This is one of my favorite worship songs. I say that advisedly, knowing the reaction that statement will get from a lot of people: “That’s not a worship song! It doesn’t end with praise!” In fact, according to an interview the men of Tenth Avenue North gave a few years ago, a lot of Christian-music stations refused to play this song for just that reason: it doesn’t end with everything resolved and God having made everything good again.
But this is a worship song. If you don’t believe me, just ask the Psalmist.
I’m thinking about this tonight because of a remarkable, powerful post: When Lament Doesn’t Quickly Resolve into Trust, by a woman named Desiree Brown. For my part, before my time at Regent, I knew churches that simply didn’t do lament; the only church I’ve ever attended (and not pastored) that has made meaningful space for lament is our current congregation, Valley Springs Fellowship, which came out of the ministry of Larry Crabb, who was a friend and something of a disciple of Jim Houston—which is to say, it’s all in the same stream. From her post, it sounds like she was a part of churches which domesticated lament, which I think might be even worse.
I was taught how lament is an appropriate posture of faith as long as it ends in the assurance of faith and thanksgiving. There was a formula to the Psalms of lament: address, complaint, petition, confidence, praise. Sure let God hear your hurt, but make sure you also state your trust in God- lest you wander into doubt. In fact, even the complaint and appeal was restricted- one must tread lightly in voicing their hurt and anger, for there is a line drawn in the sand. Anything that questioned God’s goodness or his sovereignty, anything that wrestled with the trust of God is to be deemed sinful- to fail to honour God’s sovereignty. . . .
Then what do we make of Psalm 88, the Psalm with no resolution? It ends with “you have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness” (v.18). Yet, it is still added to the Psalter. The Jewish people saw no conflict in adding this Psalm to the Psalter. In fact, because they included it, they must have believed that the psalm added something so essential to prayer and spiritual formation that it had to be included even in all its gloom.
She’s right—and in fact, there’s more to be said. For one thing, that “formula” is a joke. There are a lot of psalms of lament which end exactly where Tenth Avenue North ended: with the psalmist still pleading with God for deliverance and vindication which have not come. Just to pick a few I found right off, look at Psalm 25 (all translations from Robert Alter):
See my enemies who are many
and with outrageous hatred despise me.
Guard my life and save me.
Let me not be shamed, for I shelter in You.
May uprightness, wholeness, preserve me,
for in You do I hope.
or Psalm 44:
For Your sake we are killed all day long,
we are counted as sheep for slaughter.
Awake, why sleep, O Master!
Rouse up, neglect not forever.
Why do You hide Your face,
forget our affliction, our oppression?
For our neck is bowed to the dust,
our belly clings to the ground.
Rise as a help to us
and redeem us for the sake of Your kindness.
or Psalm 74, which is every bit as unresolved as Psalm 88; it begins,
Why, O God, have You abandoned us forever?
Your wrath smolders against the flock You should tend.
and ends,
Arise, God, O plead Your cause.
Remember the insult to You by the base all day long.
Forget not the voice of your foes,
the din of those against You perpetually rising.
or Psalm 89, which begins with praise and ends with lament:
Where are Your former kindnesses, Master,
that you vowed to David in Your faithfulness?
Recall, O Master, Your servants’ disgrace,
that I bore in my bosom from all the many peoples,
as Your enemies reviled, O Lord,
as Your enemies reviled Your anointed one’s steps.
To those popping up to cry out, “You left off the last verse!”: no, I didn’t, because verse 52 (53 in the Hebrew) doesn’t actually belong to Psalm 89—it’s a line of prose which is in there to mark the conclusion of Book III of the Psalter.
But if that isn’t enough to make the point for you, turn to Psalm 137, which goes a step further—it ends with one of the bitterest, blackest, most vindictive cries for revenge ever put in print:
Daughter of Babylon the despoiler,
happy who pays you back in kind,
for what you did to us.
Happy who seizes and smashes
your infants against the rock.
Alter describes this as a “bloodcurdling curse,” and he certainly isn’t overstating things. But again, to borrow Desiree’s words, “it is still added to the Psalter. The Jewish people saw no conflict in adding this Psalm to the Psalter. In fact, because they included it, they must have believed that the psalm added something so essential to prayer and spiritual formation that it had to be included.”
How dare we look down at a Bible that contains a verse like that and then look up into the eyes of a brother or sister who is weeping in pain, screaming for grief, and empty with loss, and tell them they need to praise God now? How dare we? That’s not something we do for them, and it’s not something we do for God—it’s something we do for us because we aren’t willing to bear their loss and grief and pain. I’m reminded of Eugene Peterson talking about doing his father’s funeral, and sitting down in a side room after the service to recover a little; a man came in and proceeded to unload several standard platitudes on him (it was his time, he’s in a better place, etc.). Eugene told us he badly wanted to slug the man. When it was finally over, Eugene turned to his daughter and said, “I hope I’ve never done that to anyone.” (She reassured him that she didn’t think he ever had.)
