The God Who Seems Absent: Wrestling with Divine Silence in Suffering
Click on the image to PRE-ORDER Kingdom Revolution (eBook) from Amazon for $0.99 today!!
When Everything Falls Apart: A Biblical Guide to Hope Through Lamentations
You’re three months into chemotherapy, and the well-meaning church visitor leans forward with that familiar earnest expression: “God’s got a plan in all this. He’s going to use your cancer for good.”
You nod and smile because that’s what Christians do. But inside, something darker whispers: What if God isn’t trying to heal me? What if he’s the one making me sick?
Most Christians would be horrified by that thought. We’ve been taught to view God as exclusively loving, always working for our good, and never the direct cause of our pain. We blame Satan, sin, or “a fallen world”—anything but God himself.
But Lamentations refuses us that comfort.
Last week, we discovered that biblical lament gives us divine permission to fall apart, to bring our rawest grief to God without shame. This week, we’re diving into deeper, darker waters: What do we do when God doesn’t just seem absent from our suffering, but appears to be the very source of it?.
ORDER MY NEW BOOK TODAY FOR $9.99 (eBook)
The Shocking Reality: God as the Cause, Not Just the Permitter
Open Lamentations to any chapter, and you’ll encounter something that makes most contemporary Christians fidget in their soul. The poet doesn’t present God as a distant deity who sadly allows bad things to happen. He presents God as the active agent of destruction.
Look at these verses from chapter 2:
The Lord has become like an enemy; he has swallowed up Israel; he has swallowed up all its palaces; he has laid in ruins its strongholds, and has multiplied in daughter Judah mourning and lamentation. (Lam. 2:5)
He has broken down his booth like a garden, laid in ruins his meeting place; the Lord has made Zion forget festival and Sabbath, and in his fierce anger has spurned king and priest. (Lam. 2:6)
This isn’t “God allowed the Babylonians to destroy Jerusalem.” This is “God himself destroyed Jerusalem.” The poet uses active verbs: God swallowed, God laid in ruins, God broke down, God spurned. There’s no theological buffer zone here, no attempt to preserve God’s reputation by blaming secondary causes.
Chapter 3 gets even more personal and disturbing:
I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. He has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; against me alone he turns his hand, again and again, all day long. (Lam. 3:1-3)
The sufferer doesn’t say, “God permitted my affliction.” He says, “God afflicted me.” He doesn’t claim, “Evil forces attacked me while God looked away.” He declares, “God himself turned his hand against me.”
This is theological dynamite. And it’s exactly what most modern Christians spend enormous energy trying to explain away.
Why We Struggle with Divine Causation
Our discomfort with God as the direct cause of suffering reveals how far contemporary Christianity has drifted from biblical theology. We’ve created a sanitized version of God—always loving, never wrathful; always blessing, never disciplining; always protecting, never allowing harm.
This theological drift has roots in our cultural moment. We live in a therapeutic age that prioritizes emotional comfort over truth, self-esteem over holiness, and personal happiness over covenant faithfulness. We’ve unconsciously imported these values into our understanding of God.
But the biblical writers had no such luxury. They lived in a world where kings destroyed cities, famines killed thousands, and diseases ravaged communities. They couldn’t retreat into psychological explanations or secondary causation. They had to wrestle with a God who was sovereign over both blessing and calamity, life and death, salvation and judgment.
The prophet Isaiah captures this biblical realism: “I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things” (Isa. 45:7). This isn’t a distant, detached deity managing a cosmic chess game. This is a God intimately involved in every aspect of reality—including the parts that hurt us.
The Covenant Context: Why God’s “Hostility” Makes Sense
Understanding Lamentations requires understanding covenant relationship. Modern Christians often think of their relationship with God in terms of personal spirituality or individual salvation. But the biblical writers understood their connection to God through the lens of covenant—a binding, legal, relational agreement with mutual obligations and consequences.
In covenant terms, suffering isn’t subjective or mysterious. It’s the predictable result of covenant violation. When Israel broke their covenant obligations through idolatry, injustice, and unfaithfulness, they activated the covenant curses described in passages like Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26.
Lamentations doesn’t present God as cruelly capricious. It presents him as covenant-faithful—even when that faithfulness requires judgment. The destruction of Jerusalem wasn’t divine child abuse; it was covenant enforcement. God was being true to his character and his promises, even the uncomfortable ones about consequences for betrayal.
This covenant framework transforms how we understand divine “hostility.” God doesn’t turn against his people because he stops loving them. He acts against their rebellion because he loves them too much to let them destroy themselves and others through persistent unfaithfulness.
Think of it like a parent who takes away car keys from a drunk teenager. The teenager might experience this as hostility: “My parents hate me! They’re ruining my life!” But the parents act from love, preventing greater harm through temporary but necessary pain.
Divine Hiddenness vs. Divine Absence
One of Lamentations’ most profound insights concerns the difference between divine hiddenness and divine absence. These aren’t the same thing. Confusing or conflating them can shipwreck faith.
Divine absence would mean God has abandoned his creation, walking away from his covenant promises and leaving us truly alone. But divine hiddenness means God remains present and active while concealing his face, his blessing, his obvious intervention.
Psalm 13:1 captures this distinction beautifully: “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” Notice that David doesn’t accuse God of abandoning him entirely. He accuses God of hiding—remaining present but withholding his obvious blessing and intervention.
Lamentations operates within this framework of hiddenness. God hasn’t abandoned his people; he has hidden his face. He remains actively involved in their circumstances (even orchestrating their discipline), but his blessing, his protection, his obvious favor have been withdrawn.
