Fierce, Risky, Faithful

The righteous live by their faithfulness — Habakkuk 2:4b

The Present Grief

On August 27, during a morning mass attended by students at a parochial school adjacent to Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, a 29-year-old shooter killed two children and wounded others as they prayed. On September 10, Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University. Last Sunday, a man attacked a Mormon church in Michigan, killing four, wounding others, and bombing the building itself. We watch the news footage—shattered glass, police tape, grieving families—and the questions rise unbidden: How long, O Lord? Where were you? Why didn’t you stop this?

We’ve become almost numb to such headlines, haven’t we? Another shooting. Another act of violence in a place that should be sanctuary. We scroll past, we shake our heads, we maybe say a quick prayer. But underneath, something harder stirs—not just sadness, but bewilderment. Anger, even. The kind of feelings we’re not always sure we’re supposed to have, much less voice.

If you’re feeling that way this week, you’re not alone. And you’re not unfaithful. In fact, you’re in the company of a prophet who refused to keep quiet when the world around him seemed to be coming apart.

Habakkuk: Prophet of the Unedited Prayer

The Old Testament reading assigned for this coming Sunday takes us to the book of Habakkuk, tucked away in the minor prophets where many of us have never ventured [Habakkuk 1:1–4; 2:1–4, Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, RCL, Year C]. Twenty-six centuries ago, Habakkuk looked at his world and saw what we see today: violence, destruction, strife. The legal system had become paralyzed, unable to protect the vulnerable. Justice came out “perverted,” twisted to serve the powerful. The wicked surrounded the righteous, eager to devour them.

Habakkuk’s message has a startling aspect: unlike many prophets, he doesn’t begin with a message from God to deliver to the people. Instead, he opens with a message to God—a complaint, an accusation, a demand for answers.

“How long, O Lord, must I cry for help, and you will not listen? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Why do you just stand there while destruction and violence are right in front of me?”
—Habakkuk 1:2–3

Most of us have been taught that faith means keeping composure. We can ask God for things—strength, wisdom, comfort—so long as our requests are properly spiritual and humbly phrased. But complaint? Pure, unvarnished complaint? We’ve learned to think that’s somehow beneath us as believers, that it reveals a lack of faith. We treat doubt and anger as stages to process through on our way to acceptance. Faith becomes emotional management, and God becomes our therapist.

But the Bible knows a different kind of prayer altogether—one that is fierce, risky, and still faithful. Not safe, not therapeutic, not self-focused, but confrontational in the context of covenant relationship. It’s the kind of prayer that refuses to edit reality for God’s benefit.

Habakkuk prays that kind of prayer. And the story that unfolds is far more unsettling than the lectionary reading would have us believe.

Habakkuk’s Full Story—The Lectionary Hides the Hard Part

The assigned reading omits some important matters: God actually answers Habakkuk’s complaint. But God’s answer is worse than His silence.

God says, in effect: “You think I’m not doing anything? I’m raising up the Chaldeans—that brutal, violent empire—to break the stranglehold the wicked have on the righteous” [Habakkuk 1:5–6]. Imagine hearing that. You cry out against violence and injustice, and God’s solution is imperial conquest and destruction?

So Habakkuk complains again. This second lament is even more anguished: “God, you can’t be serious. You’re too pure to look upon evil—how can you abide this treachery? The Chaldeans are worse than what we have now!” [Habakkuk 1:7–17].

This is where chapter 2 begins—not after the first complaint, as the truncated Lectionary reading suggests, but after the second. Habakkuk posts himself like a watchman, waiting to see what God will say to this objection. And God’s response is maddeningly ambiguous: “Write down the vision. It speaks of an appointed time. If it seems to tarry, wait for it” [Habakkuk 2:2–3].

And then comes that famous line: “The righteous live by their faith”—or more accurately, by their faithfulness [Habakkuk 2:4].

With the Lectionary’s abbreviated reading, we may miss the full story. God’s message isn’t “have faith and I will fix everything.” Rather, God admonishes that the righteous live by faithfulness even when God’s answer is worse than the silence. Even when the vision tarries. Even when you can’t see how any of this makes sense.

This is covenant lament, not emotional catharsis. Habakkuk isn’t venting to feel better. He’s holding God accountable to covenant promises. He’s refusing to let God off the hook, even as he commits to wait for God’s ultimate deliverance.

Fierce. Risky. Faithful.

Bill’s Story

In the five years before his death in 1990, my friend Bill, a Korean War veteran, had many “overnights” at the large VA hospital across the street from Duke Medical Center here in Durham. On the surface, Bill and I had little in common, but our friendship grew as we shared many conversations about music, literature, philosophy, and faith.

During one of his stays, I walked toward his room expecting our usual exchange, but when I looked in, I was stopped cold by the expression on his face. The pain was so intense that his breathing had become shallow. As I entered, Bill managed a faint smile and, without greeting, simply whispered: “Read me a Psalm, Tom. Read me a Psalm.”

“Glad to, Bill,” I said. “How about the 23rd?”

Bill grimaced. “No thanks. I’m not in a 23rd mood. Read me the 22nd—or perhaps the 31st.”

The 22nd Psalm—“My God, my God…”—felt too raw. So I turned to the unfamiliar 31st. I was doing fine until I hit the verse about life spent in sorrow, bones wasting away, becoming a horror to neighbors [Ps. 31:10]. I paused.

“Bill, don’t you think you ought not to complain to God this way? That instead you ought to be thinking positive thoughts, looking on the bright side?”

And in his wonderfully earthy manner, Bill said: “Tom, today there is no bright side. I hurt like the dickens, and I’m sick of this pain. I think God’s up to a few harsh words, don’t you? After all, what’s he going to do—stop loving me?”

In that moment, Bill understood something I was still learning. He wasn’t being therapeutic or “processing his emotions.” He was doing something far more theologically serious: bringing the full, unedited truth of his experience before God in covenant relationship. He was insisting that God is sovereign over all of life, including the parts that hurt like hell. For Bill to withhold his anguish, to pretend there was a bright side when there wasn’t, would have been to withhold part of his life from God’s sovereignty.

Bill was praying fiercely, risking honesty, remaining faithful—not to some therapeutic process, but to the God who had promised never to leave or forsake him.

Jesus and the Psalms of Darkness

If we needed any further authorization for this kind of prayer, we need only look at the cross. As Jesus hung there, he didn’t reach for comforting words. He cried out the opening words of Psalm 22: “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”—My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Jesus prayed a Psalm of Darkness at the moment of ultimate darkness. If Jesus can voice abandonment and accusation from the cross, then we have divine authorization for bringing our harshest words to God.

God is not some tottering old man from whom we must hide the diagnosis. God is our Creator, the very essence of our lives. God is up to a few harsh words.

Permission and Obligation

The question isn’t whether we’re allowed to bring our grief and rage and confusion to God. The question is whether we’re willing to withhold anything from the One who is sovereign over all.

When we see violence win and justice perverted and God silent—when a young and vibrant leader is murdered, when church doors are blown open by a bomber, when someone shoots children through stained glass windows—we don’t have to pretend that there’s a bright side. We don’t have to protect God from our accusations.

Covenant faithfulness demands that we bring it all—the harsh words, the “How long?”, the “Where were you?”—directly to God. Not because it will soothe us, but because God reigns over this chaos. To withhold our truth is to deny that sovereignty.

So bring your harsh words. Stand at your watchpost like Habakkuk. Wait for God’s answer—even if it’s slow, or troubling, or unclear.

Bring them anyway.

Because God is up to it.

After all, what’s He going to do—stop loving you?