevant, or at least it could be considered as such depending on how you use it. And as I write this personal revelation, it occurs to me that all spiritual disciplines are in exactly the same position.

Any discipline that the Lord asks of us is no good by itself. We are not like the yogis or the secular ascetics who believe that certain practices themselves have the power to enlighten. Nor should we believe in a genie of a god who responds best to particular demonstrations of admiration or affection. Any discipline is undertaken with much prayer and hope. It is a way of quieting the world, the flesh, or the devil, only in order to hear God a little more clearly and to speak to him a little more honestly. His response remains an act of his mercy and goodness, based on nothing but his love. Fasting is an attempt at listening to a Being who can speak very quietly, and there is nothing more noisy than our own wickedness. How will we hear his response to our prayers when our own voice uses the fast that was meant to quiet it as a loudspeaker, happily abusing the downtrodden or making a show of our self-denial for the benefit of those more easily fooled than the Almighty.

Aristotle famously said, “The soul rules the body like a despot.” I wish this were truer than it seems. In my case, it is often the other way around. The church has set aside these forty days so that we can join together in quieting our bodies for the benefit of our souls. Let it be a fast that the Lord has chosen.

Moral vices prosper by dressing themselves as virtues. Niceness presents itself as benevolence, but is often merely an evasion of hard decisions that the realities of human nature require. And it has spread throughout our societies because it is often popular with voters. The road to hell, it is said, is paved with good intentions, and so is a good deal of democratic politics.”

The writer of this headline article at Standpoint, a British mag aiming to “to celebrate our civilization, its arts and its values – in particular democracy, debate and freedom of speech – at a time when they are under threat,” takes a frontal shot at the politics of “nice”.  While he is particularly interested with the collapse of family and school life, or at least the collapse of well-ordered and socially beneficial families and schools, he makes a larger critique of contemporary politics and public thought, both of which have taken “niceness” as the gold standard and determine policy and action by asking, “Now, what’s the nice thing to do?”

The history of this trend towards niceness would be interesting to explore—the hows and whys of a moral sentiment that has blossomed in a pluralistic society that is otherwise opposed to moral governance or restriction, almost on principle.  The cultural revolution of the late sixties and early seventies was the historical moment of rebellion against established societal norms as an expression of contempt for universal norms, natural laws, or morals.  In light of this rebellion, one might wonder how it is that a new morality has emerged, a public morality of compassion.  My hunch it that this, and the historical movement of political compassion has a great deal to do with anthropology and theology, but I’ll leave that discussion for another time.

The empirical fact remains that many political debates take place in the context of a culture of “nice.”  Is the proposed solution a nice one?  Does it implement and promote social compassion?  Does it give the public those warm and benevolent feelings that often follow on the heels of generous action?  If the answer to these and similar questions is “yes”, then the debate is usually over.  The problem, though, is that compassion is not the lone guide to effective social policy.

Political compassion, or niceness, was never meant to serve as rubric for social action; indeed, compassion is a feeling or sentiment of concern and pity, not a substitute for prudence or empirical research.  Feelings and sentiments motivate a general action, but are useless in the determination of the specific action to take.  Examples abound, and a simple one drawn from common experience should suffice.

A child comes to her mother, math homework in one hand while wiping away tears of frustration with the other.  Mom, being the loving and caring sort, sees her daughter’s predicament and is filled with pity.  Her pity motivates her to try and help her daughter, but her prudential wisdom, her understanding of her daughter’s real needs, and her beliefs about growth and education will determine if her pity moves her to do her daughter’s homework for her, or to sit down and help instruct her on the finer details of long division.

Pity alone will not determine action.  Pity combined with other character traits, beliefs, and desires result in specific plans, courses, and results.  The current exaltation of political compassion shines a spotlight on the collective character, beliefs, and goals of political body—and judging from current social maladies the revelation is discouraging.  We can expect compassion combined with complacency, pity, self-love, and an enthrallment with personal experiences of catharsis to lead to social solutions and actions that yield a great deal of positive feelings, but that generally fail to deliver permanent goods.

