Learning to Lament

What authentic faith does with pain and sorrow

If you’ve ever watched The Simpsons, you know exactly who Ned Flanders is. He is the perpetually upbeat, hyper-spiritual neighbor who greets every minor catastrophe and systemic disaster with a cheerful, plastic smile and “Okely-dokely!”

For decades, popular culture has used Flanders to lampoon a very real and toxic phenomenon that plagues the modern church: the expectation that Christians must always be happy, or at least fine. It’s easy to treat even times of fellowship like a curated Instagram feed rather than an authentic community of broken people being redeemed. We may even believe that spiritual maturity means outgrowing negative emotions, treating tears as a sign of spiritual failure or a lack of faith.

But when we do this, we fall face-first into what pastor and clinical counselor Chuck DeGroat calls “spiritual bypassing.”

“Spiritual bypassing is an illusion, a defense mechanism. We use spiritual language, concepts, and practices to avoid facing our unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.”¹

While such bypassing might make certain psychological or sociological sense, it is profoundly unbiblical. Scripture doesn’t resemble a self-help guide that just teaches us how to maintain a positive outlook. It’s a prayer book where over a third of the chapters deal with the realities of human pain and suffering. If we want to grow into real, resilient disciples, we must learn to lament.

The Language of Anguish

Biblical lament is fundamentally different from worldly venting or self-centered wallowing. Surveying scripture, lament can be defined as an honest, impassioned expression of sorrow, frustration, or confusion earnestly placed before God.

Lament is not the absence of faith; it is raw proof of it. It takes God so seriously that it brings its darkest, ugliest realities directly to His doorstep. Look at the wide variety of catalysts that trigger lament across the Psalms:

• Abandonment (Psalm 22)

• Betrayal (Psalm 3)

• Sickness (Psalm 6)

• Legal trouble (Psalm 35)

• Oppression (Psalm 53)

• Personal sin (Psalm 51)

• Societal evil (Psalm 10)

• Famine and natural disasters (Psalm 85)

The heart of lament is a palpable sense that something is not as it should be, bound together with a fierce hope that God can intervene. It stands in the tension between the brokenness of the “already” and the promise of the “not yet.”

Portrait of an Unresolved Soul

Nowhere is this tension clearer than in Psalms 42 and 43. Scholars and commentators widely recognize that these two psalms are actually a single, unified composition. The text is structurally divided into three distinct sections, each marked and bound together by a common, haunting refrain:

“Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” (Ps. 42:5, 11; 43:5)

To understand the depth of this prayer, let’s look at how the Psalmist maps out his internal crisis across these three movements:

1. Longing for God (Psalm 42:1-5)

“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’ These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go to the house of God under the protection of the Mighty One with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng.” (Ps. 42:1-4)

2. Overwhelmed and Forgotten (Psalm 42:6-11)

“My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God my Rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?’ My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’” (Ps. 42:6-10)

3. A Plea for Vindication and Return (Psalm 43:1-5)

“Vindicate me, my God, and plead my cause against an unfaithful nation. Rescue me from those who are deceitful and wicked. You are God my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy? Send me your light and your faithful care, let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight. I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God.” (Ps. 43:1-4)

The causes for this particular lament are layered and heavy: threats from enemies, a visceral experience of oppression, and a devastating, perceived absence of God. The writer’s spiritual past (he cites the memories of leading others into the house of God) now feels like a lifetime away. Instead of the comforting and encouraging presence of the Lord, he feels drowning, as if God’s own “waves and breakers” have entirely swept over him.

The emotions present in this text represent a complex mixture of human suffering: depression and despair, fear and anger, confusion and doubt. Yet, notice the crucial pivot in the text: this divine distance and suffering drives the psalmist towards God, not away from him.

As Elisabeth Elliot profoundly writes in Keep a Quiet Heart:

“A refuge is a place of safety. But to have a refuge, one must go into it…When we are suffering, we are tempted to run away from God, but that is like running away from the only shelter in a storm.”²

Where the Lament Leads

What does it look like to drive towards God, even in the midst of confusion, anger, or sorrow? These Psalms among others provide us with important cues.

1. Deep Prayer: Lament takes the heavy weight of internal anxiety and converts it into raw, direct communication with the Father. As author Paul Miller once noted “Anxiety is just wasted prayer.” Rather than letting worry corrode our souls and become tunnel-visioned, lament obeys the New Testament directive to “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).

2. A Cry for Help and Relief: The writer doesn’t offer a polite, managed, or curated prayer. He aggressively asks for divine intervention: “Vindicate me, my God, and plead my cause… Rescue me” (Ps. 43:1). He expects God to act because God is his ultimate stronghold.

