The plot of the film version of Where the Wild Things Are is as simple as it is brilliant. Feeling neglected and ignored by his older sister and mother, Max lashes out and, when his mom yells at him for his tantrum, he runs away in fear of his mom and his own anger, hiding in a thicket down the street. He then finds an imaginary sail boat on the bank of a stream running through the thicket. He boards the boat and sets sail, following the stream out to sea and eventually running aground on the land of the wild things.
No wonder the book was able to garner such a loyal following among adults and children alike. What child hasn’t lashed out in anger, finding an uncontrollable “wild” side of themselves? Who doesn’t remember those strong, confusing feelings of anger and the fear of feeling so out of control? And, these days, what person hasn’t found themselves struggling with the modern tendency to repress those emotions? Surely much of the book’s popularity owes to this tendency to dull the extremes of our emotional experiences through willful ignorance or self-medication.
Christians especially seem to find themselves prey to such repression, fearing that expressing negative emotions somehow betrays a lack of faith or goes against the biblical admonition to be joyful in all circumstances, as if we can trick God with a fake smile. We forget that hope and despair are both ultimately longings for a new creation, longings for peace, justice, and the presence of God in a God-forsaken world. The opposite of hope is not despair. The opposite of hope is the unthinking acceptance of the status quo. In a world full of sin and suffering, surrounded by resigned realists and head-in-the-sand hedonists, for the Christian to long for a better world, to be angry at injustice, to grieve over his or another’s loss, to cry out from the depths of abandonment and despair can be acts of profound faith in the God who promises to make all things new.
But we tend to skip over such emotions just as we skip over the Psalms that express such emotions (Ps 88 is especially challenging in this regard). We are frightened at times by what we may find if we were to open our hearts and allow the Spirit to plumb its depths. Too often this pseudo-piety betrays our own desire to hold on to the perceived possibilities of this world and to maintain some semblance of still having control. But God Himself calls us to struggle and to long for the impossibile possibilities of His promises. He calls us to hold Him accountable, like Abraham, Moses, and the psalmists, expressing even our anger, as numerous psalms show, when things don’t seem to go right while still trusting Him in faith. He calls us to stop numbing the pain and ignoring the suffering of ourselves and others, and to experience the depths of our own suffering and, in so doing, open ourselves to the new life available to us through His grace. A grace that listens to the cries of pain and longing, that meets us where we are in our anger, frustration, and despair, because through His Son, God has already experienced the full extent of our suffering and then some.
At the end of the movie Max misses his family and returns home. He finds his mother joyful over his return, giving him a hug and a hot bowl of soup. We can expect as much from our heavenly Mother.
Hey,
All I can say is Wow…this is good…this is gospel…a forgotten dangerous
“wild” part of the gospel! This is the kind of strong wind needed for blowing out the soul stiffeling religious tradition – the one that’s geared to creating religious robots rather than plunging into the messiness of the human condition – addressing the whole person! This is what I was trying to say in my last response to you about the different “programs” that keep us from getting to the heart of things…but this is so much better, though. Really good! Talk to you soon.
My turmoil with God in this past year has brought me more peace and certainty of his presence than years of singing happy praise songs. I am not always happy with God and when I wrestle with him I get a sense that he’s pleased with me for my honesty.
I love the Psalms. For a few years now my husband has been pointing out exactly what you did above. A notable favorite is God’s people asking him to dash their enemies’ babies against the rocks. As horrible as it sounds (I love babies), I still have to smile that those passionate words were expressed, heard by God, and not edited out of the Bible. It tells me that whatever is in me, no matter how ugly, God can take it, and still love me despite it. It’s so comforting to me. I think I’m ready for that soup now.
Luke to the rescue.
I don’t know if you read my question to Mr. Laird but he directed me here and this addresses it nicely. It doesn’t answer it of course, but an answer readily given is readily forgotten.
Thanks again,
adam
Do these inspirations come to you in flashes or after careful, long and drawn out contemplation and meditation?
