Thoughts on Lamentations 2

Today’s reading: Lamentations 2; 2 Corinthians 9-10

There are two things Lamentations has gotten me thinking about this morning: (1) the nature of God’s judgement, and (2) the danger of spiritual authorities being unwilling to stand on the truth.

The nature of God’s judgement

On the first side of it, in terms of God’s judgement, this book has been highlighting to me how much of God’s judgement is carried out as “giving over” to the natural course of things rather than being an active inflicting of some punishment. I don’t know that I would have noticed this before, but an episode of The Bible Project Podcast I listened to recently was on the topic of God’s judgement, and Tim Mackie pointed out that this is how it generally works. He pointed out that for all the times that God or the prophets point to His judgement of His people, it’s almost always some “natural” event (e.g. famine, conquest, etc.) that God then takes credit for. I tend to think of God’s judgement as Him actively doing things to people, but it more so seems like His judgement is primarily in the form of stopping protecting people from the natural consequences of their actions.

Jeremiah juggles these two ways of thinking about God’s judgement constantly in Lamentations. On the one hand, he keeps recognizing and calling out the nature of their suffering for its more natural causes, but then, in the next verse, he will attribute it to the Lord.

The way I’ve come to start thinking about it is that God’s blessing is to protect His people from the natural course of things. Sometimes that is in the form of ensuring their rains always come in their seasons and their crops always have a good yield, sometimes it is in the form of turning away foreign armies, sometimes it is in the form of giving them undue favor in trading agreements, etc. But the natural course of natural and global affairs will sometimes be favorable and sometimes unfavorable, and the blessing of God seems to be the active bolstering of the favorable and protecting from the unfavorable. God’s judgement then, at least at the start, looks to be mostly withholding the blessing, letting things go back over to their more natural state. The furthering of His judgement then, at times, is clearly bolstering the unfavorable and/or blocking them from experiencing the favorable as they would “naturally.” But in both cases, His judgement is giving the people over to the natural consequences of their actions rather than supernaturally striking people down or something like that.

The danger of spiritual authorities not standing on truth

In the midst of lamenting the state of his people, Jeremiah says this about how they got to this place:

Your prophets have seen for you
false and deceptive visions;
they have not exposed your iniquity
to restore your fortunes,
but have seen for you oracles
that are false and misleading.

The prophets were supposed to be the voice of the Lord, calling the people to turn from their faithlessness to the Lord, but clearly they were doing no such thing. Rather than performing their God-given function in speaking truth to the people, the prophets were more concerned with being liked and well regarded by the people, so they gladly gave them false and deceptive visions.

I worry about this for the church today. How many churches, pastors, or teachers are unwilling to speak boldly about things that might cost them attendance numbers, donation dollars, or book sales? How much sin is left unchecked because to address it would be unpopular or uncomfortable? Even worse, how much sin is actively accepted and affirmed by those in positions of spiritual authority in the name of “loving everyone”?

God did not give the prophets to His people to make them feel good about themselves, but to tell them what they really needed to hear, even (and especially) when they didn’t want to hear it. Jeremiah even says, if they had been willing to expose the people’s iniquity, it would have meant the restoration of their blessings, so it was to their great detriment and harm that the prophets were unwilling to speak a difficult word or experience the discomfort of unpopularity for declaring God’s truth.

So when a church refuses to call sin what the Lord calls sin, trying to protect their attendance records, claiming that, “It’s better for people to be here and be exposed to the Bible at all, and if we addressed their sin too directly, or took a biblical stand on hot-button issues they would leave,” they are acting exactly like Israel’s worthless prophets, putting a veneer of spirituality over blatant sin and rebellion. And will this ever produce fruit? Will this ever make a lasting impact for the Kingdom of God? Never! It may fill churches on Sunday mornings and fill bank accounts the rest of the week, but none of it will last because it is nothing but false and deceptive visions intended to placate the multitude.

We have to do better than that…