Deep Lament as a Remedy to Superficial Complaints
We live in a culture that has made optimism a duty. Think positive. Count your blessings. Others have it worse. Pain is to be managed, distracted, scrolled away: a thousand short videos, another evening out, one more painkiller so that we can keep moving the injured arm. Christians have often baptized this reflex. Prayer becomes a row of little hearts: thank you, God; Jesus loves you; all is well. None of this is false, and gratitude is indispensable. But we arrive there too quickly. A gratitude reached in a hurry rings hollow, because it has never looked at what is not well at all. The Bible is far less embarrassed by pain and lament than we are. Depending on how one counts, the Psalter holds some fifteen to twenty psalms of thanksgiving and sixty to seventy psalms of lament, more than a third of the prayer book Jews and Christians have shared for over two thousand years. “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me.” Jesus died with such a psalm on his lips.