The Fear of Silence

One of the traits that's endemic to the little corner of Christianity that I'm tucked into right now, the charima-pentecostal corner, is the emphasis on making noise. We love our God, and we shout and sing and dance and cry out in angelic tongues about it. It's often communicated, overtly or otherwise, that if we're not being loud, we're not loving God, or at least not to the degree which we could be.

If you spend any time at ORU, or many other places with an emphasis on vocal worship, you will certainly hear this verse quoted and or paraphrased on a near weekly basis:

But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.

Psalm 22:3 KJV

In fact, in chapel last Friday, the speaker made a brief mention of the verse, which is what really led to this whole thought. I turned there in my handy dandy NRSV. I had thought that the verse sounded familiar. Here's how that psalm begins

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.

Psalm 22:1-2 NRSV


The first part is one of the Seven Sayings of Christ on the Cross, which, I think is where I remembered it from. But what really caught my attention is that we have really knocked out the natural tension of these three verses in favor of the simpler, more incantational formula |[us+praise=presence.of.God]|. And so then I was thinking about God's silence.

And then our speaker referenced the story of God appearing to Elijah. Which, I checked, and found:

He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.

1 Kings 19:11-12 NRSV

Now, I'll be the first to admit that the NRSV reading is by far the minority reading of the text, but it's a legit one. And it carries some interesting implications with it.

Is our difficulty in finding God in silence based in our fear that God is silent sometimes?

I'm not so sure.


Peace, love, and joy to you all.