3. An Earnest Search for God: When suffering, our spiritual horizons need to be broadened. We always need more than just circumstantial deliverance. We can see that the psalmist doesn’t just want his problems to go away; he wants God Himself. His soul pants and thirsts for the living God (Ps. 42:1-2). He recognizes that the ultimate answer to pain this side of heaven is an increased sense of God’s presence.

4. Reasoning with Himself: Humans have the unique ability to engage in “metacognition”—the act of thinking about your own thinking. The psalmist explicitly stands up and challenges his own internal emotional echo chamber, demanding: “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?” (Ps. 42:5, 11; 43:5).

In his classic book Spiritual Depression, Martyn Lloyd-Jones unpacks this exact discipline:

“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but there they are, talking to you. Now this man’s treatment in Psalm 42 was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself, “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” …he stands up and says: “Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you.” …And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do.”³

5. Holding onto God’s Promises: Even while drowning in confusion, the writer anchors his mind to the objective, unshakeable character of Yahweh. He declares, “I say to God, my Rock… God you are my stronghold… Send me your light and your faithful care” (Ps. 42:9, 43:1, 3). This teaches us an indispensable theological truth: confusion is not incompatible with knowing God’s character. You can be completely bewildered by your circumstances while remaining entirely confident in what you do know is true about God.

6. A Commitment to Do What Is Right: Finally, the psalmist resolves to stay the course of active worship and obedience, declaring, “Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight… Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him.” (Ps. 43:4-5). This is a massive challenge for us: he doesn’t use his pain as an excuse for sin. Suffering does not grant us a license to compromise our character or rebel against God’s ways.

A Lack of Resolution

While Psalms 42 and 43 are profound and instructive, they notably never reach catharsis. What is entirely missing is any evidence of circumstantial or emotional resolution for the Psalmist.

The enemies aren’t suddenly struck down by lightning in the final stanza; the dark clouds don’t miraculously part. The poem ends exactly where it began—with the refrain, with the wrestling, as if he’s still stuck in the ongoing fight for hope. This proves that lament for the person in process. It is a prayer posture designed for the middle of the storm, not just the safety of the shore.

In his brilliant book Exclusion and Embrace, theologian Miroslav Volf offers a paradigm-shifting insight into why this sort of honest and unresolved emotion must be brought into our prayer lives:

“Rage belongs before God not in the reflectively managed and manicured form of a confession, but as a pre-reflective outburst from the depths of the soul…By placing unattended rage before God we place both our unjust enemy and our own vengeful self face-to-face with a God who loves and does justice.”⁴

When we strip our church communities of the language of lament, we don’t actually get rid of the pain, the rage, or the confusion. Instead, we leave our people to adopt highly destructive, alternative approaches to coping:

• Bottle negative emotions up

• Pretend they don’t exist

• Indulge their negative emotions constantly

• Wallow in guilt and shame

• Make pain their core identity

Thank God He’s given us something so much better to deal with the broken world as it is.

Reclaiming the Art of Lament in Community

As leaders, pastors, and members of churches, how do we push back against the plastic mask of spiritual bypassing and build communities capable of lament? We can start by recovering three core theological convictions:

First, a Biblical worldview suggests the world is fundamentally broken, but there is also real hope. We do not need to play pretend. We can look at systemic injustice, broken marriages, failing health, and deep psychological trauma and say, “This is awful, and it breaks my heart.” But we can say it in full confidence that Jesus has, and still will, overcome (John 16:33).

Second, we must remember that being emotional and affected is an aspect of what it means to be made in God’s image. Jesus wept at the graveside of Lazarus, even though He knew He was about to raise him from the dead. Grief is not a defect; it is a reflection of the divine character reacting to a distorted creation.

Third, we must recognize the structural limits of human community. Other people are a vital part of God’s provision, but friends can and will let us down, especially when confronting deep grief. Just as Job’s friends eventually failed him, the people in our church communities will not always know what to say, and they will occasionally mishandle our pain. Therefore, while we walk together, we must ultimately learn to deal with God directly.

If you find yourself stuck in a season of deep darkness, maybe look into doing some solid Biblical counseling… but above all else, definitely learn to pray and process directly with God!

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Let’s do what we can to make this more than theory. Try writing your own Psalm of lament. I have a great Biblical template based off Psalm 13 put together by a good friend of mine who is a pastor and counselor. Send me a message and I’ll share it with you. Whatever you do, don’t wait until things boil over or come out sideways. Give voice to your pain and frustrated, lay your rage or anxiety before God’s throne, and discover the deep, unshakeable refuge of a God who can handle your inner storms.

1. DeGroat, Chuck. Healing What’s Within: Coming Home to Yourself—and to God—When You’re Wounded, Weary, and Wandering. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2024.

2. Elliot, Elisabeth. Keep a Quiet Heart. Grand Rapids, MI: Revell, 2022.

3. Lloyd-Jones, D. Martyn. Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1965.

4. Volf, Miroslav. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996.