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A Screaming Place
Cecil Murphey
I wish places of worship would provide a screaming room.
Most of the time, I like going to worship services. My reasons include feeling a sense of the divine presence, connecting with other believers, and learning more about God and about myself.
Most of the sermons and Sunday school lessons encourage me and remind of God's faithful and everlasting love. They're aimed to uplift me and that's awfully good and extremely comforting.
But I wish places of worship would provide a screaming room. Sometimes I need a place to scream at life and yell at its unfairness. It has to be a private place where I can roar at the top of my lungs, "I hate this!" "Life is a garbage pit!"
But our place of worship can't provide screaming rooms. After all, we're the good people, the religious people, those who meekly accept life as it comes and start every week with praise on our lips and joy in our hearts. Sometimes that truly is the way I feel. But now and then . . .
Because I didn't know how to find such a place among the spiritually minded people, I found my private screaming place.
These days, I don't go there often, but in the past, I visited about once a week. My screaming place was inside my Honda Accord and I used it ten years. I got inside my car, rolled up the windows, and drove down the street. I yelled. I bellowed. They were the loudest sounds I could make. A few times I shook my fist. I honestly didn't care if other drivers looked at me. If they did, they probably assumed I was mouthing the words of a CD.
Usually it took only three or four minutes to finish my emotional outburst. Sometimes I verbalized my anger at the injustices in my life. One time I yelled at God for failing me. (I had to believe in God in order to get mad and confront the Creator.) Most of the time, I let out what some have called the primal scream—a total release of tension and emotion. Each time, I felt better.
I still go to my screaming place. Three or four yells at the loudest decibel I can reach seems enough. After I've done that I can sit among the good, righteous people again.
Until now I haven't talked about my screaming place. But I finally decided there might be one or two people like me who need the liberation I discovered.
Yes, I wish places of worship would provide a screaming room.
Cecil Murphey has written more than one hundred books on a variety of topics with an emphasis on Spiritual Growth, Christian Living, Caregiving, and Heaven. He enjoys preaching in churches and speaking and teaching at conferences around the world. To book Cec for your next event, please contact Twila Belk at 563-332-1622.
To read or sign up for email delivery of Cec's weekly devotional Invading the Privacy of God on Crosswalk.com, click here.
Original publication date: September 9, 2009
Most Recent User Comments
ajcolorado
9/15/2009 10:50 PM
cindyi, it's great that you've never had a place of doubt and never question the presence of God in your circumstances. I hope it is always that way. But maybe you & I aren't so far apart in our views as it seems. The point of the "screaming place" is to take it to God - people like me might not have the accepting faith that you do but pouring out our despair to Him is done because of the conviction that He has the power to act. Sometimes His response is gentle - giving strength for the task. Other times His response is a reproach - see Job 38 as an example. He sees our heart & knows if we're just in agony or need a lesson in the fear of the Lord & His response is always perfect. The writer in Lamentation 3:18 - 20 says outright that he did not acquire whaqt he had hoped from the Lord & that his soul was downcast. It was later that the writer remembered God's love. The writer of the "Screaming Place" has received an answer to his cry and is still in the faith. And I am too.
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cindyi
9/11/2009 5:52 PM
ajcolorado-I'm not suggesting being phony. Walking into church smiling when your world is falling apart is choosing to walk by faith, not by sight. This is not deception, but real faith exercised. Thing do happen beyond our comprehension, and I don't minimize the pain of it. I believe in crying out to God. I don't believe in shaking an angry fist in God's face. None of the Biblical examples you give condone this. Moses and Elijah did not wallow in self pity, but entreated God for the sake of God's cause. David cried out to God in humility, not in angry confrontation. Job did not sin with his lips. Lamentation 3 says "His compassions fail not". And the 4th sentence of Jesus on the cross was a prayer offered with the conviction that God was still His very own "My God". He received an answer that enabled Him to endure to the finish line with a quiet heart and serene mind; not with a wail of dispair, but a shout of victory. What a comfort to everyone who has found life bewilderingly hard.
ajcolorado
9/10/2009 8:32 PM
cindyi, honey - Christians can be rather glorious liars; painting on a happy face when they're in absolute agony inside. It gets called "faith" but it's still a deception.
We're not to complain about God but we can certainly expose our true selves to God, even when it ain't pretty. Sometime things happen are beyond our comprension - a child is murdered, a horrible disease strikes, a spouse leaves - and the pain is more than can be repair with a platitude and you wonder if God stopped watching. You can lie or you can cry.
Some Biblical Examples: Moses - Exodus 5:22 - 25. Elijah - 1 Kings 18:4 / David - throughout the Psalms. Job. Lamentations 3.
You mentioned the New Testament. The perfect (literally) example here is Jesus who cried out "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46 & Mark 15:35). Would you suggest that Jesus needed deliverance from a raging spirit? Deep devastation is not tantamount to demonic possession.
We're not to complain about God but we can certainly expose our true selves to God, even when it ain't pretty. Sometime things happen are beyond our comprension - a child is murdered, a horrible disease strikes, a spouse leaves - and the pain is more than can be repair with a platitude and you wonder if God stopped watching. You can lie or you can cry.
Some Biblical Examples: Moses - Exodus 5:22 - 25. Elijah - 1 Kings 18:4 / David - throughout the Psalms. Job. Lamentations 3.
You mentioned the New Testament. The perfect (literally) example here is Jesus who cried out "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46 & Mark 15:35). Would you suggest that Jesus needed deliverance from a raging spirit? Deep devastation is not tantamount to demonic possession.
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