Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

by Soong-Chan Rah

The triumph-and-success orientation of our typical church member needed the corrective brought by stories of struggle and suffering.

The tendency to view the holistic work of the church as the action of the privileged toward the marginalized often derails the work of true community healing.

Shalom, therefore, does not eschew or diminish the role of the other or the reality of a suffering world. Instead, it embraces the suffering other as an instrumental aspect of well-being. Shalom requires lament.

Lament in the Bible is a liturgical response to the reality of suffering and engages God in the context of pain and trouble. The hope of lament is that God would respond to human suffering that is wholeheartedly communicated through lament.

Christian communities arising from celebration do not want their lives changed, because their lives are in a good place. Tax rates should remain low. Home prices and stocks should continue to rise unabated, while interest rates should remain low to borrow more money to feed a lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.

Lament recognizes the struggles of life and cries out for justice against existing injustices. The status quo is not to be celebrated but instead must be challenged.

Any theological reflection that emerges from the suffering “have-nots” can be minimized in the onslaught of the triumphalism of the “haves.”

American Christians that flourish under the existing system seek to maintain the existing dynamics of inequality and remain in the theology of celebration over and against the theology of suffering. Promoting one perspective over the other, however, diminishes our theological discourse. To only have a theology of celebration at the cost of the theology of suffering is incomplete.

For American evangelicals riding the fumes of a previous generation’s assumptions, a triumphalistic theology of celebration and privilege rooted in a praise-only narrative is perpetuated by the absence of lament and the underlying narrative of suffering that informs lament.

Lament serves a multitude of functions reflected by the various genres and forms. As Westermann notes, “the lament has a history. . . . [It] has a historical antecedent.”1 Lament, therefore, recounts a historical suffering. “Lament stems from an acute experience of pain, be it physical, emotional, or spiritual.”2 It is the human response to anguish and adversity, and is not bound by the rules of praise. Instead, lament can take the form of complaint, “in the sense of bemoaning the troubles one has undergone . . . [and] complaint in the sense of arguing with and complaining to God about one’s situation and protesting its continuation.”3 Lament is an act of protest as the lamenter is allowed to express indignation and even outrage about the experience of suffering. The lamenter talks back to God and ultimately petitions him for help, in the midst of pain. The one who laments can call out to God for help, and in that outcry there is the hope and even the manifestation of praise.

The funeral dirge does not allow for the denial of death, nor does it allow for the denial of culpability in that death. The funeral dirge is a reality check for those who witness suffering and allows mourning that is essential for dealing with death.

Lament is honesty before God and each other. If something has truly been declared dead, there is no use in sugarcoating that reality. To hide from suffering and death would be an act of denial. If an individual would deny the reality of death during a funeral, friends would justifiably express concern over the mental health of that individual. In the same way, should we not be concerned over a church that lives in denial over the reality of death in our midst?

Our nation’s tainted racial history reflects a serious inability to deal with reality. Something has died and we refuse to participate in the funeral. We refuse to acknowledge the lamenters who sing the songs of suffering in our midst.

The painful stories of the suffering of the African American community, in particular, remain hidden. Often, American Christians may even deny the narrative of suffering, claiming that things weren’t so bad for the slaves or that at least the African Americans had the chance to convert to Christianity. The story of suffering is often swept under the rug in order not to create discomfort or bad feelings. Lament is denied because the dead body in front of us is being denied.

The slave trade that brought Africans to the Western Hemisphere brutally stripped them of all identity, resulting in the complete obliteration of kinship, family, identity and history. The subsequent history of the progeny of the African slaves in the United States has stifled their story. In the church, there is a particular absence of knowledge about the stories of the African American church. Western theological history dominates while the stories of slave religion are left untold. Spirituality in the African American church is assumed to be an essential internal characteristic, negating the need to more fully understand its nuances.

The slave ship served to reshape the imagination of all involved. “Everyone who stepped on a slave ship became racialized, white and black.”11 The crew would participate in the dehumanizing of the slaves. “Those who resisted in any way were beaten or whipped without mercy. . . . The rape of black women was woven into the very fabric of the social order of the slave ship . . . as sailors shared fully in the brutal rape and torture of women and children.”12 The slave ship’s arrival into port meant the transfer from one place of torture to a new place of torture. The auction bell that would greet the slave ship would signal the transition to life on the plantation.

