The Bible and Mental HealthSample

Speaking the unspeakable

I doubt this is anyone’s favourite psalm.

It’s a psalm we often sweep under the carpet or pretend doesn’t exist. It’s a psalm of anger and pain, unflinching in its naming of human emotions in the face of deep trauma.

The people of Israel had been brutally attacked and taken into exile by the superpower of the time. They had lost everything – homes, land, loved ones, everything they thought made them who they were – and been forcibly displaced to a strange land where they lived as a minority conquered people. And now, their captors torment them in Babylon by asking for songs from their lost homeland.

The trauma of war is etched all over the pages of Scripture, and the toll trauma takes is heavy with every word of Psalm 137. Deep trauma shatters a person and a people. It takes away life as we know it, all the anchors that keep us safe, and the things we believe about the world, ourselves, and God. Trauma is so painful that it escapes words and narrative and comes through in fragments, shards, and outbursts. Very little is said in the Old Testament about life in exile. There is before and after. But the exile itself is too traumatic to say much about it.

And yet, we know – from long human experience and science – that the aftereffects of traumatic events do not go away unless the events and their impact are named. There is no silver bullet to solve mental health challenges, but one thing always helps: truth. Psalm 137 is a truth-telling psalm, naming the depth of pain and anger the people feel and the depth of damage done to them – which surely, warrants anger.

But this is still a psalm. Honestly, expressed emotions are not free-floating, allowed to take just any shape. They’re expressed within a prayer, within the people's relationship with God, who has always promised to be with them. True and honest feelings are voiced within a safe place of being known and loved – and there, they can begin to be transformed.

Psalm 137 challenges us to ask deep questions of ourselves and our communities: how do we nurture complete honesty with God in our worship and prayer in safe and unflinching ways? How can we say this psalm in solidarity with those for whom this kind of trauma is today’s reality?

Action

How can you come alongside those who have or are suffering the unspeakable?