Lament as Worship

In American, we believe in “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness..." It is our constitutional right, according to the laws of our land. Happiness is anything that makes me feel good, anything that gives me a momentary high or makes me feel better (if only for a moment).I believe that we in religious circles have fallen into the same trap. We believe that God desires our personal happiness, and if we aren’t happy then there must be something wrong with us. How many of you have ever heard the phrase, “God wouldn’t mind. He just wants me to be happy.” One of the ministers who best exemplifies this way of thinking is Joel Osteen, minister of the 40,000 member Lakewood Church in Houston, TX and author of bestselling Your Best Life Now. On his weekly TV program I routinely hear him say something to the effect of, “God will give you fulfillment, he will provide for the new car, he will give you the new job, because God just wants to bless you. He just wants you to be happy.” With all respect to Joel, I wonder if he’s ever read the book of Job or Habakkuk... The fact is, we are so concerned about what makes US happy that we assume that the same things will make GOD happy…

Similarly, I’ve heard this statement too many times before: "You have depression?!? Well, if you just had more faith then you wouldn’t be depressed!" OR “You just need to trust God more…” Or some other version of the same statement.

We are so concerned over our personal happiness that we think it trumps everything else. If we aren’t happy then there is something wrong with me, other people, the world, or (most importantly) GOD! Because God just wants me to be happy.

* I have HUGE theological problems with this mindset, mainly because our own happiness could and WILL lead us to

Aside from the major theological ramifications of this thinking, I have another problem with this mindset: It negates an entire range of human emotion and experience. It essentially tells us that there is no place for sadness, grief, suffering, complaining, etc. It simply tells us that we cannot be CHristians if these things are present! But the fact is that the world is full of suffering, both personal and communal
1. Victims of war
2. Victims of violence: Virginia Tech, etc.
3. Children who are forgotten and abandoned, even within their own homes
4. Etc.

At times our own lives are, at times, full of grief
1. Loneliness: away from home, away from loved ones
2. Lost friendships, lost relationships, lost opportunities
3. Sickness, of yourself or a family member
4. Someone close passes away and you wonder why

I want to tell you a secret: It’s ok to be sad and it’s ok to be angry, and it’s ok to yell and scream at God and wonder why. Indeed, it is the essence of relationship!

Part of a relationship with God is being able to question, to ask the big questions, to have doubts and wonder if God cares.

It’s ok to have times of lamenting towards God. Indeed, what we find out in Scripture is that not only is it ok to lament towards God, it is a part of worship!
It can be worship to question God and to wrestle with understanding him and his ways! Indeed, approximately 1/3 of all psalms are songs of lament.

Guidance from the Lament Psalms:
According to Rodney Plunkett, there are five elements that are typically contained in a lament
psalms
1. Address God: With a term of respect.
2. Complaint to God
3. Request for help
4. Affirmation of trust
5. Vow to praise God
“Lord, here is my complaint, and I trust you to help. And I promise to give you glory!”

Lamenting doesn't mean just complaining about all of our personal problems in our own lives. Laments in the Bible are both 1^st person and 3^rd person: we are learning to lament for ourselves and for others as we live in the midst of community. We are called to lament and question at the injustice, oppression, and violence that goes on around us. Indeed, if we don't I fear we have missed the point. We are called to be angry about the injustice in our world, because these things make God angry too!

Anything worth talking about is worth praying (and lamenting) about. And anything worth praying about is worth doing something about. Thus, we are called to lament AND to be instruments of peace.

Let us live as people who lament about our world but don't just stop at the complaining... Let us be willing to take action as well.

Honor/Shame and Individual Holiness

I recently posted on Ben Witherington's blog about rights vs. gifts, and I argued that we in American are so focused on individualism that we have lost any sense of honor/shame. I sincerely think that we must regain a sense of honor/shame in order to fix the moral problems that pervade American culture.

I ended with the phrase "God doesn't necessarily want us to be happy, he wants us to be holy." My personal opinion is that the things that make us happy are not always the things that God would have us do. Many students here at KU are made happy by getting plastered, sleeping around, and skipping class. The last time I checked these things didn't make you holy; indeed, God speaks out against them! (Except the whole class cutting thing... But I digress...)

One respondee took up my comments and stated, "What is holiness to you? How you define holiness is everything! And becasue we may disagree to what that means, also means that we must not make the assessment for others. Your holiness is not mine..." I am intrigued by her statement. The problem facing our culture (both secular and Christian) today is that everyone thinks they have the right to define holiness for themselves. The Bible is very clear: We are called to be holy BECAUSE God is holy. God's holiness defines what holiness is, not our broken or shallow definitions. Holiness is defined by God.

She goes on to say that God wants us to have an abundant life filled with blessings. I think this sorely misses the point of the entire Bible! God's desire is not for our health and wealth, despite what Joel Osteen might tell us. God does NOT promise us great material blessings; read the end of Habakkuk: "Though there are no sheep in the pens, cattle in the stalls, crops in the fields..." God doesn't promise us great material blessings as a result of our following him; rather, he promises us he will be faithful to us if we are faithful to him...

The problem is that we see the blessings of God as our right rather than our gift. God doesn't owe us stuff because we follow him; sometimes it brings more heartache, pain, and persecutions! As Jesus reminds his disciples, "I tell you the truth," Jesus replied, "no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life..." (Mark 10:29-30)

What God wants is for us to live lives that honor and glorify him through our holiness. That is our RIGHT and what, consequently, is RIGHT to do in our lives...