Praise In Spite Of

It’s an interesting moment in one’s life when you into contact with a religious tradition that looks like yours on the surface, yet as soon as you delve just a little deeper you begin to realize that while there is much in common, there is also much to learn.
Last week I had that experience when working on an Incarnational Translation. At one point a colleague of mine, who is African-American, commented that in her tradition there are two kinds of praise. There is praise because of and there is praise in spite of. Praise because of is rooted in the events of life for which we’d like to offer God our praise and thanksgiving. A family member recovers from a serious illness; a child does well in school in a troubled subject; a relationship that was broken is healed – all of these would be examples of times when you would praise because of. In essence your giving thanks to God for something that you perceive to be welcomed in your life, good for you, or someone you care about. This, I think, is a kind of praise that is common across religious traditions. Those of us who self-identify as Christians have no problem giving praise to God when things are going as we want them to. We don’t have a problem offering thanksgiving for getting something that we wanted. We have little afterthought for saying thank-you to God when our prayers are answered in the manner we’d hoped for. But what about other times, you know the ones when things don’t go our way or “bad” things happen to us or those we love and care about. What then? Are we as eager to give God our praise during those times? Or are we more likely to withhold our praise as if we can punish God or bring God around to our way of looking at the world if we don’t offer our praise.
In the African-American tradition there is an understanding that in those times you offer your praise in spite of the situation at hand. It goes something like this: even though my child died; my cupboard is bare; I got laid off; my child failed a subject; I’ve discovered I have cancer – in spite of all of that I will praise God and offer my thanksgiving. In other words even when it doesn’t seem to make sense I will offer my praise to God exactly because it doesn’t make any sense! Do you get it? It’s easy to give praise when everything is going your way, but when times are tough and you feel forgotten, ignored, mistreated, and/or harmed by God, that’s when offering praise is tough work. That’s when your praise matters because it would be easier to just walk away and yet, even in the midst of your situation, there is always (and yes I mean always) something to praise God about. It might simply be that your alive another day and yet for some folks that is a miracle in and of itself.
So as I sit here in my room I’m left to wonder about those times in my life when I’ve refused God my praise. I wonder who I really hurt. I wonder what was gained by those actions. I wonder if there isn’t a deep wisdom in the African-American tradition of praise in spite of and I wonder what my life would look like and what my church would look like if we were able to cultivate this kind of deep faith.