Rooted in faith ...

VOICES FROM THE RAGGED EDGE

We live in a world racked by suffering. Our marriages, despite our

h Ibestintentions, fall apart. Close friends die of cancer. On Cana-How t e Psa ms dian =i= n~ti~e teenase.rs take their own lives in

desperation, whzle tn our ciiies we are confronted by

can hel~ us hollow-eyed street people casting furtiveglances in our direction in the hope of a hand-

process paeln out. M nwhile the victims of political violence pile up in thestreets of Haiti, Rwanda, Bosnia and Tel Aviv as so many deadbodies. And the planet groans in the thrall of ozone depletion andtoxic waste. by J. Richard Middleton

J. RichardMiddletonis a doctoral studentat the Institute forChristian Studies andco-authorwith BrianWalsh of The Trans-forming Vision,published byInterVarsityPress,aswell as the author ofnumerous publishedacademic articles.

This article is reprinted with permis-sion from the Canadian Theological SocietyNewsletter, November 1994.

Richard's paper, The Liberating Image?Interpreting the imago dei in Context waspublished in Christian Scholar's Review lastSeptember.In the paper Richardgives theOld Testamentscholars' interpretation ofimago dei and the contemporary theologicalobjectionsto such an interpretation.

Tragic as this massive sufferingis, the tragedy is compoundedby the church's paralysis. As apeople called by God to

respond in compassion to the pain ofothers, we find, if we are honest, that welack the energy for this mission. We aretoo spent just coping with the ordinarycrises of life to give much of ourselves toothers. So we pull back self-protectivelyinto a defensive posture, avoiding eveneye contact with the street person,unable to bear such exposure to theworld's wounds.

Ibelieve that the roots of our paralysislie in the church's own pain that hasnever been adequately processed. Wefind ourselves, like the psalmist in Psalm30, remembering the comfort and safetyof a past which we no longer have accessto:

When I felt secure, I said,"I will never be shaken."

oYahweh, when you favoredme, you made my mountainstand firm. (v. 6-7a)

But this memory of God's favor ispervaded by a profound sense of loss.The psalmist tells of the withdrawal ofGod's presence and our disorienting fallfrom the heights into the abyss. "Butwhen you hid your face, I was dis-mayed" (v. 7b).

Like the psalmist, many in the churchhave experienced the absence of Godand are consumed by a sense of betrayal,having neither hope for the future norenergy for mission. Although some ofthis pain is undoubtedly caused byfamily or personal crises, much of it isthe result of the accumulated frustra-tions of a life which does not seem to

work out as it's supposed to.Our typical response to this pain is to

repress it. Like the writer of Psalm 39,our first impulse is to silence. Voicingour pain honestly in public, and espe-cially to God, would certainly beinappropriate. This psalmist decides tokeep quiet about his suffering and"muzzle" his mouth since "the wicked"are around (v, 1). He says, in effect, "Mypastor always told me that a trulyspiritual person should speak only nice,edifying words." Presumably he doesnot want to display a lack of trust in thepresence of unbelievers.

But when Iwas silent and still,not even saying anything good,my anguish increased.

My heart grew hot within meand as Imeditated, the fireburned. (39:2-3)

Like many in the church, this writerbottles up his pain until it grows into araging fire within and he is ready toexplode.

"Then, I spoke" (v. 3). But it doesn'tcome out all at once. Perhaps he's notsure what God can handle. So he teststhe waters, musing in a general wayabout human mortality and asking asafe, disinterested question about howlong he has to live (vv, 4-6). God doesn'tstrike him down. So he gets bolder.From safe musings and disinterestedinquiry, he moves to an honest admis-sion of need. "Now, Lord, what do Ilook for?" Not "How long am I going tolive?" What do I really hope for? "I hopefor you!" (v.7) And he pleads fordeliverance ("save me").

Why couldn't the psalmist havestarted with this? What held him back?

Perspective / VOLUME 29 / NO.1 / MARCH 1995 / 4

...growing in service

In his new-found honesty, he tellsGod, "I was silent; I would not openmy mouth, for you are the one whohas done this"(v. 9). The problem isthat his pain came from God; heperceived his suffering as God's faultand was understandably slow to voicethis. But whereas Psalm 30 faults Godfor abandonment, Psalm 39 goesconsiderably further. ''Remove yourwhip from me; I am overcome by theblow of your hand"(v. 10).Thepsalmist accuses God of violenceagainst him and pleads for an end tothe pain because he can't take it anymore.

