You Would Not Believe if Told, But Don’t Worry You Will Not Be Told (Habakkuk)

    5 “Look among the nations, and see;  wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told.”

I look at the world and feel tired. I look at myself and feel exhausted. Things are tiresome and then they get tedious as the same old evils repeat themselves from generation to generation.

Why?

The prophet Habakkuk asked God why. In particular, he began asking why God tolerated the evils of his own people. They were being unjust, oppressing the poor. Why did God allow this to happen? Was God ignoring injustice?

The prophet did not like what he heard: in general God was raising up Babylon to do justice on the aristocrats and plutocrats of Jerusalem. The cosmos is a complex interplay of free will beings (angels, demons, humans, and God knows who else) with the animals, and material reality. God brings the greatest possible good out of this interplay, but this good takes place over eternity.

This arc of history can look mysterious, indeed is unknowable in all details. Why? We cannot know all God is doing in someone else, because God will not breach the relationship between God and that individual. Imagine those reasons multiplied over all the free will beings who have lived, are living, and will live! Over centuries, we might get the general picture that justice will prevail but our rational grounds for hope will have to be in the general character of God and not in the details.

If we see that God is good and has the power to do good, then we can have reasonable hope.

This is how God interacts with Habakkuk. He will tell the prophet what He is doing in general, but what he is doing in the soul of Nebuchadnezzar, of each Babylonian soldier, of the King of Judah, of the priests in the Temple, or even a baby born in China that very year of all that mass of detail that would make perfect sense God can and will say nothing.

God is so good and so secure in Himself that He will not betray us to others even to justify Himself. What the prophet is given is the general plan. God is willing to tip off the prophet to the arc of history, but the prophet is not going to be told all the details. He could not comprehend it or even believe it if told. The connections are too numerous even the ones that Habakkuk could hear.

He is left then with a general account of God’s working over time (history): God will bring justice and mercy. God will work with the nations and no harm will be forgotten or injustice ignored over time. Yet Habakkuk knows himself well enough to know that he, Habakkuk, needs mercy. God promises mercy and because God can and does reveal His character and power to the prophet, Habakkuk can rest.

When I was a boy, I did not always understand why Mom and Dad were doing the things they were doing. In fact, because some of the reasons had to do with the life of the Church, including details they should not share with an eight year old, I could not know. However, I knew the character of my Mom and Dad and so could reasonably trust them. The difference between Mom and Dad is that God is always right (and even Mom and Dad were not always right!) and has the power to do whatever must be done. 

God is making this the best world that can be for all God’s children. God has the wisdom and power to help. Despite my ignorance of the detail and frustration with timing, I pray for mercy (Lord have mercy!) on my sins and those of others and justice.

“When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say: “It is well. It is well with my soul.”