Knowing God through His Word … Day by Day

It’s difficult to live in a world of corruption, abuse, and mindless cruelty and not experience a recurring spiritual nausea. When one witnesses senseless injustice and the prosperity of those responsible for it, nausea turns to indignation and righteous rage.

I know a little of what the psalmist meant when he cried out, “How long, O Lord, how long?” Sometimes the question, “How long?” doesn’t spring from a speculative curiosity that says, “I want to know when,” but from an agitated conscience and a sense of moral outrage. “People who feel this way,” observes Ron Allen, “want to know when the Lord will return because they cannot abide wickedness abounding, not because they want to pinpoint a date in a chart” (90).

This is the mood of Psalm 10. “Why, O Lord, do you stand afar off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (v. 1) The psalmist’s “why?” isn’t because of some personal harm that has come to him. It’s not “Why did this happen to me?” but rather “Why would God allow such things to occur and do nothing, if indeed he is the King of all the earth?”

The question eating away at his soul is, “Why do you seem so remote, Lord, when evil is so near? Why do you seem indifferent to the oppression of the righteous by the wicked? Why do those who hate you prosper and those who love you suffer? Why do the unrighteous and unbelieving get along so well, often at the expense of your children?”

Why does God seem absent and far off and concealed from us at those times when he is needed most? Why? The psalmist’s anguish is not because there is evil and corruption and oppression but because God seems to ignore it, having withdrawn his gracious presence.

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