Short-term solutions to long-term problems don’t worry people who like the sense of accomplishment that comes from having a solution, any solution, and allow them to bustle along to each new problem with a great deal of self-congratulation.  The Western world’s approach to poverty and hunger in developing nations, and especially Africa, is a fine example of societies acting out of compassion with the goal of national catharsis rather than securing permanent wealth for the nations in need.

Are politicians, NGOs, and social leaders are asking us all to be compassionate, but compassion alone is of little benefit when determining a course of action.  It’s nice to ask questions like these, but political decisions ought to ask a whole lot more.

The past few weeks, I have had an ongoing conversation with a friend who has experienced traumatic evils and has questions about how to respond to them as a Christian.  This is the latest installment in that series:  it begins with their questions, with my reply following.

Now, believing that God’s character means He would seek to have a horrifying situation like this brought to an end, and being assured from Scripture and Christian history that He often works in situations like these through His children, my question then turned to right: if vengence is God’s, yet He works through His servants, how can I know if He would have me act in this situation?  As I’m oft inclined to do when I’m having trouble trusting God, I turned to Lewis.

I remembered Perelandra and the concept that sometimes God seems to give us “jobs” (for lack of a better term) that are entirely for us; succede, fail, something in between, it’s in your hands.  That made me even more confused.  How could I even come close to figuring out if this was a job God gave me to tackle, or if I should step back and “give it up to God” (a loaded phrase that I’ve never understood)?

A few months later, I believe I found the answer quite accidentally. I reread LOTR, and ended up with this: “Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”  Yeah. I don’t know if I *can* do anything, and God may well choose to use another instead of me or work in some crazy way that I cannot even begin to guess or understand. But somehow it seems that the people hurt by this situation are about as close to “the fields that [I] know” as I can get.

That was long, but I think it’s important.  My spiritual question for you is how do I come by faith/belief/trust that if I wait on the Lord He *will* answer? I get that I should believe that, and I truly do wish that I did…but I find myself praying that He would show me something, do something, anything to help me believe that.  Right now it’s just intellectual lip service; I believe that Scripture is true, and it says He will (whatever that means), so I guess He will (whatever that looks like)…

I’m going to go straight to the heart of the your struggle (it seems) by answering your two questions (which were very well put).  First, you wrote:  “Now, believing that God’s character means He would seek to have a horrifying situation like this brought to an end, and being assured from Scripture and Christian history that He often works in situations like these through His children, my question then turned to right: if vengence is God’s, yet He works through His servants, how can I know if He would have me act in this situation?”

This is a difficult problem.  Allow me to offer a few thoughts.  For one, it’s clear that when you ask the question, you are thinking primarily of ‘acting’ through legal (or extra-legal) channels to bring about justice.  That is, you feel impelled to do something to put an end to this situation.  The impulse is certainly noble, though I suspect it might be tinged with more of a desire for retribution than you might admit.  To that extent, you should hold that impulse up with a grain of salt–it too needs purification.  More to the point, should we not think that prayer is doing something?  Andrew Murray, a great saint, wrote that there is no higher act of love than intercessory prayer.  I am persuaded by this, for it seems that even what is demanded in the eradication of great evils is the cultivation of love, both in us and in those whom we would seek to help.  For you, intercession must be your primary activity–all else must be secondary.

None of this entails, of course, that the crime should not be prosecuted or that those in danger should not be rescued.  That intercession should be your primary activity does not entail that it should be your only activity.

Tolkien’s answer, then, is precisely right and I think your intuition that this situation is near enough to you to warrant involvement correct.  The question for you is whether anything should be pursued beyond what you have attempted.  In other words, if legal action and recourse is taken without results, should the Christian pursue extra-legal means of remedying the situation?  I would argue that they should not–the law and the State have been placed here by God for the preservation and the pursuit of public justice, and a matter such as this falls under its authority and dominion.  While you might seek to remove those being harmed through persuasion, financial support, or other means, I am persuaded that our position as Christian citizens demands working within the rule of law whenever possible.  If nothing else, shadow-justice systems make me queasy:  they are built on the assumption that an individual has the moral vision to discern what is right in any given situation, and the moral stamina to avoid the temptation to pursue vengeance instead of justice.  The rule of law and the State are meant to act as safeguards against individuals abusing their power, safeguards which I think important to maintain in a world infected by original sin.