Now, it certainly isn't "theologicallycorrect" to accuse God of doing evil, asthis psalmist has done. This is astatement made in extremity, out ofdesperation. But it is not unique in thepsalter. There are many psalms oflament which make similar statements.From Psalm 22, which Jesus prayed onthe cross (''My God, my God, whyhave you abandoned me?"), to Psalm88, which of all the psalms seems mostbereft of hope ("I have suffered yourterrors and am in despair"), we arebombarded with voices from theragged edges of life that articulate painhonestly to God. These abrasiveprayers all complain about suffering asintolerable and implore God fordeliverance. Indeed, many lamentpsalms, along with portions ofJeremiah and Job, are prayers in whichlife is experienced as so raw and sofickle, where the pain and suffering areso massive, that the supplicant ulti-mately experiences God as fickle anddares to voice this in prayer.

I submit that the church can learnfrom the honesty of the psalmists. Forwhen the pain and disorientation arethat great, we have only three options:1) We can bottle it up inside, nursing ituntil we self-destruct and the painexplodes into violence and abuseagainst those around us, especially ourspouse and our children. I believe thata great deal of abuse is rooted inaccumulated suffering which, insteadof being articulated, is kept within andhas nowhere to go. And when we havenowhere to direct our pain except atthose around us, we can't evenperceive, much less begin to respondto, the suffering we inflict. 2) Or, wecan piously deny the pain and main-tain the theologically correct statusquo. We can sing hymns of praise in

church and say, "God is good," thoughwe don't, in our bones, believe a wordof it. And then we become numb toour pain, and numb to God. And wecertainly become numb to the pain ofothers. 3) Or, following the lead ofthe psalmists, we can take our anger,our doubt, all the dismay and theterror of life and put it at the feet ofthe Most High. We can bring our painto the throne of God and say, "You'resupposed to be faithful, but I don'tsee it! You're supposed to be good,but I don't experience it."

Contrary to appearances, thatdesperate voicing of pain to God isredemptive. Prayers of lament areradical acts of faith and hope, becausethey refuse, even in the midst ofsuffering, to give up on God. The factis that silence will not get us throughthe pain. Only speech addressed toGod gets us through. Speech whichsummons God into our suffering,which says to God, as the writer ofPsalm 30 did, "Hear, a Yahweh, andbe merciful to me; a Yahweh, be myhelp" (v. 10). Or, even as the writer ofPsalm 39 did in his impropriety,"Look away from me, that I mayrejoice again" (v, 13). It doesn't haveto be theologicallycorrect speech. Butit has to be gut-honest speech.

When we have the audacity to layour pain at God's feet, to summon theMost High into our suffering, some-thing remarkable happens. Godcomes. Lament psalms have theirroots, ultimately, in the exodus, thecentral and founding event of the OldTestament, when Yahweh deliveredthe Israelites from Egyptian bondage.Central to the story as it is told in theBible is the Israelites' primal scream ofpain to God. Between centuries ofaccumulated suffering and God'sdecisive intervention, we find thisremarkable statement:

The Israelites groaned in theirslavery and cried out, and their cryfor help because of their slaverywent up to God. God heard theirgroaning and remembered hiscovenant with Abraham, with Isaacand with Jacob. So God looked onthe Israelites and was concernedabout them. (Exodus 2:23-25)

This agonized cry of pain at theheart of the exodus echoes resound-ingly throughout the psalms of lament.

Lament is redemptive, therefore, notsimply because the supplicant clings toGod in desperate faith, but morefundamentally because lament isrooted in the very pattern of thebiblical story, at the hinge betweenbondage and deliverance. This is trueboth in the Old Testament and in theNew. For as the Gospels tell it, threedays after Jesus' own lament-his cryofabandonmentonthecros~odacted decisively, defeating the powerof death and raising him from thegrave.

But more than this, the cross itselfwas God's response to the lament of allcreation. For creation itself, says Paul,is groaning in its bondage to decay,subject to futility, and yearning eagerlyfor redemption (Romans 8). And weourselves groan inwardly, says theapostle. I submit that our articulationof these groanings into prayer, evenragged prayers on the boundary ofpropriety, has the potential to unleashthe power of the resurrection in thechurch, contributing to a renewal ofhope and compassionate outreach inour day.

Silence about pain in the churchconveys the message that God simplydoesn't care about suffering. Too manyparishioners think they have tosuppress their pain in order to singglib hymns of praise and thanksgiving,when what they really need is closer toa primal scream of rage. And hurtingvisitors are effectively excluded fromparticipation in worship by invoca-tions which call the congregation toput aside their problems to come andworship God. But if the church tookseriously the psalms of lament asmodel modes of speech in its commu-nallife and processed the pain of itsmembers in public worship, it wouldconvey the quite radical message thatour suffering matters to God. Indeed, itmatters so much that he bore it in hisown body.

And if our suffering matters to God,then we might begin to believe-andfeel-that the suffering of othersmatters too. Voicing our pain to Godmight then be redemptive not only forourselves, but ultimately for the world.As that which unleashes the power ofthe resurrection, lament has thepotential to generate genuine thanks-giving for the grace of God, thusenergizing the church in its vocation ina suffering world.

5/ INSTITUTE FOR CHRISTIAN STUDIES