That sort of “comfort” isn’t about the other person’s good, it’s about our comfort zone, and that’s well-nigh blasphemous. That’s part of the point of the book of Job. In fact, it may be the main point of the book of Job; which in turn may be part of the reason why, as Desiree points out, the church has so little idea of what to do with the book:
Take, for example, Job, ahh Job the man who declared he wished to be dead, who told God he was putting him on trial, who wept and raved. But we tend to quickly skim over most of his dialogue of anger and doubt, and we get caught up in arguments about how good people suffer. We avoid the nitty-gritty of Job’s relationship with God and fly over in favour of a metaphysical discussion of suffering. The only time we look deeply into Job’s words and try to imitate them is when Job, in the wake of losing his children, home and livelihood he praised God with “Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I shall return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away blessed be the name of the Lord” (1:21). Evangelicals are taught that this is the pious response to suffering, immediate acceptance and praise.
I still remember precisely when I was in Professor White’s class “Theology and Vocation,” and he stated that Job did not speak the words of 1:21 in piety but in shock. Even Job was not immune to the effect of shock on the human body. But, after several days, the shock wore off, and we are privy to what Job really thinks about his turn of fortune.
Incidentally, kudos to Job’s wife, who’s honest enough to voice the lament he starts off trying to bury beneath theological platitudes. When he breaks, it’s his friends’ turn to bring out all the good theology. The problem with them isn’t their theology (because much of it really is fine); rather, it’s twofold. One, when Job won’t cooperate with their agenda and accuse himself of all sorts of bad things, they start doing the accusing for him—and going far beyond anything fair in their urgent desire to break him. Two, they do this because their theology is their way of controlling God and keeping him at a distance, and Job’s obstinate defiance is threatening to bring their whole scheme down in ruins.
Think that’s unfair? The key is Job 42:7, which every English translation I know botches. They all have God telling Job’s friends, “You have not spoken of me what is right,” when everywhere else the book of Job uses that preposition with a verb of speech, it’s translated “to.” In other words, God is actually telling Job’s friends, “I’m furious at you because you didn’t do the right thing by speaking to me, like Job did.” As the scholar Manfred Oeming puts it,
Instead of prayerfully speaking to God and wrestling with God, they practice theology as speech about God. Instead of praying for Job or with Job, they theorize about God. In this manner, they completely miss God, even if they do make theologically correct statements.
Whatever you might want to say about Job’s statements about God, he says them to God. He opens up on God with both barrels, to his face. That, not the pious God-talk of Eliphaz & Co., is what God honors—which should make sense to us. When my infant daughter screamed at me at 2 am, did I accuse her of distrust? No; that was actually an expression of profound trust in me, that I would take her rage and make it all better. Babies are born trusting. Distrust is learned. When Jesus calls us to become like little children, doesn’t that logically imply trusting God in this way?
As Margaret Becker put it in one of her early songs, God’s not afraid of our honesty. He already knows what we’re thinking or feeling (better than we do, in fact); he doesn’t want us to hide it, or hide from it, or deny it or cover it up or pretend it’s something else or try to argue it away. He knows full well we have a tiger in the living room, and he has no desire for us to pretend it’s an animated throw rug. He wants us to face the fact that we have a tiger in the living room and talk to him about it, even when that means throwing it in his teeth that we’re furious about it and blame him for it.
Simply put, God honors Job for having the courage and honesty to face God openly with his blazing fury, his agonized grief, and his sense of unjustified betrayal. God honors Job for moving through his emotions, and doing so with (and even at) God, because that’s the truth and God is truth . . . and that’s what God wants from us as well: lay down our defenses against him and ourselves and, in his presence, face the reality of who we are and what we’re feeling.
Yeah, we’ll go overboard and get a lot wrong when we do that, our anger won’t be pure, we’ll say sinful things. So did Job. When God showed up, Job was humbled to repentance. So will we be. It isn’t be easy, or pleasant—but if we’re angry at God and have reason to be, then if we’re honest, easy and pleasant aren’t options on the menu no matter what we do. If we’re willing to be honest with ourselves and honest with him, he can work with that, and he will—and that is the road to healing. As Jesus didn’t exactly say in the Sermon on the Mount, only those who are willing to mourn can be comforted.
I began writing this post late last night, and looking back up the page in the light of morning, I think I hit a couple of my own buttons without realizing I was going to do so. So be it, I suppose. Lament shouldn’t resolve quickly; this world is too broken, too screwed-up, too not-the-way-it’s-supposed-to-be for that. When we try to push people through it, we’re dishonoring them, we’re telling them to lie to themselves and everyone else about their experience—and I think we’re denying and dishonoring God, too. Who is this Jesus we worship? He is God whose response to this world’s bleak pain was to write himself into the story and experience it to the full. If he took our lament that seriously, then if we do any less, aren’t we belittling his sacrifice?
Desiree asks, “What do we steal from suffering believers when we shame them into tying their stories up with pretty bows of faith before they are ready?” Would it be too much to say, “Everything”? It is well for us that what we would steal, God can give back . . . but woe to us for the harm we do to the vulnerable among us, and for the dishonor we do to the truth.
(As a side note, hearing Job’s words in 1:21 in tones of pious praise seems very strange to me . . . but then, I love Brent Bourgeois’ song “Blessed Be the Name,” which I think powerfully captures something much deeper and more real.)
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