Laughter and Lament: The Radical Freedom of Joy and SorrowSample

Life is Hard and Then You Die

The Bible is a very earthy book. It is not only a two-edged sword, it’s an “in your face,” sometimes offensive, and always authentic two-edged sword. And therein is the gift of Scripture that we often miss. Because we miss it, we allow a kind of toxic religion to take over when it comes to what Christians are supposed to feel and express.

Jesus said in John 8:31–32 that people who abide in his word are his disciples and would know the truth “and the truth will set you free.” How does the truth set us free? The freedom comes from the truth of redemption and the forgiveness Christians experience. The freedom comes from the knowledge that we have “another comforter,” the Holy Spirit, as our companion and guide. The freedom also comes from the true promises Jesus made which we can “hang our hats on” and in which we can trust. It is truth about sin, meaning, hope, and eternal life. But it is also a freedom that comes from staring “our demons” in the eyes, identifying the dark without running from it, and allowing the truth of our brokenness and the world’s brokenness to be accepted and absorbed as definitive in a Christian worldview.

Denial is not only dangerous. It becomes a prison that robs us of the freedom that is the Christian’s heritage. Lament isn’t worth dink if it’s lament that is shallow and just another kind of denial. It’s superficially saying, “It hurts . . . but I’m fine.” The reason our lament is so useless is that we run from the dark, cover it up, or, with a crazy spirituality, make it something that it isn’t. There is so much evil in the world—pain, sin, brokenness, injustice, fear, abuse, death, disease, and destruction—that it will kill us if we don’t find out how to deal with it.

In Ephesians 2:1–3, Paul references three areas as the sources of the darkness we all experience—the world, the flesh, and the devil. That is the darkness to which we don’t want to go, but must go to get free.

But when Jesus bids us go there (and he does), he goes with us. Not only that, Jesus gives us permission to experience the darkness and to cry the tears. It’s called lament and, believe it or not, that lament is healing and healthy. What isn’t healing and healthy is pretending the world is a garden where we “walk through the flowers with Jesus.”