Talking to God Face to Face

In a recent church small group called Reconstructing Faith, we looked at several Bible stories in which people talk to God about the severe suffering they’re facing. Moses, David, Job, Jesus and many more figures from the Bible all complained to God, expressing their anger, confusion, and dismay. In one of the more uneasy moments of the Bible, Jesus laments, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” just before dying on the cross.

These stories portray faith as a bold, gritty, face-to-face interaction with God-who-is-present. Instead of Midwestern-polite, well-mannered conversations with God, the Bible repeatedly shows faith-filled people engaged in frank, direct cries to God’s face. The people of the Bible have a big problem with the world and with God, and they’re calling “bs.”

Contrast these gripping face-to-face encounters with the project of talking about God in theology or philosophy. When we talk about God, we’re in our heads. We’re analyzing, judging, evaluating, and making meaning. These are all valuable and necessary, but they are insufficient because they ultimately keep suffering, pain, and love at a distance. It’s as though we’re walking next to ourselves, looking on our experience from a third person point of view rather than experiencing the raw vulnerability of life from the first person.  

When we talk to God face-to-face and expect God-With-Us to be there, we begin inhabiting our bodies and spirits and hearts. We’re in our pain, not next to it. We’re in the first-person moment of suffering and love. The result can be thrilling, and that’s because of the stakes:  we’re risking it all. We risk hearing God’s response, or God’s lack of response. We risk confronting the darkness around us and inside us. Will we be curious about this darkness to stay there, to look around a bit and wonder what’s going on, and to talk to God about it?  

Jesus’ agonizing cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” models for us what to do when we face suffering:  kvetch to God directly. You’ve got a problem with the world? A problem with how well God is managing this place? Join the club! And join the saints in calling “bs” on God. Stop trying to figure it out in your head and let loose in your body and spirit. Put on some loud music and scream in your car, go out into the woods and yell, or try writing it all down, an f-bomb laden psalm of rage and discontent. Do this, and you will find God right there with you. God is already in the darkness, in our pain and suffering, waiting for us to commune with God, face-to-face.

- David Borger Germann, Executive Pastor