If there’s a single thing that strikes us most about
the Psalms it has to be the brutally honest emotions that the Psalm writers
use. We don’t read much that is so raw in our culture today. The closest
corollary we have to modern Psalms are hymns or praise music, but, while hymns
might be a little more far-reaching, almost all of our Christian music lives
with a fairly narrow set of emotions—joy, thankfulness, relief, maybe even a
kind of submission that is not as much emotion as outlook on life. You can
listen to any Christian radio station or praise band, or sing along at most
worship services, even at traditional churches, and hear largely these
sentiments. The Psalms, however, go well beyond the bounds of what we normally
feel as part of our standard religious practices.
I’m not sure if this is more of an issue for the church
or for our country. We tend to use language that disassociates us from our pain
and we offer assurances that things will get better, even when reality points
to the contrary. Ours is a culture of platitudes—things that sound nice but are
only about as deep a kiddy pool in the ocean’s depth of what we feel. I can’t
tell you how many times I hear from people who are in pain that “some people
have it much worse.” That’s undoubtedly true but also not really the point. You
aren’t some people; you are you, and
what you feel is real, no matter what others are feeling.
There’s
a part of us that always feels like it’s somehow inappropriate to say, “God, I
just hurt right now,” as if we are just being too ungrateful. We say it in
private and we say it to trusted friends and confidants, but we don’t say it
loudly enough for anyone else to hear. Rarely do we pray, saying, “God, I don’t
understand, and, frankly, I’m pretty upset. I hate this. But still all praise
to you.” We’ve grown up with an implicit understanding that the reason we
praise God is because God blesses us. On the cross, sure, but also in our
lives. The Psalms, then, are one of the few places we can turn that approach
pain and suffering with honesty.
It actually sounds kind of funny to our ears when we
follow lament with praise, but the Psalms do this over and over again. They cry
out, they say they don’t understand, they lay out their frustrations and angst…
and then they end with a word of praise or even thanks. There is some serious
wisdom there. In fact, I think it’s the only way to effectively do lament,
because when lament lacks that final word of thanks or praise it become
self-centered, less honest, and it lays an expectation on God that God has
never promised to deliver. I don’t mean that people who are sad or have
experienced loss need to pick themselves up and feel better—actually, exactly
the opposite—I mean they need to understand that even in lament—perhaps
especially when we do not understand—God promises to be present and to hurt
with you. We are not promised we will feel better, or that those with strong
faith will not be in pain; only that God is with us when we are.
The funny thing is that both Christians and atheists
share some of the same language in times of tremendous loss. Both cry out in
anger and frustration, both question whether there is any divine plan, and both
doubt the inherent goodness in creation. The primary difference then between
Christians and atheists when we cry out in despair is that Christians conclude
with praise. They say, “God, I don’t understand. I’m hurting. I’m lonely. I
feel like I will never be happy or whole again. I am lost. But… you are above
all things, in all things, and work through all things, so to whom else shall I
turn? My trust is in you, O Lord, because I can trust in myself no longer.” And
we do this because otherwise we’re just shouting to the universe. If there is a
God to whom I am praying, then I am obligated to praise even if my emotions are
torn and despair is a lot closer at hand than joy.
We can say these things because God is not a good luck
charm, and we are not promised a life without pain. Christians have been killed
just as often and as horribly as non-Christians ever since Jesus came along.
Jesus told us to pick up our crosses and follow, which is pretty much the
opposite of living a life of comfort. We have a God who promises us just two
things: we will die and we will rise again. Only one of those is a promise for
this life, and it’s not the kind of promise most of us care for very much.
So we lament. Not always and not equally. But lament we
do. And, mercifully, the Bible offers us words for this lament in the Psalms.
There are other places in the Bible where sorrow is expressed, but nowhere so
clearly demonstrates how to do it as the Psalms. The writers of the Psalms are
living through real pain. Whether it’s David writing a tearful prayer after the
death of his newborn son, or anonymous children of Israel crying out because
their land has been taken from them and they are aliens in Babylon, these are
not people writing prayers from a place of comfort. They are right in the thick
of it.
Sometimes we like to play the game of comparing and
quantifying peoples’ suffering. We think that so-and-so can only talk to me
about pain if their pain is as great as mine, but the Psalms beg us to consider
the universality of lament. All of us have had, will have, or currently have
reason to be sad, to feel lonely, to experience loss; and holding that loss up
on a scale and comparing it to the loss of others misses the point. Some people
hurt more from the loss of the pet than from the loss of a mother or father,
even a son or daughter; and this is not because they have something wrong with
them. They are just wired for lament in a different way. When David’s son dies
as a result of his affair with Bathsheba he prays night and day without eating
a thing up until the boy dies. Then, with his advisers fearful of what he will
do when he realizes his son has died, he reacts in what they consider to be a
strange way. He picks himself up, comes down, and eats, saying “While the child
was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, “Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me, and the
child may live.” But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back
again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.” (2 Samuel 12:22-23)
David understood that lament, done properly, leads to
something else. We become aware of our littleness in the scheme of things; and
then we understand that we don’t matter very much to a world that can chew us
up and spit us out, and that we do matter a good deal to the God who created
us. What then is worthy of our praise? Only God.
So, it is not our job to decide when others have lamented
too long or not enough. Our job is to remind one another of where we stand as
human beings alive by the grace of God, completely dependent, and in need of a
Savior to make all of this brokenness worthwhile. Like most of the lessons from
the Psalms it ends with humility. By the grace of God here we stand, whatever
you are feeling, and God will take it all.
No comments:
Post a Comment