This hiddenness serves covenant purposes. It compels God’s people to examine their hearts, return to covenant faithfulness, and rediscover their dependence on God rather than on His gifts. It’s painful medicine for a relationship that had become presumptuous and unfaithful.
Isaiah 45:15 acknowledges this dynamic: “Truly you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior.” Even in hiddenness, God remains “the Savior.” His concealment is purposeful, redemptive, and temporary—not permanent abandonment.
Wrestling with the God Who Won’t Answer
So how do we pray to a God who feels hidden, hostile, or absent? How do we maintain faith when heaven seems shut and our circumstances suggest divine opposition rather than divine help?
Lamentations offers several crucial insights:
Honest accusation is better than pious pretense. The poet doesn’t attempt to maintain theological correctness while his world burns. He brings his raw, unfiltered experience to God: “You feel like my enemy right now.” This honesty isn’t irreverent; it’s relational. You can only be truly honest with someone you believe is real, present, and capable of handling your truth.
Wrestling is a form of worship. Jacob wrestled with God all night and received both a blessing and a new name (Gen. 32:22-32). Wrestling acknowledges God’s presence—you can’t wrestle with someone who isn’t there. The act of struggle itself demonstrates faith that God is worth fighting with, worth engaging, worth pursuing even when he feels distant or hostile.
Covenant relationship provides stability in chaos. Even when God feels like an enemy, covenant promises remain. Even when blessing is withdrawn, covenant love endures. Even when circumstances suggest abandonment, covenant faithfulness persists. The poet can accuse God of hostility precisely because he knows God well enough to expect something different.
Divine hiddenness has limits. Throughout Scripture, God’s hiddenness serves specific purposes and operates within boundaries. It’s remedial, not vindictive. It’s temporary, not eternal. It’s disciplinary, not destructive. The same covenant that permits discipline also promises restoration.
Practical Faith in the Silence
What does faith look like when you’re not sure if God is helping you, hurting you, or simply ignoring you?
Acknowledge your experience without theological editing. Don’t rush to explain away your sense that God feels absent or hostile. Bring that raw experience to prayer. “God, you feel like my enemy right now. You feel silent. You feel absent. I don’t understand what’s happening, and I need you to help me make sense of this.”
Distinguish between your feelings and God’s character. Your experience of God’s hiddenness doesn’t negate God’s covenant character. His silence doesn’t mean he’s stopped loving you. His discipline doesn’t mean he’s stopped being faithful. Hold your experience honestly while anchoring your faith in his revealed character, not your current circumstances.
Look for God’s activity in unexpected places. When obvious blessing is withdrawn, God often works through suffering itself. Can you find him in the compassion of friends who show up? In strength you didn’t know you had? In the way hardship is stripping away false securities and deepening your dependence on him? Divine hiddenness doesn’t mean divine inactivity.
Remember the trajectory of Scripture. The Bible’s story arc moves from paradise through catastrophe to restoration. Lamentations captures the catastrophe phase—necessary but not final. Even the book’s darkest chapters contain glimpses of hope, hints that God’s hiddenness serves his ultimate purposes of healing and restoration.
Stay in community. Isolation amplifies the sense of divine absence. When you can’t sense God’s presence, let others carry that awareness for you. When you can’t pray with faith, let others pray over you. When God feels distant, experience him through his body, the church.
The God Who Hides Is Still the God Who Saves
Here’s the paradox Lamentations teaches us: the God who feels like an enemy is the same God who remains our Savior. The God who orchestrates discipline is the same God who promises restoration. The God who hides his face is the same God who will reveal himself again in blessing.
This isn’t cognitive dissonance; it’s covenant complexity. God’s character is large enough to encompass both judgment and mercy, both discipline and blessing, both hiddenness and revelation. He can oppose our rebellion while loving our souls, chasten our unfaithfulness while remaining committed to our ultimate good.
Lamentations teaches us that we don’t have to choose between honest struggle and faithful trust. We can wrestle with God while worshiping him. We can question his methods while surrendering to his sovereignty. We can feel abandoned while believing in his covenant love.
The poet of Lamentations models this complex faith. He accuses God of hostility while continuing to pray to him. He describes divine silence while engaging in extended conversation with the divine. He experiences God as enemy while addressing him as Lord.
This is grown-up faith. Large enough for paradox. Honest enough to name the difficulty. Stubborn enough to keep seeking God even when he feels absent, silent, or downright hostile.
The journey through Lamentations doesn’t promise easy answers. Still, it offers something better—honest faith that can hold both struggle and trust, both accusation and worship, both the experience of God as enemy and the knowledge of God as Savior. This is the faith that remains when everything else falls apart.
Your Jerusalem may have fallen not despite God’s involvement, but because of it. Your suffering may be covenant discipline rather than cosmic accident. Your prayers may be met with silence because God is working in ways you can’t yet see or understand.
If that’s where you are today, Lamentations offers you permission to wrestle, question, and struggle while maintaining faith. The God who seems absent may be more present than you know. The God who feels hostile may be more loving than you can imagine. And the God who appears to be your enemy may be working as your Savior in ways that will only become clear on the other side of resurrection.
Last week, we learned that God gives us permission to fall apart. This week, we’ve discovered why we might need that permission—because sometimes God himself is orchestrating the circumstances that make us want to fall apart. Next week, we’ll explore how hope can emerge from this darkness, how God’s faithfulness shines brightest when everything else has failed.
Next week: We’ll explore the most famous passage in Lamentations, “Great is thy faithfulness”—and discover how unshakeable hope can emerge from the darkest moments of divine hiddenness.
——
FYI: Some of the links above are affiliate links. If you choose to purchase items linked, I will receive a small commission from that sale.
If you find this blog helpful and want to say thanks, click here to buy Danny Davis a coffee.