There is power in bringing untold stories to light. The freedom to speak about the reality of suffering and death results in a freedom from denial. Lamentations 1 presents as a funeral dirge to remind us that we cannot ignore what is right in front of us.

In the American Christian narrative, the stories of the dominant culture are placed front and center while stories from the margins are often ignored. As we rush toward a description of an America that is now postracial, we forget that the road to this phase is littered with dead bodies. There has been a deep and tragic loss in the American story because we have not acknowledged the reality of death. Stories remain untold or ignored in our quest to “get over” it. But in the end, we have lost an important part of who we are as a nation and as a church. We have yet to engage in a proper funeral dirge for our tainted racial history and continue to deny the deep spiritual stronghold of a nation that sought to justify slavery.

A contemporary funeral dirge for the twenty-first-century American church would require the effort to more fully understand and learn another’s history. It could be as simple as watching films that depict the atrocities of the slave trade and the institution of slavery. It may involve visiting museums that teach the history of racism in the United States. It may require a deepening understanding by reading texts that engage this oftenhidden history. The knowledge of this history can begin the process toward an authentic lament. The church must engage in a funeral dirge that reflects the truth of our tainted history.

The language of sin as used by Western Christianity does not provide the necessary nuance to understand how a victim of sin experiences sin. “Traditional theology has emphasized one-sidedly the sin of all people, while ignoring the pain of the victim. Its doctrine of sin must be complemented by dealing with the suffering of the victim.”

Western concepts of sin lead us to feel guilty when we do something bad, but we often do not have the language of shame when we are sinned against. When the shame of han overwhelms us, as it does the personified Jerusalem in Lamentations, the simple act of individual confession does not prove adequate. Han must be addressed on the level in which it operates. Andrew Park suggests “that with a vision of new relationships or the Hanless society, we confront the Han-causing elements and transform them.”15 The guilt of individual sin leads to individual confession, but the shame of han should lead to social transformation.

As previously stated, Americans often have a difficult time addressing the issue of race. The tendency in the dialogue on race in the United States contrasts to the acknowledgment of shame in the book of Lamentations. American culture tends to hide the stories of guilt and shame and seeks to elevate stories of success. American culture gravitates toward narratives of exceptionalism and triumphalism, which results in amnesia about a tainted history. The reality of a shameful history undermines the narrative of exceptionalism, so it must remain hidden.

Social psychologist Brené Brown summarizes this tendency in explaining our inability to engage in a conversation on race: “You cannot have that conversation without shame, because you cannot talk about race without talking about privilege. And when people start talking about privilege, they get paralyzed by shame.”16 True reconciliation, justice and shalom require a remembering of suffering, an unearthing of a shameful history and a willingness to enter into lament. Lament calls for a...

The primary narrative that forms our ministry models draws from our evangelical success stories. We are presented with triumphalistic narratives that minimize stories of struggle. Our historical reflection reveals an obsession with success and celebration while stories of survival and suffering a...

There is a history that we have to account for. When we don’t, it is easy to assume that things such as tribe, race, and terrorism are natural, or simply the way things are.

The depth of pain endemic to racial hostility requires full disclosure for complete healing. The church should become the place where the fullness of suffering is expressed in a safe environment. Liturgy, worship, leadership, small groups and other aspects of church life should provide the safe place where the fullness of suffering can be set free. Stories of suffering can never be buried when lament is an important and central aspect of the church’s worship life.

Lamentations reminds us that the proper response to tragedy and suffering is lament.

The persistent history of shame in our story as a church requires the type of lament offered in Lamentations. This shame may be isolating, but it is essentia...

Unfortunately, in recent years, the American evangelical community has attempted to silence the voices of women. By silencing these voices, we have an inadequate understanding of Lamentations and the biblical message as a whole. We assert a warped form of masculinity at the expense of hearing the whole story from all perspectives.

We worship at the altar of the latest and greatest American evangelical icons who regale us with stories of the exploits of their cutting-edge ministry. Our ears have been tuned to hear the call for successful pastors who will go and conquer the world with muscular Christianity, where celebration exists without lament. Meanwhile, we ignore the stories of suffering and oppression (often times the voices of women oppressed by their own communities). We have a deficient theology that trumpets the triumphalistic successes of evangelicalism while failing to hear from the stories of suffering that often tell us more about who we are as a community.

