In A Chaotic World, Christians Need To Understand the Value of Lament

God is good, all the time. But I got to tell you, I am exhausted. 

2020 has been a doozie. Right now, COVID-19 is on the march, our countries are polarised, and our politics are full of absurdist twists. It’s a time that feels like a rollercoaster, ricocheting between calamities to Lord knows where.

It’s a time when you’d be well in your rights to demand, “Why, God, why?”  

When disaster strikes, there’s a natural impulse among Christians to jump to express the hope that’s given in the gospel. We know that the world is broken and passing away, but we can encourage each other knowing that God is on the throne regardless of what life throws at us.

This is all true.

But what about those of us who are feeling weighed down by the world? Those people whose prayers of thanksgiving stick in their craw, and whose hearts feel out of sync with the praise their lips are singing?

Really, many Christians find it difficult to express negative or dark feelings about where life is headed. We may think to do it betrays a lack of trust, or maybe we’re afraid of being judged by others. Or maybe we think that good Christians experience joy and peace despite suffering.

But whatever the reason, the result can be disastrous. We see Christians who become quietly cynical, who only pray polite prayers, and believe that their faith depends on having a “stiff upper lip” mentality.

Don’t get me wrong – it is good for Christians to express hope in the midst of disaster. But I wonder if we are forgetting that mourning is also part of the human experience – and therefore the faith experience, too.

For most of us, we’ve lost the practice of Christian lament – the biblical practice of talking to God frankly and passionately about the dark.

And that is a spiritual weakness – and one that I think is critical to the pressure cooker times we’re in now.

Here’s why.

We need to know it’s okay to tell God it’s not okay. 

Lament is much more than just being sad. As singer and author Michael Card puts it,  

Lament is larger than feeling sorry that you’ve sinned. It encompasses pain, hurt, confusion, anger, betrayal, despair and injustice. It goes beyond your personal relationship to consider how all creation groans to be restored by God. 

I don’t know about you, but I don’t do this very often. If I’m praying with others or even by myself, I’m much more likely to downplay the negative and put a positive spin on things.  

“Lord, our world is being ravaged by a virus that is terrifying all of us, but thank you that you are on the throne.” 

That’s not a bad prayer. But what if it doesn’t reach your heart right in that moment? If you are squashing down your true feelings to pray that prayer, is that bringing God your whole self? 

If prayers were always supposed to be deferential and poised, then the Bible is not a good example. One-third of the Psalms are laments, and a whole book of the Bible is called Lamentations. Jesus himself calls out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Uncomfortable? Sure. But real? Absolutely. As Paul Miller puts it in his book A Praying Life: 

We think laments are disrespectful. God says the opposite. Lamenting shows you are engaged with God in a vibrant, living faith. We live in a deeply broken world. If the pieces of our world aren’t breaking your heart and you aren’t in God’s face about them, then …you’ve thrown in the towel.

When my heart is full of messy emotions about American politics and climate change, I need to bring them to him, not give him a Sunday School prayer.  

But lament isn’t just about honesty. 

By lamenting, we are putting our faith in God. 

To say that lament is just venting would miss half the equation. It is about asking God to act. 

If you’ve ever read Psalms, you will know the phrase that David uses frequently in his laments: “How long, O Lord?” It’s a perfect summation of what a lament is: a visceral request to God to act. 

Let’s not forget the significance of that.  

If you’re like me, you’ll know it’s tempting to limit God in times of pain. Many of us will prefer to retreat into silence, or grow bitter. Others will increasingly put on a false front, willing themselves to feel joy even in the face of abject grief.  

Yet it’s in the very act of bringing out pain to God that we are submitting it to him. It’s how we can see him working and reaffirm our trust in him.  And we will be surprised at how honest God allows us to be.

As Michael Jinkins puts it, 

If we remove lament, we forget why we praise God. 

Looking around at our bleak world, are we growing more cynical and disconnected from our faith? Or are we asking God to act decisively? 

Our laments are prayers in painful circumstances that help us trust God more. 

Strong churches know the language of Christian lament. 

Not every Christian tradition has been ambivalent about lament (the African-American church, for example, has a strong grasp of it). 

But in Western Caucasian churches I’ve attended, this is far from the case. In church, I’m more likely to find a space where we don’t talk about those matters. It’s a place to worship, to sing and be encouraging of one another. It’s not a space for pain. 

But if the world is groaning, I wonder how tackling this groaning head on would transform our Christian communities.  

Imagine how it would change how people perceive the church – a place that’s not for the well, but for the sick, where we are not afraid of bringing real issues to our God. 

Imagine, too, how would it inform our mission if we are making space to groan for the disenfranchised and broken-hearted? What would that do to how we view politics, minorities and other countries?  

And would that not be what Jesus would do? As Michael Card puts it,

The fact that Jesus wept with people and entered into their suffering and their confusion – that’s a piece that’s missing from our world… [They’re] hungry to see this side of us.

While researching this article, I noticed a phrase continually popping up: “The lost art of Christian lament.” 

It’s true. Christian lament is an art, but it’s also a practice. One that more of us should make into a habit and a lens for viewing our faith. 

While wars are consuming everything in their path, natural disasters are seething across landscapes, and we despair at corruption and power, we can’t sit back into silence or polite prayers. 

Instead, we ask, “How long, O Lord?”