There are plenty of very uncomfortable things in the Bible, and it can be hard to discern the underlying rationale to their inclusion in the narrative. Every author has to decide on some kind of editing principle or a set of narrative objectives that will help them decide what stays in the book and what gets cut out, right? The Bible is a very complex book, and I won’t pretend to understand all of God’s reasons for what’s included and what’s not. What is clear is that God does have reasons. He is a deliberate person, and has assembled a collection of writings that is carefully crafted to make it possible for his family to come home to him.  

 

For instance, the Bible is not the story of everything that has ever happened, or everything God has ever done. There’s a primary editing principle, and it shows up in the 12th chapter of Genesis as the promise given to Abraham. That’s the Bible’s topic sentence, if you will. Basically, God promises to bless Abraham, make a nation from his descendants, and through that nation to bring about a blessing for the entire world. Everything that follows gets either included or edited out based on how it relates to the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, which is eventually realized in Christ.  

 

So, are dinosaurs real? Sure. But, though that’s an interesting question, it’s not one that’s relevant considering the fact that the Bible’s editing principle sets the trajectory of this particular book within the narrow constraints of God fulfilling his promise to a man named Abraham through a man named Jesus Christ. Even God has to narrow his focus in order to get his objective accomplished, just as any author, if they want to actually write a book, must decide to write about something rather than everything. 

 

Today, I read Psalm 88, which is one of those uncomfortable bits I mentioned. It’s not the only uncomfortable psalm, but, unlike most psalms, it doesn’t resolve by the end. There’s no closure. Let me just read it, and you can see what I mean… 

 

Lord, you are the God who saves me;

    day and night I cry out to you.

May my prayer come before you;

    turn your ear to my cry.

 

I am overwhelmed with troubles

    and my life draws near to death.

I am counted among those who go down to the pit;

    I am like one without strength.

 

I am set apart with the dead,

    like the slain who lie in the grave,

whom you remember no more,

    who are cut off from your care.

 

You have put me in the lowest pit,

    in the darkest depths.

Your wrath lies heavily on me;

    you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.

 

You have taken from me my closest friends

    and have made me repulsive to them.

I am confined and cannot escape;

    my eyes are dim with grief.

 

I call to you, Lord, every day;

    I spread out my hands to you.

Do you show your wonders to the dead?

    Do their spirits rise up and praise you?

 

Is your love declared in the grave,

    your faithfulness in Destruction?

Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,

    or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

 

But I cry to you for help, Lord;

    in the morning my prayer comes before you.

Why, Lord, do you reject me

    and hide your face from me?

 

From my youth I have suffered and been close to death;

    I have borne your terrors and am in despair.

Your wrath has swept over me;

    your terrors have destroyed me.

 

All day long they surround me like a flood;

    they have completely engulfed me.

You have taken from me friend and neighbor—

    darkness is my closest friend.

 

Can you hear the misery in this psalmist’s voice? Did it make you squirm a little bit to listen to it? It makes me squirm, for sure. How would you summarize this psalm? Maybe something like, “God, I’m miserable and I thought you’d help me, but you, Lord, are a huge disappointment. In fact, you’re only making things worse. You’re a lousy friend, darkness and misery are better friends than you. They’re all I have left at this point, thanks to you.”  

 

This is a brutal, gut-wrenching psalm. Why in the world is it in the Bible? Wouldn’t you expect God to edit this kind of thing out of his book? I would! If I were God I would find this insulting and offensive; it’s embarrassing, if God’s narrative objective is to make himself look good. The tone is generally disrespectful and ungrateful; by what editing principle has God decided that special care should be taken to make sure this miserable psalm does not get left out? This psalm is here, because God wanted it to be. But why? 

 

Let me skip over to another uncomfortable moment, this time in the New Testament. It’s one of my very favorite scenes in John 4 where Jesus and a Samaritan Woman meet at a Well. In fact, this story has become very dear to me over the last 7 years, as the Lord has been working with me through a long season of grief after trauma. The album I’m recording right now is based on this scene.  

 

At any rate, this is a complex encounter with the Woman at the Well, and endlessly fascinating, uncomfortable, and encouraging to me. 

