As someone who has shad more than my share of tears at the results of my own folly or the sins of others, I have often found it worthwhile to reflect on the tears of God [1]. It is a striking but often unrecognized truth that God desires communication with people. Perhaps it is something so basic that we neglect it, and perhaps as well issues of communication, being at the core of so many of our own problems as human beings, are often areas of difficulty when it comes to our own spiritual lives, whether we struggle in areas of prayer or whether the desire for communication with God becomes twisted into some sort of holier than thou mysticism that privileges people for certain claims of divine communication, rather than seeking to use communication as a bridge between believers and as a way of encouraging one another in our mutual godly walk.

What did God do after the initial sin of mankind? Genesis 3 describes God anthropomorphically as walking in the garden in the cool of the evening, seeking a conversation with Adam and Eve. Given the horrors of sin that had been unleashed upon the world, it might have been understandable had God been in an angry mood, but God instead asked a series of gentle questions to Adam and Eve, questions that were answered with uneasy attempts at evasion and a lack of repentance. Yet God’s attempt at a genuine and friendly conversation is notable. Strikingly, after having honored Abel’s sacrifice and rejecting that of Cain, God attempts a friendly conversation with Cain, remarkable for its gentleness and kindness, and yet Cain totally failed to master his sin. Even after the sin of murder, God dealt with Cain in an immensely gracious manner, responding to his fears of vengeance and the rather petulant statement that God’s punishment of exile was more than he could bear, despite the fact that he deserved far worse.

More successfully, God had plenty of conversation with other believers in the Bible among ancient history. For example, Enoch walked with God, and was delivered from the hostility of his neighbors as a result. Abraham walked with God as well, and was considered a friend of God. Jacob wrestled with God, and during that wrestling had a conversation with God. God communicated with Joseph through dreams, and Moses had enough conversations with God that it affected his face and led him to have to wear a veil because of the way that his closeness with God made other Israelites uncomfortable. Indeed, perhaps most tragically, God wanted a personal relationship with the Israelites, but his ardor terrified them, and led them to want to distance themselves from any relationship with God, and to have Moses (and Aaron) as intermediaries. Nor was this an isolated occurrence, as continually throughout biblical history God wanted to commune with His people, but His people did not want to have a relationship with Him.

Perhaps most poignantly, we find this a problem during the life of Jesus on this earth. What prompts Jesus’ own greatest sadness was the fact that despite His outgoing and conspicuous love for His people, they simply did not want to be saved from sin, but rather wanted deliverance on fairly narrow physical terms, from their hunger or from diseases or from Roman oppression. And when it came time for Jesus Christ to bear the burden of the sins of humanity as our sacrifice, He was cut off from that communication and from that intimacy with His Father that he had enjoyed for eternity, and His cry about being forsaken by God is something that those who have felt the dark night of the soul and felt themselves to be cut off from intimacy with humanity and utterly abandoned can relate to in all of its terrors and grief. We are all relational beings, and since God created us in His image, that is one aspect of His nature that we share, however that desire for relationship has been corrupted in our own relationships with God and with other people through sin and folly.

One of the most common difficulties that people face in areas of apologetics is justifying the ways of God when it comes to the suffering of supposedly good people. We wonder, and understandably so, why God allows horrors like the Holocaust, or allows helpless and innocent infants and children to be raped and abused. Yet the sorrows and troubles we face, and those we inflict on others, are the result of people doing what is right in their own eyes, and not turning from their native bent and forsaking their wicked ways. We are beings possessed of free will, for it is only beings who are free to decide and free to act that can choose to love. With the granting of free will–a gift we do not deserve, nor one we tend to use wisely–the possibility of rejection is a given. God does not look upon our struggling and our suffering with a detached air of resignation, nor does he storm through our lives like a bull in a china shop, destroying our idols and our illusions, but rather he speaks to us as He spoke to Elijah, with a still small voice in the midst of the fires and tempests of our lives, a voice that is easy to miss. He speaks in the silence that infuriates us, and He speaks through gentle nudges and pokes that require a certain sensitivity to recognize, and a certain amount of humility and faith to respond to. The tears of God, and our own, are part of the price for the freedom we hold so dear, and abuse so promiscuously, but because we are free to choose between life and death, blessing and cursing, God must urge us rather than compel us to choose life so that we and our descendants may live. For, fortunately for us all, God does not desire the destruction of the wicked, but rather that they repent from their wicked ways and seek after Him, so that they may live. The tears of God are tears of compassion and mercy, and God willing, we will respond to them in time that we may avoid our own tears of great grief and misery over the course of our lives.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/triste-est-anima-mea-usque-ad-mortem/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/08/31/jesus-wept/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/tears-of-the-sun/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/07/16/psalm-126-those-who-sow-in-tears-shall-reap-in-joy/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/psalm-56-put-my-tears-into-your-bottle/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/04/10/the-fractured-fairy-tale-of-israels-departure-from-egypt/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/who-sigh-and-cry-over-the-abominations/