Sitting at Starbucks one night at about 11pm, a friend expressed that in her younger years she greatly struggled with depression. She grew up in the church until 5th grade and in her moments of lament she was simply told to be joyful in the Lord because that's how Christians were supposed to be. She was given the impression that being upset was wrong. I believe the Body of Christ often walks the halls of the local church, shares in times of fellowship, and sings praises to God alongside one another with this same perception. It shows when we share "too much" of what is going on in our lives and our "too much" is met with skepticism, harsh dogmatism, or rebuke by our brothers and sisters. It shows perhaps even in our definition of "too much" as we grow a fear of how our candid thoughts and feelings would be received. It also shows at times in our own prayer life as we relate to God. The Lament psalms come to us as an instructive example that speaks directly to such perceptions. Is lament legitimate among God's people? What does biblical lament look like? How can the church practically address this issue? These are the questions the church needs to answer for the health of the Body.
Psalm 4 is a psalm of individual lament that opens with "Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer! " In this verse David gives his Address to God. If we were to stop here the point could be reasonably made by this verse alone. In these words we hear an urgency and an honesty. It comes across as a kind of demand. There is no nuance of "answer me if you want to, God." This is the true heart of David as he wrestles with the place of this distress in his life. When we read these words and ask if it is wrong to say similar things to God, in some sense we are asking the wrong question. The question instead is, "Is it honest or realistic to talk this way to God?" The answer to this question must be yes. David pours his heart out to the Lord without fear or reservation, calls for mercy in his situation, and calls for God to listen to his prayer. The tenor of this address is common throughout the Psalms (13:3-4, 69:13-14, 119:145-146, 143:7).
Lament psalms also have a section describing the specific situation of the distress. It is actually called the Lament or Complaint portion. Psalm 4:2 says, "O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?" V.6a also says, "There are many who say, 'Who will show us some good?'" Similarly and more directly we find statements like "I pour out my complaint before Him; I tell my trouble before Him." (142:2), "...I am restless in my complaint and I moan" (55:2), and of an important theological comfort, "Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan, and He hears my voice." (55:17). Is it alright to complain to God? Rather, is it honest and realistic to complain to God? To this we also must answer yes. He hears our cries and listens to our complaints as the loving patient Father He is. In our church culture we often operate under the assumption that it is wrong to complain to God. The truth is that the Lord is intimately acquainted with the struggles of the human soul and He meets us where we are in our normal complaints just as He met David where he was in Psalm 4:3b, "The Lord hears when I call to Him."
Lament psalms also contain a Petition. In Psalm 4 we find this petition in the call for God to hear and in v.6b to "Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord!" Similar themes in Psalms are petitions for God to "forget not the afflicted" (10:12). We also find the impreccatory requests like, "Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer; call his wickedness to account till you find none" (10:15). Without getting too bogged down in the impreccatory issue it's important I believe to note that these requests are bundled up in the psalmists' trust in and assumption of the character of God. He is a just God and it's clear that he deals out justice appropriately to those who deny Him. The Psalmist only makes these requests in accordance with His known character. The most familiar part of our prayers is our asking things of God. This comes most natural to us and therefore doesn't need too much defense. When the psalmist asks God not to forget those who are afflicted though, we may immediately question his theology. Doesn't he know God doesn't forget things? Doesn't he know God doesn't forsake us? Doesn't he know God listens to us? "God isn't deaf," we may say. Here we must all admit that in our moments of pain the amount of theology or propositions we can know simply don't do the job. The head often doesn't communicate well with the heart. The beauty of Lament psalms is from them we can see that God understands this and He is patient to hear us in these moments and meet us there.
Finally the Lament psalms give us a portion expressing a certainty of having been heard. This is often a call to praise or trust in God. Psalm 4 shows us this in v.7-8, "You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound. In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety." Similarly, psalm 55 ends with the brief yet heavy phrase, "But I will trust in You." This is encouraging because the prayer to God that begins in pain will end in a firm trust that God not only will be but is faithful. Often our laments don't see the optimism the psalmists show us. We must show the church that biblical sorrow is legitimate, however it should be surrounding in praise. This presents a challenge for us. In our moments of lament we need to look to the promises of God and the sufficiency of God to grant us help, grace, and strength.
From all of this I believe we can learn a simple truth. It is that God's people today can be honest in their times of sorrow because God's people in the Psalms were honest in theirs. The church today is afraid to be vulnerable. We've bought into a culture of religious individualism. We think our faith and how our pain and struggles relate to it should be our own. We buy this lie and in doing so we stunt our growth in so far as it depends on us. We believe this and wonder why we have trouble relating to those to whom we want to minister. I believe to address this situation we need a biblical world view to affect how we express our sorrow. We need to look to the psalms and see their no-nonsense nature. We need to know that God's people need not be divorced from their feelings. We can express them in all their naked glory to a God who sees that nakedness, sent His Son to die for it, and knows it better than we do. We have a God who entered our earthly reality in the person of Jesus Christ and can "empathize with our weaknesses" (Heb. 4:15).
Secondly we must use this biblical understanding as a foundation to then teach God's people how to pray. We need to know that it is alright to let it all out before God. We need not force or fabricate emotion in our prayer, but we need to know that it is legitimate and that He is unafraid to hear and respond to our honesty in His own sovereign way. It may be that in our familiarity with verbal prayer that we find it difficult to be honest. In these cases it would help for us to write out a prayer as a letter. We can also look toward the communal Laments in Psalms (12, 44, 60, 74, 79, 80, 83, 85) as examples of prayers that depart from the "I" of individuality and present a unified plea to God in a group. For those who are in a place where they can express distress in their individual times of prayer it may be helpful to join a small group of other brothers and sisters who share the same lament and can seek the Lord in honesty together. If God is not afraid to hear us then we need not be afraid to speak to Him both alone and together. As God's people today may we follow the example of those who have gone before us!
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