Does the Bible leave a place for the dark night of the soul? In my last post, we talked about Jesus and the woman with the flow of blood for 12 years, about ways Jesus ministered to her and about ways we can minister to those suffering chronic pain or illness. In this post, we’ll dive in more deeply on the theology of lament for long-term suffering, whether due to chronic pain, chronic illness or chronic suffering.
A Theology of Lament
First, we’ll deal with whether lament is Biblical: the short answer is yes! The evidence for lament ranges across the canon of scripture, from the earliest sufferers in Genesis to ultimately Christ’s cry of dereliction on the cross. But where you see lament on display over and over again is the Psalter. The Psalms contradict our expectations of the normal Christian life; riddled with prayers of suffering individuals, they teach us that there is value in holy despair and God-oriented exasperation. They show us there is much to learn about the good gift of long-suffering.
Dr. Dan Allender and Dr. Tremper Longman III, in their study The Cry of the Soul: How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Questions About God, desire us to see the full value of extended suffering in the Psalms noting “The Psalms are permeated with despair” (p. 117). This should be a consolation to our hearts, that David and others, spiritually inspired, wrote from a realistic perspective voicing their despondency. We get to watch all manner of God-seekers deal with the hardest questions of suffering.
But does the Psalmist truly experience despondency? Isn’t that hopelessness? Don’t they always end up rejoicing at the end? Anticipating this objection, that the psalmist consistently returns to the Lord with joy and confidence and that “only those who break out of their despondency make the grade and get their Psalms included in the Psalter”, Allender and Longman point us to Psalm 88, which “disabuses us of that conclusion” (p. 118).
The Progression of Lament in Psalm 88
Psalm 88, from beginning to end, is unbridled lamentation: “Day and night I cry out to you… my life draws near to death… you have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them”, ending with the whimper, “darkness is my closest friend” (Ps 88). And you thought Simon and Garfunkel were original! The Psalmist has heard the sound of silence from God and finds no relief in his lament.
Why is this included in the inspired word of God? Unanswered questions, such as “Why do You hide Your face from me?” sit, stewing in the pot of uncertainty. Why does God want us to know that He knows this? Part of the answer is that He knows our experience, in the work of Christ as a sufferer. Part of the answer is that He has designed our hearts to ache for Him and the mark of a healthy, God-oriented heart is one that laments when life gets hard.
God is all about the process of lament, as Allender writes, “A person in despair does need encouragement and assistance. But rarely will encouragement or help lift a person out of the slough of despondency. Something else must occur – facing honestly the loss and the terror that is even more terrible than the despair” (p. 122). This is so important. Turning a blind eye to our suffering in the name of spiritually “overcoming” or “being strong” actually work against the design God intended in the Psalms.
The Psalms contradict our expectations of the normal Christian life; riddled with prayers of suffering individuals, they teach us that there is value in holy despair and God-oriented exasperation.
– Daniel Lopez
The Psalmist teaches us that despair is healthy when it is directed correctly. The writer in Psalm 88 seems to be stuck in the same place emotionally at the beginning of the work as much as at its end; but notice that it is directed at someone. It’s directed at God. I have many patients in the hospital whose despondency is going nowhere and is directed nowhere. They vegetate in their loss of freedom, in their disease process, in their pain unending, and I don’t think I can blame them.
Yet, their suffering is empty partially because they haven’t figured out where to direct it. Often, they are a shell of a person who has died a thousand emotional deaths with no forward progress, thus shutting themselves off from their emotions for fear of the pain of hoping again. Allender and Longman weigh in on this, saying, “The psalmist convicts us of our tendency to sweep all of our ugly emotions toward God under the rug. By his example, the psalmist invites us to open ourselves up to the Lord. We yearn to unburden ourselves to Him. The good news of the Psalms is, we can!” (p. 125)
That God would be honored by our God-directed despair is almost unthinkable, but it is indeed a Biblical doctrine. Who to look to more than Jesus who broke out: “Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabacthani?” (“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”) The one being in the universe who understood the “why” of His suffering with infinitely perfect clarity quoted this Psalmist’s line of abandonment upon His cross. Who are we to think such things beneath our speech to God the Father?
The Difference Between Ungodly and Godly Despair
There is a difference between ungodly and godly despair, as Allender and Longman write, “Ungodly despair is a flight from desire; it is a refusal to embrace loss as a deepening of the hollowness that makes room for God… ungodly despair refuses to walk through the valley of the shadow of death; it refuses to agonize any longer with the pangs of uncertainty, loss, and the irrepressible desire for redemption” (p. 127). Godly despair, in contrast, “is the collapse of self-will; it is the surrender to a reality of becoming that we are powerless to consummate but in which we are granted an opportunity to play a part. Instead of a suicide note that puts a stop to the loss, it is a howling prayer that sees no explanation for our pain but reflexively knows something beyond an answer is what we desire” (p. 128).
This information is massively important. God wants to hear our emotions, day after day, night after night. He holds our tears in his bottle (Psalm 56:8), and he hurts as we hurt: this is vitally sourced in an understanding of the Gospel and the Lamb who was Slain. Allender and Longman are driving us to see that our emotions are meant to drive us toward God, and that the Psalms are our guidebook on emotional heart-cries to God.
That God would be honored by our God-directed despair is almost unthinkable, but it is indeed a Biblical doctrine.
– Daniel Lopez
Circling back to chronic pain and illness: How does this information come to bear on long-suffering? It affirms the need for suffering persons to voice their despair at God, and it gives a vital perspective on the surrounding community to encourage honest conversation with God. Long-suffering is messy. The avenues of love from a community toward those who suffer long are messy. We need to see the mess as normal here, while still anticipating the hope to come as certain. An impossible tension? Yes, but with God such things are possible.
