Appalachian Disciple

My son is angry with me.  After a long crusade on his behalf to convince me that I should let him play a particular video game, his father and I finally gave him a hard “no.” Last night, he cried for hours in great, gulping sobs until he exhausted himself into sleep.  This morning, with swollen eyes, he’s taken to ignoring me, interspersed with spontaneous tirades about how he doesn’t like my reasons.  How they make no sense.  How cruelly unbending I am.

This is the child who, when he was making his case, previous to our answer, assured us that whatever we decided would be fine.  He “just wanted us to consider” his arguments.  And he made his case well.  But the answer was still no.

Now, he shuns our nighttime routine and has abandoned the father-son activity he was taking so much joy in before.  Of course, that didn’t keep him from walking in here just now and asking for lunch. Sigh. My heart is heavy for the tension in our home, but more because I keep thinking, “Isn’t this just what we do to God?”

When we get the firm “no,” after all of our well-articulated prayers to the contrary, don’t we often respond like bratty children, and sometimes over the stupidest things?  We stew in our anger and pain over the answer we didn’t like, and soon we’re saying things like, “I just can’t pray right now,” and “I just can’t be around ‘church people.”  Really?  How revealing.

It’s got me rethinking anything I might have said that would encourage this kind of behavior.  I’ve always entreated people to be honest with God — to take all of their anger, hurt, pain, etc. to Him — that He can handle it.  And of course He can; He’s the only adult in the room!  And I still maintain that honesty is the best policy before an all-knowing Father (I mean, who are we kidding? He already knows). But I’m wondering if we also need to encourage each other to grow up already.  To concede that He’s got His reasons, which He is not obligated to reveal to me and which, in my current immature state, I could never understand anyway.

While our angry tirades against God reveal our love for Him and trust of Him to be pretty shallow, the fact is His love for us is deep. So deep that He’s not saying ‘no’ on a whim, any more than I would to my own beloved child.  Can’t we give Him the benefit of faith and draw near, rather than away?  I think we can, fellow believer, we can.