It felt like a test\u2014a test of my faith, a test of my convictions, a test of my love for God. Soon, very soon, after I learned that my son had died, I received a message from an old acquaintance. Her intentions were good\u2014she wanted to offer consolation. But her instructions were suspect\u2014she wanted me to rage against God. Paraphrasing one of her favorite authors she said \u201cIt\u2019s okay to be angry with God about this. It\u2019s okay to tell him exactly how you feel about him right now. Let him have it. He doesn\u2019t mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
My instincts rebelled against her counsel, but for just a moment I wondered. I didn\u2019t feel anger in my loss, but should I? I didn\u2019t resent God\u2019s sovereignty in taking my son, but might that be appropriate? Already I was leaning hard on God for comfort, but should I now also press against him for blame? In that very moment a verse of scripture, a mere fragment, flashed into my mind. \u201cCurse God and die.\u201d In this case it was not a human demanding it of another as Job\u2019s wife did of her husband. Rather, it was the Holy Spirit\u2019s reminder<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It felt like a test\u2014a test of my faith, a test of my convictions, a test of my love for God. Soon, very soon, after I learned that my son had died, I received a message from an old acquaintance. Her intentions were good\u2014she wanted to offer consolation. But her instructions were suspect\u2014she wanted me to rage against God. Paraphrasing one of her favorite authors she said \u201cIt\u2019s okay to be angry with God about this. It\u2019s okay to tell \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":29387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[436,303,3242,233],"class_list":["post-29384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tim-challies","tag-anger","tag-articles","tag-nick-challies","tag-suffering","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/biblicalcounselor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/shutterstock_758985370-1-1.jpg?fit=910%2C320&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29384"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29389,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29384\/revisions\/29389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}