Whiners

Whiners May 30, 2005

Jehoram goes out into the wilderness with Jehoshaphat, and as soon as he encounters a bit of difficulty, he crumples, blaming his bad fortune on Yahweh’s perfidy: “Yahweh has called these three kings to give them into the hand of Moab.” He had a good teacher: When Ahab received the prophecy in 1 Kings 20, he went home sullen and vexed; when he didn’t get his way with Naboth’s vineyard, he was sullen and vexed once again; and when Micaiah prophesied his death he attempted to circumvent it. There is no pleading, there is no effort to placate God’s wrath, no real repentance. Just wrath and whining. Like father, like son.


It never had to be this way, and Ahab knew it. The one time Ahab responded penitently, the Lord showed favor – delaying the fall of Ahab’s house until the days of his son. Ahab knew that the Lord would relent if he made the least move in the direction of repentance.

Whining is easy. It’s easy to believe that God stands against us, that He intends to do us ill, that He keeps us from that delicious tree because He doesn’t want to share His wisdom with us. It’s easy to believe the worst of God, to join in the chorus of Satanic slander. In a world of sin, faith is a challenging demand. In fact, it is hard to have faith even in the absence of sin – because even in the absence of sin there would be obstacles to overcome and challenges to face. Even in an unfallen world, faith would have to be a gift of God.

Note the contrast with Jehoshaphat: Faced with the same difficulties as Jehoram, he looks for ways to change the situation. Acceptance of the status quo – whether with grim Stoicism or sentimental whining – is the polar opposite of faith. Faith knows that things are not as they should be, and knows too that making things what they should be is wholly beyond human power. Faith does not bow before “the given” as inevitable, because faith knows it can make an end-run round “the given” to the Giver. And faith, as Calvin teaches us, is a Trinitarian reality, a grasp of the goodness of the Triune God, of His Triune Goodness, and of His good intentions toward us, or, in Calvin’s own words, “a firm and sure knowledge of the divine favor toward us, founded on the truth of a free promise in Christ, and revealed to our minds, and sealed on our hearts, by the Holy Spirit.”


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