Lamentations and imprecations are forms of holy complaints in sacred scriptures. They are acceptable because they form the basics of dialogical worship in the Bible. The Psalms are clear communicative models for the Church. There is an insatiable hunger for the vindication of God and his Church on earth as it is in heaven.
The world is not as it should be, but God’s people do not remain committed to a world that is not as it should be; nor do they sit back and act as if the world’s injustices are mere byproducts of a world destined to defeat. Instead, they pursue a world that is being made new, transformed from glory to glory by the incarnate Son of God. That pursuit of vindication and victory comes through forms of conversations between God and man. It comes through laments and imprecations made fervently by God’s holy people.
George MacDonald once said: “Complaint against God is far nearer to God than indifference about Him.” To fail to lament and imprecate is to be indifferent, apathetic, and accepting a fatalistic premise. It is a rejection of the premise of the incarnation: that God entered into time to be the ruler of time.
The Christian imprecates against his enemy just as the saints call for God’s justice in Revelation (Rev. 6:10). The people of God call and plead with God for a renewed world; he complains rightly that complete justice has not been yet executed and imprecates against God’s enemies until God’s world becomes the kingdoms of our Lord (I Cor. 15:24-26).
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