Surprised By ParadoxSample

Faith’s Complaint 

In the spate of mass shootings, people try offering up answers to the ringing question of “Why?” Some blame the accessibility of guns, others the negligible help offered to people suffering mental illness. In the midst of suffering, we not only search for explanations, however; we also search for solutions.

As the Bible testifies (especially in the book of Job), we don’t always have explanations for why we suffer, but we do have faithful ways of looking to God in our suffering. The impolitic plea, or lament, is an ancient prayer tradition in the Bible. In language that seems hardly admissible in God’s throne room, as men and women pray to God, they try making faithful sense of the mystery of their suffering—and the love of God in the worst of circumstances. 

Lament, with its clear-eyed appraisal of suffering alongside its commitment to finding audience with God, is a paradoxical practice of faith. In the book of Psalms, we see suffering of all kinds: enemies, threats of death, false accusation, betrayal. Further, we see suffering of these external varieties causing internal anguish: lost appetite, constant crying, insomnia. Most generically, the psalmist might refer to his suffering as the “trouble” he’s in, a word that provides broad connection to the hardships of modern life: divorce, financial insecurity, disease, job dissatisfaction, unemployment, prodigal children, crises of identity. “In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord” (Psalm 77:2).

But for all its seemingly impolitic, impious qualities, lament is a confession of faith. Maybe mustard seed faith, maybe angry faith, but faith nonetheless. It is not an abandonment or denial of God, but an affirmation of his reality, even his goodness and power. It might shock us to learn that in the book that is purportedly a collection of praises, there are more psalms of lament than psalms of thanksgiving and praise. In other words, most psalms are not tame and tepid; instead, they read like nasty letters to the editor. “O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest” (Psalm 22:2). 

In the psalms of lament, people ring God on the day of trouble and demand an accounting for his inaction. This is complaint, to be sure—but it is also the persistence of faith that hounds God until he answers.

Adapted from Surprised by Paradox by Jen Pollock Michel.