 

It doesn’t take long for Jesus to ask the most uncomfortable question imaginable to this woman. He deliberately brings up her miseries. Her five failed marriages and a current sixth inappropriate relationship. An accumulation of tragedy, rejection, and failure. But the next thing this woman does is particularly interesting. She changes the subject. As soon as Jesus opens that wound, she deftly switches gears and launches into a kind of religious talk, but you can feel that it’s forced. She recognizes she’s dealing with some kind of holy man, and so she starts playing the religious game. She says the things religious people are supposed to say, asks the questions spiritual people are supposed to ask. What happens next is something that may shed light on an editing principle that helps us understand why things like psalm 88 get included in the Bible. 

 

Jesus accepts her redirection and pretension, but he doesn’t give up. She’s asked him which mountain does God approve of for worship. It’s a technical question; she’s trying to steer the conversation away from personal issues. But Jesus says that God doesn’t really care all that much about this or that mountain. There’s no magical procedure, temple, or mountain. What God is really interested in are people who will worship in “Spirit and Truth.”  

 

In other words, people who will stop playing religious games. Stop with the lip service. Stop with the pretension. Stop saying the things spiritual people are “supposed to” say. People who will be honest about who they really are, right where they are, as they are. God wants people who, like the writer of psalm 88, will make themselves available to God in a way that you might think would get you struck by lightning, edited out of existence for being brutally truthful.  

 

At this point the Woman at the Well seems to speak with a sort of hopeless sigh of despair, “Yeah, you’re an idealist I can see. Good luck with that. I’m sure when the messiah shows up (fat chance) everything will be hunky-dory.” She’s done with this conversation and starts to leave. But Jesus says, in effect, “Ah, right there, there you are, there’s the real you. Well, here’s the real me: a tired, thirsty messiah, who’s been looking for you.”  

 

Why are these painfully uncomfortable stories included in God’s Book? Because life is actually like this, isn’t it? Life is painful, confusing, disappointing, full of tragedy mixed with wonder, laughter, and all manner of ruin and revelation. It may be that the people most dismissive of the Scriptures, are those who have a hard time being truthful with themselves about the gap between what they wish life was like and what’s actually true about life.  

 

The title track of this new album I’m working on is called “Only the Lover Sings”, and the first verse of the song says, “you’ve never met a liar, you’ve only met the lie that they put forth. There ain’t no soul more lonely, until you tell the truth, you can’t be touched. And I want to be touched.” Jesus wants to meet us, but he wants to meet the real us. 

 

God is looking for people who will show up in “spirit and truth”, because when we play the religious game, we’re hiding behind a protective pretense and remain untouchable. We aren’t making contact with reality, and God, who will not trespass against us, is left without access to us as we truly are. Which means nothing can change for us. And so he honors the painfully honest writer of psalm 88 who becomes an example for us in how to make ourselves truly available to the Lord.  

 

So, it turns out, that one more editing principle of Scripture could maybe be called “truthful contact”. God is showing up as he really is and sometimes it’s uncomfortable. Sometimes he’s angry, frustrated, weary of our rejection, but always deliberate and stable in his love and longing to rescue us. And he invites us, not to some weird game of pretension and ‘saying the right thing’, but to possibly uncomfortable, but real, contact right from wherever we really are, whether it’s angry, frustrated, sad, or feeling like God himself has screwed us over.  

 

In that place, something new becomes possible, as the truth of Jesus’s sorrow and our sorrow make contact and intermingle. It is a surprising thing to meet like that, and maybe the most uncomfortable thing to speak of is God’s own vulnerability, as God longs to be with us right where we are, as well as for us to be with him where he is. 

Closing Prayer

Jesus, Scripture says you were very tired when you got to Jacob’s Well that day. I confess I sometimes don’t allow for you to show up as you really are in your anger, frustration, weariness, or sadness. But you have taken pains to make sure that we know we are allowed to come to you in spirit and truth, not having to play religious games, or pretend. You have pioneered vulnerability with us, inviting us to be vulnerable with you. You’ve been honest with us, inviting us to be honest. Thank you, for not playing games with us, so that we can be set free from the games we tend to feel we must play. For we long to make real contact, to be truly touched, to be comforted in our hidden depths, and for our sorrows to find their home in your tender presence. Amen.