Evil and pain come in a variety of forms in our life. You or a friend or family member is diagnosed with stage 4 cancer unexpectedly. A child dies in the womb. A spouse is suddenly institutionalized due to some unforeseen mental illness. Suicide shocks a community. Illness of every sort plagues your life everyday. You lose your job and financial difficulties ensue. War comes upon a people and you are displaced from your home. On and on and on we could go.
Struggle seems to describe the experience of many, and struggle also seems to describe many people’s faith after a life-altering tragedy. I’ve recently been listening to some people within (and outside of) Christianity that I would describe as “doubters.” These are people that have a faith in God and they are hanging onto their faith by a very thin thread due to pain or personal turmoil. Then there are others that have lost their faith altogether after, or during, some dark trial. There are a great variety of reasons why people struggle to believe in God or to trust God, but a primary reason that emerges most of the time is some intense encounter with pain or evil in their lives.
This is where the concept of “lament” enters into the picture. What does it mean to lament? A lament is “a passionate expression of grief or sorrow; it is a complaint” (source). The Bible is full of laments. The book of Lamentations is one big lament, and the psalms are full of laments. Psalm 44:23-25 gives an example of lament when it says:
” 23 Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord?
Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!
24 Why do you hide your face?
Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?
25 For our soul is bowed down to the dust;
our belly clings to the ground. “
A lament asks, “Where is God?” or, better yet, addresses God and asks, “Where are YOU, God? I’m hurting. I’m struggling. I need Your help. Where are You, God?”
Given that there are many that come away with a fractured faith or with no faith after trials, I wonder if we taught people to “lament” more that we would be able to better “connect ” with God during our pain? It’s easy to see where church services and, possibly, those within the church might seem distant to one who is hurting because we, maybe unintentionally, give this air that we “have it all together” or that “we have all the answers.” When someone is going through great pain and deep darkness, they often don’t have it all together and they have no answers. A proper response would be to weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15) and to help them lament.
One musical artist, in 2012, tweeted this comment: “Approximately 70 percent of the Psalms are laments. Approximately 0 percent of the top 150 CCLI songs are laments (songs sung in churches)” (source). If this is still currently true, then what does this do for those who are experiencing unimaginably difficult circumstances? I heard one Christian artist say, in response to contemporary Christian music, that, “Life is not always positive and encouraging.” Yes indeed.
If we gave people permission to lament more in our church services, if we wrote songs that expressed lament, and if we went through the bible passages on lament more often, would we find ourselves not only more healthy and whole, spiritually-speaking, but would we also find less “faith-carnage” after a trial or tragedy? If we knew that it was allowed and permissible to express our pain to each other, and most importantly to God, would those who are hurting find more support and remain in the church rather than leave it? Can we, in the church, bring ourselves to the place of admitting that there are unanswered questions and that life is not always so “neat and tidy” or “positive and encouraging”? Wouldn’t it be good and proper to create spaces in our lives, and in others’ lives, to simply pour out our (their) complaint before God? Do we focus on the “good and blessed life” to a fault where we make those who are going through pain feel estranged, unnecessarily, from the Christian community and, even, from God?
May we learn to say with the psalmist: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? 2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.” And, by God’s grace, may we also find the strength to say with the author of the book of Lamentations in chapter 3:
“21 But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: 22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.24 ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’”