Often, the insights of women whose hearts are attuned to the heart of God are silenced because so much of our ministry endeavors arise from a culturally derived false sense of masculinity. Lamentations 1 points toward the power of the feminine voice in the biblical account.

We are forcing a theological famine upon ourselves by ignoring the voices of women. There is a deficiency in American evangelical ministry because we fail to reflect the feminine voice that is evident in portions of Scripture like Lamentations. This deficiency is to our great loss as a Christian community.

Lament challenges the church to acknowledge real suffering and plead with God for his intervention.

The crying out to God in lament over a broken history is often set aside in favor of a triumphalistic narrative. We are too busy patting ourselves on the back over the problem-solving abilities of the triumphant American church to cry out to God in lament. But lament cannot and must not be ignored.

For the complete biblical narrative to take root in our community, lament has to become a part of our story. Emmanuel Katongole emphasizes that “any resurrection of the church as the body of Christ must begin with lament, which is an honest look at the brokenness of the church. Without lament, we move on too quickly to reconstruction.”

Lament calls us to examine the work of reconciliation between those who live under suffering with those who live in celebration.

The dismantling of privilege requires the disavowal of any pretense of exceptionalism.

What would happen to our faith if we believed that God reigns sovereign over both our celebration and our suffering?

Are we so invested in the Western cultural captivity of the church that we are unable to accept God’s right judgment on the broken system of oppression? The Western church elevates values of Western culture, even at the expense of biblical values. Western cultural values and how we live out Christian faith in the United States are presented as theologically normative and oppress voices from outside of the Western context.

The population dominance of Western Christianity has already come to an end. Western cultural captivity and dominance as an epoch of church history is also coming to an end. But as Western Christians wring their hands over the implosion of modern, Enlightenment Christianity and the subsequent decline of European and Euro-American Christianity, is it more appropriate to acknowledge the justness of God’s sovereign judgment of unjust systems? Should we embrace this moment as God’s sovereign will?

While we may lament the loss we experience in Western Christianity, we should acknowledge that it may be God’s will that oppressive Western systems decline.

American Christians may be fearful of the dramatic changes that have already occurred in the world and in American Christianity. Could that fear be rooted in a loss of power as the demographics of world Christianity begin to favor non-Western nations? But these changes in Christianity may be exactly what God intended, requiring American Christians to relinquish a historical dominance and embrace a greater mutuality, equality and reciprocity in twenty-first-century world Christianity.

Seeing injustice in the city through an abstracted lens allows the individual to disassociate from the reality of injustice. Injustice can be objectified and depersonalized. Hunger, homelessness and racism are very real injustices, but they can be misunderstood when taken in an abstracted form. One of the most effective means of disengaging the church from the work of justice is making injustice a philosophical concept.

When a mass shooting of children at a school occurs, we will claim that this horrible action is the result of just one crazed gunman rather than consider the possibility of a socialstructure problem at work. Some will argue that it does no good to consider social action when clearly this action can be blamed in its totality on just one individual. But we do not consider that doing nothing to prevent future tragedies in the face of a national tragedy demonstrates the sin of omission.

We write checks to end human trafficking but lack concern for how our demand for cheap, disposable clothing generates a larger system of exploitation. We forget that hunger in Africa has any connection to the history of Western colonialism from which we in the West have significantly benefited. We are oblivious to the need for corporate responsibility to address colonial abuses in the previous centuries. We are able to abstract our justice efforts from the material reality of the history of injustice in the relationship between the Western colonizers and the colonized who still suffer the ill effects of a colonial history.

We abstract injustice, allowing ourselves to believe we no longer have a direct hand in it. We make injustice impersonal; if everyone is responsible, then no one is responsible. But justice should not be abstracted to a corporate concept that justifies ongoing individual injustice. Justice is social and corporate, but it requires a personal face.

A narrative of success propels white evangelicalism over and above other forms of American Christianity. Evangelicals often fail to embrace the important examples of the Spanish-speaking store-front church because they are considered too small, even though the faithful spirituality in the midst of suffering would blow away all of our purpose-driven lives.

Korean American immigrants that meet faithfully at 5:00 a.m. every day to pray at the church before embarking on a twelve-hour work day are ignored because they speak a foreign language and speak English with an accent.

The spiritual rituals of Native American Christian communities are perceived as exotic pagan practices that dabble in syncretism and are inferior ...

Non-Western expressions of Christianity, therefore, can be portrayed as inferior to the successful formula for ministry put forth by many white evan...