A Cultural Anomaly
And if you will not listen to it, my soul will sob in secret for such pride Jeremiah 13:17
Sob – Rachel weeping for her children. Joseph grieving over his brothers’ sin. The baby Moses crying in the basket. One hundred and thirty times the Hebrew word bakah is used to describe vocal outburst because of pain, grief or even joy. But in this passage, Jeremiah says something that is strikingly dissimilar to all those other uses, because bakah is a word for weeping out loud, not in secret. When people of the ancient Near East wanted to express inner emotional turmoil and tears, they did not use bakah. Bakah is a word for making noise. It is public outcry. Jeremiah steps over the cultural expectations to make the point stronger.
Do you know this grief, the kind that Jeremiah discovers wails within him? He feels it deep in his heart. It is the grief and pain of knowing that those whom he loves, his own people, have turned away from God. It is the humiliation and agony of seeing selfish pride stand between my friends and family and the blessing of the Lord. This cry is so great that it never rises into voice. It resides the recesses of my being – an agony that knows no sound other than the sobbing of my soul.
In a world where tolerance is the socially accepted protocol for all discussions of religion, we have forgotten the secret sobbing of Jeremiah. We don’t agonize over our friends and family, lost to the world’s systems. Somehow we think that they are good people and, certainly, God will not cast them out. So, we hide our terror at the thought that these loved ones will not find the way of righteousness, that they will end up in outer darkness. We don’t sob over them – nor do we agonize in prayer on their behalf.
Do you think God will forget our callous indifference toward the fate of those whom He puts in our path just because we were tolerant, just because we did not want to offend? What matter more – the truth about my real state of being, or my feelings? In this age, the answer must surely be that feelings matter more than content. The preoccupation with self-esteem has erased our need to weep over loss of conviction.
Do you want to change the fate of those who matter most to you? Begin by sobbing in secret. Agonize with Jesus over the condition of the lost. Let their destiny grip your heart. You may find that you are called to more than passive acceptance. You may discover that God is counting on you to act.
