Amon Amarth, a great death metal band of pagan roots, wrote a song called “Where is Your God?”, in which they question God’s ability to protect His followers from the wrath of the Vikings in history. While the band, and the song in particular, deal with history, one cannot help but see an element of present-day questioning of Christians.
In one sense, the question itself ignores a significant part of history and God’s working in that history. Periods of suffering are part and parcel of being counted among God’s own. A brief look at the Bible should show that being God’s people does not exempt anyone from difficulty and hardship. This is life. Israel’s exile under both the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires, Israel’s suffering under the 2nd century B.C. Seleucid rulers, enslavement under Egypt, and more should cure people of any illusions about suffering. The very fact that Jesus Christ, the Son of God Himself, initiated the new covenant through suffering and pain should slam the point home like an arrow through the throat. If God did not spare His own Son, should we even think of claiming any exemption? The idiocy that some people use to justify their ideas amazes me. Life is hard. Get over it. So, in reply to Amon Amarth’s question, God is right there in the prayers of the people, His people. He has not abandoned them.
Amon Amarth assumes that no visible move to physically protect Christians from raiding Vikings constitutes “silence”. This is a patently false assumption that leads to false conclusions. Amon Amarth also assume, like some Prosperity Gospel advocates, that Christians should not suffer if God truly loves them. These are false assumptions that are born of half-blind attempts at understanding God from a purely human viewpoint, as creatures of creation. In Romans 5, the Bible says that “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom He has given us.” Christians rejoice in suffering, which may seem insane to Amon Amarth, but that is the fact of it. In Romans 8, it is written that Paul “considers that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” In Philippians, Paul writes, “What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.”
It should be pretty obvious that anything a Christian “loses” is nothing, including our physical lives. What is a mere few years on this world compared to the eternal presence of God? The comparison is so bad, that Paul even refuses to consider it worth the effort. Anything you can lose, car, house and so on, is all crap. So, in answer to Amon Amarth, what better way to produce character and hope than to be faced with death? Just because God does not come in blazing glory to rid Christians of Vikings, (or any other hardship), does not constitute silence. We have hope, and that is eternal. Many people have gone to their deaths, singing the praises of Christ, who they would meet. Ignatius of Antioch, threatening to taunt the lions if they were not enthusiastic enough, welcomed the trial of his faith.
Insane to the world, but not surprising that people cannot understand, and ask questions like Amon Amarth’s. The love that God poured out, the very thing that enables us to go forth in faith despite suffering, is the very thing Amon Amarth do not have: the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God is the very vehicle by which God’s love is poured out and so hope comes to us. How can anyone understand Christians in this attitude to suffering if they do not have the Holy Spirit?
For this reason, Amon Amarth’s question is a reasonable response to what they see and what the Vikings inflicted on the Christians. However, I would remind the band that the primacy of the old gods and goddesses was limited and they are still very much on the back-burner, along with the rest of us. In later centuries, the same question could be asked of followers of the pagan gods: "where are your gods now?”
Hails,
Bu-Chan