As a model, then, for engagement of the sort I am proposing, I would suggest Wilberforce.  Perhaps this is your calling–to work to bring justice here and now through legal and social engagement.

As for your second question, it is extremely difficult to answer.  You wrote, “My spiritual question for you is how do I come by faith/belief/trust that if I wait on the Lord He *will* answer? I get that I should believe that, and I truly do wish that I did…but I find myself praying that He would show me something, do something, anything to help me believe that.  Right now it’s just intellectual lip service; I believe that Scripture is true, and it says He will (whatever that means), so I guess He will (whatever that looks like)…”

The question of faith is difficult, and I am not surprised to hear you say that it feels like intellectual lip service.  The difficulty of faith is that it is an event in us which we can not engender–it can only be given to us from outside, from God.  So the answer to your question is that you cannot come to faith.  It will seem like intellectual lip service, yes, but you have to realize that it is God who gives Himself to us in His Spirit, and it is God who determines what level of comfort we need to remain faithful to Him.  If you do not feel the Lord’s presence, you may walk away, but to what?  Alternatively, you may rejoice in the reality that God has seen you fit to endure (for now) without a sense of His presence.  Had you needed it, He would give it to you.

The question, then, is whether we will throw a fit like a child might and rebel against that which we know to be true and demand that God meet us in the way in which we want and have come to expect. I am persuaded it is God’s intention to wean us off our dependancy upon experiencing his presence in a particular way.

I am often reminded when struggling with this issue of T.S. Eliot’s lines from The Four Quartets:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

What might you do, then?  I would suggest immersing yourself in Scripture–and not just isolated verses selected at random, but a book of the Bible that you read twice a day for a month.  Choose Phillipians–it has much to say about these issues, I think.  Faith, after all, comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.

Second, I would suggest asking the Lord to show you where in your own life you are holding on to idols and have not allowed Him to speak to you.  Your desire for justice is good–perhaps as you seek fulfillment the Lord would show you areas in your own life that need submission to him.  I sometimes wonder, after all, whether we actually want to hear the voice of the Lord–it may be the case, after all, that he would have you pause in your pursuit of justice in this case because you are not yet ready for it.  Opening yourself to that possibility may be more difficult than you anticipate (a sign, I would argue, of a heart that has not yet surrendered this area to the Lordship of Jesus).

Third, I would continue to meet in worship at your local church.  Go to church intentionally–ask the Lord beforehand simply to help you pour yourself out before him in worship.  And if you are unable, ask the Lord to open your eyes to see what He’s doing in the church around you.

All of these are ways of reinforcing the point that the faith that you have is faith in Jesus Christ, in whom God demonstrated himself faithful to his covenant and in whom God has judged the world.  And he will come again. You ask that the Lord would show you something:  he has in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. It is there that your faith is grounded.  It is not in the experience of faith, or in the experience of Scripture, but only in the reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection which the Spirit makes known to us (albeit through Scripture).  This is the reality to which you must open yourself.   All this you know:  it is simply that the faith in this is not something you can produce through strength of will (or even through the activities listed above).  It can only be produced when the Holy Spirit engenders it in you (new creation!).

One final point:  you say that you feel more hopeful after writing your email.  I am not surprised.  At the end of Til We Have Faces, Lewis writes that Orual (in her dream) finds herself in a law court before the gods, reading her complaint against them over and over.  She is cut off by the voice of a God, who asks her whether she is answered.  She answers, of course, “yes.”  It is one of the most significant moments in the book.  My sense is that Lewis is suggesting that the ability to speak our complaints to God is itself the answer. It is precisely in and through the speaking of our complaints against God that we realize how inadquate, how poorly equipped, how insufficient we are to offer a viable complaint against God.  But it is his patience with us that allows us to offer them, and it is his grace that helps us to see that our offering them is simply an acknowledgment that Jesus is Lord. If he were not, for what reason would you complain to Him?  The Lord knows your trials–”my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  It is precisely through offering your complaint to God that you are able to identify with Jesus on the cross, and it is precisely through listening to your complaint that God gives you your answer.

Please let me know if this helps at all, and feel free to let me know if it doesn’t.  As always, I will continue to pray for you.  I look forward to your reply.