Inspriations come in flashes, but are usually connected to things I’m already reading, watching, and thinking about. And more often than not, they’re things I need to remind myself anyway. The above being a mix of Brueggeman and Moltmann.
Always a pleasure, Adam.
i love it. mostly your closing sentence.
Hey Luke,
You “wild thing(!),” you The Man!
That was quite an eloquent elocution of an enthralling entertainment for enthusiastic evangelicals! (Sorry, i’m in the E-mode today) Kudos!
There are several things in your article, though, that i would wrestle with, namely:
1. “The opposite of hope is the unthinking acceptance of the status quo.”
Begging your pardon, but that is apathy or indifference, not the opposite of hope. When hope is not present, one does not simply accept the status quo without thinking. Maybe one does so, in resignation. But hope prompts us to do something- and despair does also the same though in the opposite direction. Indifference or apathy moves an unhoping person into a paralysis and ergo, status quo. JESUS is said to have brought hope to a people in despair not a people who had an “unthinking acceptance of the status quo”.
2. “…to be angry at injustice”
I seem to remember that somewhere in the Bible, a New Testament writer expressedly pointed out that “the wrath of man does not bring about the righteousness of God”. Your expression has to be qualified. I would submit that it is better understood when we say “i am angry at injustice because i feel my sense of right as per Christ’s teaching is being violated. For what could be an injustice to us would, in the vast configuration of things, is really God’s redemptive plan. The Cross was an injustice because upon in and on it, He who has no sin became sin for us that we might have His righteousness in us.” As Chris said, the grave injustice of the Cross is “scandalous” to us. But instead of railing against it and being angry at the Cross, we look at for the redemption it made and did and symbolizes. Even in OT theology, when the prophet Isaiah told the people about the injustice done to the orphans and widows, namely, ostentatious display of wealth amidst poverty, it always pointed to Christ. Thusly, anger or injustice, and/or both is not about me- it is about this God who loved me and gave Himself for me.
3. “A grace that listens to the cries of pain and longing, that meets us where we are in our anger, frustration, and despair…”
I would be very careful at this. I remembered that ancient very rich guy (1) whose sons and daughters were taken from him; (2) whose camels, sheep and oxen and livestock were taken away from him; (3) whose wife even advised him to “curse God and die”, (4) whose body was so covered with sores; and, (5) whose beloved friends, like sometimes our church today, accused him of hidden sin and self-righteousness and were kicking him in the face as he sat by the garbage dump. He cried out to God in anger, frustration and despair, even going so far as saying, “Cursed be the day I was born!”. He challenged God and demanded that He speak to him and explain all these depths of “anger, frustration and despair”. He got an answer from God? “Where you there when I laid down the foundations of the earth?” OUCH!
I think all these thoughts are experiential and honest and seem to be like David in the Psalms. Well, David was first introduced to us as a “man after God’s own heart”. And that is a high bar to set before I started complaining and whining and yapping and blabbering about my depths of despair and anger and frustration to God. I am neither an ascetic nor a stoic, so i would not deny my feeling.
I would simply bend my knee and ask God, “What would you have me do, LORD?”
“What are you teaching me in this circumstance, Loving Father?”
“Who are You revealing Yourself to me in these despairing and desperate moments, in this scourge of hell and passage of death that I am going through right here right now?”
I’d love to adventure amongst these wild things but i have this Wild, Wild Love of this God who is so wildly in love with me that, while I was yet a sinner, He died for me.
Then, perhaps, he wouldn’t be a heavenly Mother no more to me.
But a tenderly loving, gently affectionate. genderless God.
TEDEUM LAUDAMUS!
Ronaldo,
I’m not saying we should stay in those negative emotions, but we should experience them and express them when they inevitably occur in this fallen world. And I’d emphasize the “still trusting Him in faith.” Other than its necessary incompleteness, I stand by everything I wrote.
