“How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?”
— Psalm 13:1, NIV
I know I was taught somewhere along the way that I am not supposed to question God.
But I do not know what else to do right now.
How do you look at the world as it is and not question?
How do you watch people treated like criminals because of their skin color, their last name, their accent, their paperwork, their poverty, and not ask God what the hell is going on? There are lawsuits and reports alleging racial profiling and aggressive immigration raids targeting Latino communities, and there are real people living in fear underneath all that policy language.
How do you see detention facilities filling with frightened human beings and not ask where Christ is in the middle of it?
How do you watch protections for minority groups, queer people, trans people, immigrants, the poor, and the vulnerable get challenged, narrowed, or rolled back, and not feel something holy and furious rise up in your throat? KFF has tracked executive actions affecting LGBTQ+ health protections, and the ACLU is tracking continuing attacks on LGBTQ rights.
How do you watch Gaza suffer, Lebanon suffer, children suffer, families suffer, and not want to grab heaven by the robe and say:
Explain this.
The United Nations reports massive displacement, destruction, and lack of access to food, shelter, medical care, clean water, education, and livelihoods in Gaza. Reuters has also reported devastating death, injury, displacement, and infrastructure destruction in Lebanon during the latest Israel-Hezbollah war.
And I want to say this carefully.
I am not blaming Jewish people.
I am not blaming a whole people, a whole faith, or every person who lives under a government.
I am talking about governments.
Militaries.
Empires.
Religious nationalism.
Systems that crush bodies and then explain themselves with flags, theology, security language, and historical wounds.
I am asking why the Israeli government and military can devastate Palestinian and Lebanese lives and still face so little accountability equal to the scale of the suffering.
I am asking why any nation gets to bomb children and call it necessary.
I am asking why powerful countries can make graveyards and then ask the world to respect their complicated reasons.
I am asking why the poor always pay the invoice for the sins of kings.
Scripture already has the question.
“How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not save?”
— Habakkuk 1:2, NIV
That is not polite prayer.
That is not sanitized religion.
That is a prophet standing in the wreckage asking God why violence keeps getting the upper hand.
And that is where I am.
How long, Lord?
How long do we have to watch governments become beasts?
How long do we have to watch Christianity get used as a weapon?
How long do we have to watch brown bodies, queer bodies, immigrant bodies, poor bodies, sick bodies, Palestinian bodies, Lebanese bodies, Jewish bodies, every vulnerable body, get fed into the machinery of power?
How long do we have to watch the earth itself groan under greed, pollution, heat, fire, flood, and denial? The United Nations calls climate change one of the defining issues of our time, requiring unprecedented action, and yet the world keeps arguing while creation burns.
I do not have a clean theological answer.
And honestly, I do not trust clean answers right now.
If someone can look at all this suffering and calmly say, “God has a plan,” without trembling, without weeping, without rage, then I do not want that kind of faith.
I do not want a faith that makes peace with cruelty.
I do not want a faith that explains children under rubble.
I do not want a faith that blesses detention centers.
I do not want a faith that shrugs at disease, war, poverty, racism, homophobia, transphobia, nationalism, and a planet gasping for breath.
I want the God of the prophets.
The God who says:
“But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”
— Amos 5:24, NIV
That is the God I am still trying to believe in.
Not the god of empire.
Not the god of politicians using Scripture like stage props.
Not the god of people who love borders more than children.
Not the god of people who can quote Leviticus but somehow forget Matthew 25.
The God of justice.
The God who hears blood crying from the ground.
The God who sides with slaves against Pharaoh.
The God who sees Hagar in the wilderness.
The God who sends prophets to kings.
The God who becomes flesh and is arrested by the state, tortured by empire, mocked by religion, and executed in public.
That is the scandal of Christianity.
God does not answer suffering by staying untouched.
God enters it.
Christ is not standing far away from the detained.
Christ is detained.
Christ is not far away from the bombed.
Christ is under the rubble.
Christ is not far away from the migrant afraid of a knock at the door.
Christ is at the door.
Christ is not far away from the queer kid being legislated into terror.
Christ is in that kid’s shaking body.
Christ is not far away from the sick, the poor, the imprisoned, the hungry, the stranger.
Christ already told us where to find Him.
“Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
— Matthew 25:40, NIV
That should terrify every Christian with power.
Because Christ did not say, “Whatever you debated about them.”
He did not say, “Whatever you posted about them.”
He did not say, “Whatever you justified from a safe distance.”
He said:
Whatever you did.
So maybe the question is not only:
God, why do You allow this?
Maybe the question is also:
Church, why do you allow this?
Christians, why do you bless this?
Nations, why do you fund this?
Voters, why do you excuse this?
Priests, why are we so quiet?
And me?
Where am I standing?
Because I can rage at God all day, and some of that rage may be honest prayer. But eventually the question turns around and looks at me too.
Am I standing with Pharaoh or with the slaves?
With empire or with the crucified?
With the ones building detention centers or the ones praying outside them?
With the bombs or with the bodies?
With the people trying to erase queer and trans lives or with the children trying to survive the laws written about them?
With the earth as a thing to exploit or creation as a holy body groaning for redemption?
I do not ask these questions from a place of spiritual strength.
God knows I am tired.
I am in my own dark night.
I have a hole inside me where the warmth of God used to be.
Some days I can barely pray without feeling like I am leaving another voicemail heaven will not return.
But maybe this anger is still part of prayer.
Maybe the part of me that is furious at injustice is not the part farthest from God.
Maybe it is the part that still remembers what God’s kingdom is supposed to look like.
Because the kingdom of God does not look like children under rubble.
It does not look like detention facilities.
It does not look like queer people erased by policy.
It does not look like hospitals bombed, families displaced, forests burning, oceans rising, and rich men explaining why nothing can be done.
The kingdom of God looks like bread shared.
Bodies healed.
Captives freed.
The stranger welcomed.
The dead raised.
The proud pulled down.
The lowly lifted.
Justice like a river.
Righteousness like a never-failing stream.
So yes, I am questioning God.
I am questioning Him with Scripture in one hand and grief in the other.
I am questioning Him because I still believe He is good enough to be questioned.
I am questioning Him because silence in the face of madness feels like its own kind of blasphemy.
And maybe my question tonight is the same old biblical question:
How long, Lord?
How long will violence win?
How long will the wicked hem in the righteous?
How long will the law be paralyzed and justice be perverted?
How long will the poor be crushed under decisions made in rooms they will never enter?
How long will Your name be used to bless what Your Son came to destroy?
I do not know the answer.
I wish I did.
But I know this much:
I will not call evil good.
I will not call cruelty holy.
I will not call silence peace.
I will not let empire have the last word on Christ.
And I will not stop asking God why His children are bleeding.
Maybe that is not unbelief.
Maybe that is lament.
Maybe that is the sound faith makes when it refuses to go numb.
How long, Lord?
I am still asking.
I am still angry.
I am still watching.
I am still listening.
And God help me, I still want justice to roll.