{"id":10439,"date":"2024-02-19T00:20:03","date_gmt":"2024-02-18T18:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/19\/the-church-needs-a-healthy-theology-of-lament\/"},"modified":"2024-02-19T00:20:03","modified_gmt":"2024-02-18T18:50:03","slug":"the-church-needs-a-healthy-theology-of-lament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/19\/the-church-needs-a-healthy-theology-of-lament\/","title":{"rendered":"The Church Needs a Healthy Theology of Lament"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

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The\u00a0church\u00a0needs a healthy theology of lament.<\/p>\n

Not an agreed-upon short moment of sorrow so things can get back to normal.<\/p>\n

But a season to\u00a0complain, be perplexed, shattered. To be angry.<\/p>\n

Without excuse, without being made to feel broken or weak. Without trying to fix pain\u00a0and make it behave.<\/p>\n

Everyone has their story.<\/p>\n

We need lament, even in Advent, even in the \u201choliday season.\u201d Especially then.<\/p>\n

We need to make\u00a0room for lament because lament squeezes out\u00a0simple answers, even if those answers are in the\u00a0Bible.<\/a><\/p>\n

Because the Bible says so.<\/h2>\n

Behold, the authoritative word of God: Job, Ecclesiastes<\/a>\"\", and Psalms will not sit quietly in church and play make-believe.<\/p>\n

They do not accept the conventional wisdom of their contemporaries or predecessors that life\u00a0should work this way rather than that way.\u2021<\/p>\n

They challenge and hold in check \u201cGod rewards the\u00a0righteous and punishes the wicked\u201d\u2014Job, the\u00a0afflicted, is innocent.<\/p>\n

They\u00a0disrupt the religion game\u2014Qohelet\u2019s God is absent, confounding, exasperating, and he holds nothing back in saying so.<\/p>\n

They expose\u00a0default\u00a0piety\u2014Psalms speak raw words of pain and interrogate a distant\u00a0God.<\/p>\n

They do not bow to the social pressure of acting the part. They refuse to\u00a0believe the lie\u00a0\u201cThere is something wrong with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The church needs a healthy theology of lament, where we just let it be for as long as necessary, with no quick prayer or Bible verse to take the pain away.<\/h2>\n

As if the problem is a lack of information.<\/p>\n

Job, Qohelet, and psalmists had plenty of information. That was the problem.<\/p>\n

They knew how the system\u00a0was supposed to work and they knew the Bible verses to back it up.<\/p>\n

They knew their theology. That is why they lament.<\/p>\n

The church needs a healthy theology of lament, where we accept that life doesn\u2019t\u00a0play out according to the box we place God in.<\/p>\n

Where we sit with those in pain quietly and respectfully, empathizing, not fixing.<\/p>\n

As did Job\u2019s friends\u2014<\/i>at first.* Until they started lecturing. Until they began defending their theology.<\/p>\n

Lament teaches honesty.<\/h2>\n

Like that of the psalmist, who took his pain, doubt, and exasperation with God straight to<\/em> God, to\u00a0the house of worship,\u00a0rather than putting on his\u00a0church face.\u00a7<\/p>\n

God can handle it even if we can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Lament isn\u2019t on a timer.<\/p>\n

Qohelet\u00a0grabs hold of his audience\u00a0for 12 relentless chapters to tell the story of\u00a0his hopelessness and befuddlement with God.#<\/p>\n

Lament dares us\u00a0to risk letting go of a well-behaved and predictable system and swap it out for one\u00a0where\u00a0faith and trust in God, not certitude and order,\u00a0are the beginning, middle, and end of our journey.<\/p>\n

The church needs a healthy theology of lament,<\/p>\n

to embrace lament\u00a0as a normal and pervasive reality among those who walk by faith, not by sight,<\/p>\n

to accept those who lament\u00a0as\u00a0wise teachers\u00a0living at the center of their faith community, not disruptive\u00a0children who need a timeout.<\/p>\n

In my experience, I have rarely\u00a0heard taught\u00a0or seen modeled what to do with our emotions when theological truths are blown up in front of us. Thankfully, the Bible\u00a0isn\u2019t quiet about it.<\/p>\n

\u2021Psalm 1; Deuteronomy 28
*Job 2:11-13
\u00a7Ps 73:15:17
#Eccl 1:14-15; 7:13-14<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0church\u00a0needs a healthy theology of lament. Not an agreed-upon short moment of sorrow so things can get back to normal. But a season to\u00a0complain, be perplexed, shattered. To be angry. Without excuse, without being made to feel broken or weak. Without trying to fix pain\u00a0and make it behave. Everyone has their story. We need lament, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[]},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10439"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}