1. It depends on how you define hope and despair. I’m here using hope as a positive expectation and despair as discontent with the status quo. Both share an important quality, which I am playing on (following Augustine), a longing for something not present. There is a despair that is a complete resignation that I would agree should be avoided, but even then, the issue is not the feeling, but on how we deal with those feelings: letting them fester and/or obsessing over them, or expressing them (they’re there anyway) and so letting them go in trust.
2. Jesus turned over tables, Paul rebukes harshly, and the psalmists wish graphic violence in anger at injustice. The problem is not the feelings, but how they are expressed and where they are directed. And I don’t want to forget that the cross is the result of Jesus standing up to the religious and political authorities against injustice, identifying with the victims of injustice. Jesus even repeatedly quotes the lament psalms, appropriating the psalmists expressions for His situation.
3. Actually, I think Job is a great example. God meets him precisely in his anger, frustration, and despair. He rebukes Job, yes, but He still meets him there, tells him to trust Him, and blesses him afterward. God’s message to Job isn’t “quit whining,” it’s “trust Me.” Psalm 88 ends in utter despair. He apparently felt no hope at the time, and God included it as an example for us to follow in the Psalms when we feel down and out.
Those are great questions and actually fit well with what I’m trying to say. Each are expressions of discontent while maintaining faith. I think you may have misunderstood me?
Hey ya,
That was rather quick response- but am not complaining. That was beautiful and you make your case pretty strong.
1. I think the issue is both: the feeling and the way of dealing with this feeling.
2. The difference between that and what we may do at times in our anger is: righteous indignation. The Gospel writers wrote of Jesus overturning the tables at the temple as “my zeal for your house has consumed me.” Paul’s rebukes were along the same lines: zeal for the Lord. The psalmists? Certainly one cannot make a general rule out of some imprecatory psalms. They were lamenting their subjugation to a cruel, barbaric, foreign Babylonian power – an exile that came (1) because they violated their covenant relationship with God for years; (2) they put this God like the other gods of the heathen lands.
But you do make a good point and a strong one, in a tugging-at-the-heart and a strange-warming-of-the-bosom type, And i like the profundity of it. So humanly sensitive and touching, so poignantly real and honest. Most certainly, if we just love with reckless abandon and care with that hurting vulnerability, as opposed to dwelling in the land of repressed emotions and unrequited love, we will find ourselves in and among the wild things. And i think it’s gonna be prettier than we think it is.
Like i said in my opening note, I personally wrestle with those. It is my own personal struggle coming out of the fore, my personal ethical, spiritual and moral dilemmas on theodicy and the goodness of God. Thanks for letting me resonate with you and perhaps let me find a part of my missing self. That, my friend and fellow traveller, is invaluable. (For all others, there is ______________.)
So i rest my case. Humbly, Respectfully, Gratefully.
Ronaldo S.
Thanks Ronaldo… I think I was the one who misunderstood you (at least your tone) :), though I still think we’re saying very similar things. I would just add that though we do want to be only righteously indignant and not just hot-heads, even when it’s a personal matter and we just feel wronged (and even when we’re the ones actually in the wrong), we should never hide our emotions, but boldly place them before God, trusting Him and His grace and being open to His Spirit’s work in us changing our hearts, otherwise we risk hiding things from God to deal with them on our own apart from Him… and you’d agree it’s not us, but God who must work in us. Thanks again for your insight, we should all keep wrestling, it’s nothing to take lightly.
On a personal note… you forgot to e-mail me what you wrote, if nothing else I might think of a couple ways to tweak/condense it.
I really appreciate this…now I want to see the movie. I think unleashing the wild side within us is one of the necessary ways we come alive, explore the passions and intensities in life, and come to know our need for our creator and sustainer on a deeper level. I agree, apathy is the best way to lose our hope and vision, thus we quit clinging to the hope we have in Christ and ultimate restoration found in Him. There is nothing tame about Christ’s love and hope he has in us, and likewise we must recklessly love him and his creation. This is impossible without a little wildness welling up every once in a while.