The Book of Joy

“I do at times get very angry with God,” the Archbishop then added,
laughing.
“Some of my friends,” the Dalai Lama said, “when they are really
facing some trouble, sometimes they complain at the Buddha—so similar
idea.”
“Yes,” the Archbishop continued, “I usually would go to my chapel if
I had something that really upset me. I would lambast God. The prophet
Jeremiah would say to God, ‘You misled me. You called me to be a
prophet, and I said I don’t want to be a prophet. And you said, no, I will
be with you. All you have made me say to these people—people I love
very much—is to condemn them.’ And, yes, that is how I do it. Jeremiah
is my favorite prophet in the Bible for precisely this honesty that he had.
You can go to God and speak all you have, pouring it out in that fashion.”
I wondered how many times the Archbishop, like Jeremiah, had told God
he did not want to be a prophet.
“I weep when something has happened where I may not be able to
assist. I acknowledge that it is something I can do very little about.
“I remember one of the times that I was quite despairing. Chris Hani
was one of our most incredible young leaders. There was no doubt he was
going to succeed Nelson Mandela. But then he was assassinated just
before Easter, leading up to our first democratic elections.
“I was at the cathedral in Cape Town when I heard. I was stunned, as
were most South Africans. I got back home to Bishopscourt. Leah said to
me that there have been many calls about Chris Hani. I broke down, and
Leah held me, like I was a baby. I think it helped because later on I had to
go and preach at his funeral. And we had a huge crowd of people who
were very, very angry. I knew how they felt, because I had been through
the same sort of thing. And I could appeal to them not from a superior
position but from a position of one who was with them and who had felt
the same anguish and pain.
“It is also good to recognize—speaking from our struggle against
apartheid—how incredibly noble people are. You know human beings are
basically good. You know that’s where we have to start. That everything
else is an aberration. Anything that swerves away from that is the