The Need for Lament in our churches
Featured, Meditations — By Richard Dahlstrom on February 21, 2010 at 12:00 pmSurvey the landscape of American Christianity on any given Sunday and you’ll find
plenty of evidence that God is on the throne, we’re walking in victory, and Satan’s utterly crushed. There are lots of praise choruses about our victory and God’s goodness, along with clapping and shouting “praise the Lord.” It’s the winning team for certain, at least if noise and bravado is any indicator.
Unfortunately, it’s not. Have you seen the movies from the Youth Rallies during the reign of the Reich? The singing and enthusiasm would make most Pentecostals appear as stoic Lutherans in comparison. Singing slogans about victory doesn’t make them true, and the sad fact of the matter is that for many of the people singing, the words of victory ring hollow to them. They sing about triumph over sin, but are mired in addiction. They sing about God’s power in the world, while their spouse is in the last stages of cancer. They sing about peace, while their neighbor’s kid lost his leg in Iraq. For millions, the words, if the singers stop to ponder them, seem hollow at best, perhaps even a lie.
I’ll go on record as being for praise music. I like it, and play it on my ipod sometimes in the car when I’m driving alone. But if the Psalms offers the full range of emotions, I’m wondering if it doesn’t also offer a decent example of the proper proportion between praise and lament. If it does, then we’re way too heavy on the praise side of things. By minimizing lament, we’re teaching people to process the real world in a different way than the saints who’ve gone before us, teaching them to plaster over their grief with a dose of loud singing, or snappy “feel good” songs. The distance between these pleasant tunes and the emotions of a heart that’s broken, or fearful, is large enough to stretch someone’s faith to the breaking point.
In contrast, a look at church history shows us that those who take their complaints, fears, failures, and doubts to God, will find real answers, real transformation.
Abraham: ”What will you give me, since I’m childless?”
Moses: ”…please kill me at once.”
David: “How long O Lord?”
Paul: “we despaired even of life.”
I could go on with Jeremiah, Job, John the Baptist, and many more, but you get the point. For every dance on the far side of the Red Sea, there’s a question, a weariness, a complaint. There are, to hearken back to this past Sunday’s teaching, honest to God questions and struggles, wrestlings that in the end might well leave us wrung out, but intimate.
The problem is that few were told about the “wrung out” part when they came to faith. This is because too often we’ve sold people on some sort of hybrid Jesus. There’s the real Jesus part having to do with his death on the cross and then there’s Jesus CEO, enabling us to climb the success leader, or Jesus Therapist, assuring us of successful marriages, or Jesus CFO, assuring us of wealth, Dr. Jesus, assuring us of great health, or Jesus military commander, protecting us from IEDs. These add-ons speak more to our desires for health, wealth, and happiness than our calling as disciples because the reality is that stuff happens – to Christians.
When it does, I hope the struggling saints don’t walk into a worship service three weeks in a row without hearing, somewhere in the gathering, that those who mourn are blessed, or a song of longing, or a prayer of waiting and crying out. Lacking that, they’ll eventually presume that this well dressed, clear eyed, upwardly mobile Jesus doesn’t have much to say to them. They’d be right, but they’d only be rejecting the Success Jesus of American dreams. The real one was called the man of sorrows. I just hope there’s still room for him in church.
12 Comments
Richard, I agree with you. Very well said. Bono pointed out that one third of the Psalms were Laments, and since they were modern songs of their day, the 21st-Century equivalent is that one-third of songs sung in churches should be the blues.
So true.
I have found myself quite fond of Jars of Clay, especially when I’m not in a “praise God for the victory” sort of place. I always think to myself that some of their lyrics seem so real, and by real I guess i mean familiar, in the sense that I don’t have to fabricate something in my head in order to relate to it (which, in some cases, may or not be a bad thing… i guess one could argue)… But I think that’s basically why… ’cause like you said “…the reality is that stuff happens – to Christians” and it’s not unfair to “sing about it” when it does.
Thank you for this post. I am so glad this is being written about. You have just described my church, a small rowdy bunch where we sing homegrown songs that include all kinds of laments as well as praise.
Someone recently produced a short video about us. We are not unique in what we are doing, though our sound is unique to who we are. Here’s the link if you want to check it out. It’s only about three minutes, but the comments afterwards really echo what you are saying here.
http://www.recycleyourfaith.com/2010/01/25/real-life-worship/
Thanks Richard. So often we are told that once you become a Christian you are on the open road to happiness. Sometimes I think that is why many churches are losing people. Most have figured out that life can be a grind, and to often the leadership in most churchs sit in an ivory tower, isolated from the very people they are called to be involved with. The real Christian life contains within it times of incredible joy and blessing, and times of crushing heartache, and both can go on for days, or years. To me, church should be a “Band of Brothers”. I just finished Larry Crabb’s book “Real Church” which for me, was one of the most insightful books I have read in a while. Thanks.
Thank you for this reminder. Let me just tell you that there is a great book on Lament wrote a few years ago by the musician/writer Michael Card. Its a valuable reading about the importance of lament and a strongly recommend it.
http://store.michaelcard.com/asacredsorrow-book.aspx
Thanks, Richard. We have plenty to lament.
This past week a three year boy from our church was crushed in a tragic accident and he died. The people who play the sovereignty card and say, “This was God’s plan” challenge my spirit of charity and love. Stuff happens, and the glory of our faith isn’t that we’re granted immunity, but that God walks with us through the valleys and darkness
yes, richard. i’m on the same page as you. God as I understand him is not an architect of tragedy or untimely death. I believe he sorrows with us, facing the devastation of loss and suffering head on. To call it sovereignty is a kind of Christian fatalism I reject….and I am so sorry to hear of the loss of this little boy in your faith community.
As I have walked through a rough valley of my own over the last year I have noticed the same thing. Over the Christmas holiday I came upon Steve Curtis Chapman’s CD Baeuty Will Rise, and it is a beautiful CD that mourns pain, reminds of truth, and doesnt try to sugar coat pain.
I really appreciated this honest perspective. Thank you.
I also appreciate this acknowledgement. I found grace less than a year ago and have found it incredibly difficult to respond to my family and friends that attribute loss and pain to a fault in my faith or logic, as though if I’m “right with God” and if I’m smart enough, I’ll have control over all aspects of my life, and happiness and success will abound. It’s been quite a struggle, but now it seems like my own will (and the illusion of control) is exactly what I need to relinquish, to embrace His will. I don’t understand yet how to not let fear chase away my faith in moments of physical and emotional pain, but I’m trying. It’s encouraging knowing that some in my community understand this- if I’m not reading too far in to what you are saying here.
I can’t imagine the pain that boy’s parents are experiencing now, and all condolences seem so inadequate and insensitive that the words die before they can leave my lips. But somehow silence also seems like a cop-out. I don’t know what to say, except that I’m sorry, and I don’t know what I would do if I were them, that I share in their pain and their loss, but not enough.