Lament is natural, good, and faithful--so says the Psalms

            I think there is this common misconception around lament—that lament is good and all, but the purpose of it is to move from lament to faith; that lament is contrary to faith; that lament is a sign of weak faith. The Psalms point out that this is simply wrong.

            It is not only OK to lament; it is natural, and faithful, and good. When your life is a mess, kick and scream to God. The Psalms do. Over and over again, they yell at God because he has not lived up to the bargain. Far from a lack of faith, lament shows where we are to turn when everything is wrong. We turn to God, because God can take it.

            The 69^th Psalm is a song of disorientation in which the Psalmist cries out about all the things that have gone wrong. We could spend all day parsing whether this is justified—we do this all the time with others! Should they really complain as much as they do? Do they really have it that bad? We wonder this about people all the time, but at the end of the day, what you feel is what you feel, and the feeling of God-forsakenness is real. For some, it is all-too-real and all-too-familiar.

This Psalm gets into the nitty-gritty awfully quickly. Everybody’s turned on them; their enemies, yes, but even their family. The Psalms don’t care much for motivations. Do you feel this way? OK, here’s an example of how to scream at God. It might feel like a strange kind of prayer, but prayer it is. Since the Psalms are prayers and not credos for living, they don’t restrain themselves to a compact, systematic theology. They simply feel what they feel and they don’t apologize for it.

The Psalms of lament are for you in moments of desperation. They don’t suggest that you need to pick yourself up, or feel better, or become a better Christian. Instead, they are honest about actual honest-to-goodness feelings. The Psalms call out the lie that the Christian faith is about blessings, and happiness, and unicorns, and purple silly putty. More often, the life of faith feels like being submerged in rising water. The Christian faith expects us to yell at God as often as it expects us to pray meekly. To that end, we aren’t assured that good things will follow faithfulness. Ask the apostles, martyred for their faith. If the Christian faith rewarded faithfulness, they would have all retired to Sicily. Instead, they were beheaded, or crucified, or died in prison.

The Psalms lament that this is the way of the world. They lament that the righteous are persecuted and the unrepentant sinners grow in wealth and prestige. They lament that politicians create systems that profit themselves, while oppressing the poor and the migrant, pitting outsiders one against another.

The Psalms also lament that God isn’t going to fix this the way we would like; that karma isn’t real, not in the way we want it to be. The Psalms lament that those in power wield it, protect it, and defend it when they should be giving it away. The Psalms cry out for a more just world; in fact, they demand it, but they don’t promise it and they don’t even expect it. Instead, they give voice to the frustration of people persecuted by principalities and powers. Sometimes good people suffer, sometimes young people die, sometimes vulnerable people are taken advantage of, and sometimes the righteous are persecuted. The Psalms don’t theologize it away, and they don’t minimize it.

The Psalms might tell you how it should be, but they don’t gloss over how it really is. They show us that the world is broken by sin, offering no petty promise on this side of the veil that all will be well. The testimony of faith found in the lament Psalms is the exact opposite of the Heaven is for Real kind of faith that searches for experiential evidence. It is much closer to the kind of faith Elie Wiesel writes about in The Trial of God when rabbis in a concentration camp call witnesses, debate, and finally condemn God for crimes against the human race. You can’t put God on trial, suggests Wiesel (and the Psalmists) without keeping faith that God is real. In short, it is the kind of faith that says, “God, this is broken, and I know you are doing your damnedest to make me not believe in you, but I refuse.” The faith of the Psalms sometimes clings to God even out of spite.

            We need this example, because we are too often told how it is to be a proper Christian. We are told to feel grateful, and joyful, and hopeful, which—all things being equal—are great things to be. But when we don’t feel those things, we sometimes conclude both that we are poor Christians and that there is no God. The Psalms suggest something different. They say: Be frustrated. Be angry. Be hopeless. Be whatever it is that you are. So many of our emotions are rightfully justified by our situations. Be all of that, and take it to God. Take your anger to God. Take your hopelessness to God. But here’s the really crazy part: With the Psalms as your guide, you need not bring those emotions to God to have God fix them. You don’t need to come to be healed—that will happen apart from what you are trying to achieve.

            The Psalms simply call us to feel—to feel what we actually, truly, honestly feel. No putting on a brave face. No saying what you think you are expected to say. No minimizing or apologizing because somebody else has it worse. I’ve heard that one before—so has God—and we both know it’s dishonest.

            The greatest mark of faith is taking it to God anyway. That’s the mark of a Christian—not hiding what you feel but bringing it to God, even when you feel it is something you shouldn’t be feeling. After all, God can take it. Your outlook might change, but whether it does or not, it is freeing to admit the truth. It is honest. Most importantly, it is faithful.