Dr. Wendell Watters was Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at McMaster University; he published an article entitled ‘Christianity and Mental Health’.
In it he writes: I want you to entertain the hypothesis that Christian doctrine, the existential soother par excellence, is incompatible with the principles of sound mental health and contributes more to the genesis (beginnings) of human suffering than to its alleviation.
A true Christian must always be in a state of torment, since he or she can never really be certain that God has forgiven him or her for deeply felt negative feelings—in spite of the Catholic confessional and the fundamental trick of self-deception known as being saved or born again.
Gooding, David; Lennox, John. Being Truly Human: The Limits of our Worth, Power, Freedom and Destiny (The Quest for Reality and Significance Book 1) (pp. 225-226). (Function). Kindle Edition.
Where to begin?
- Christian doctrine, he writes, presumes to be an existential “soother” par excellence
-Existential here means, experiential (sometimes it means “existence)
-Fancy way of saying, “It is supposed to provide practical comfort, in fact more comfort than anything else… but it causes more suffering than it eliminates.”
But what kind of comfort does he think Christianity is supposed to provide and fails to do?
- To be a true Christian you must be in a permanent state of torment, you cannot really be certain that God has forgiven you.
Forgiven you of what?
“Deeply felt negative feelings.”
-He doesn’t know what Christians believe at all.
-John wrote, “I have written these things so that you may know you have eternal life.”
-Not feel you do…actually have it.
-Assurance of forgiveness is baked into the gospel.
Paul wrote: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
We are not hoping for forgiveness for our “deeply felt negative feelings.”
We believe that God will forgive us for our actual sins.
Deeply felt negative feelings are not, in themselves, something that require forgiveness.
They are feelings.
Deeply held negative feelings, are not something, in themselves…that we always need to be immediately rid of.
Sometimes we feel guilty because we are…the solution is to be forgiven of the sins that we are guilty of.
Christian doctrine does not presume to be a “soother par excellence.”
It proclaims Christ as the way, truth, and the life…the only way to relationship with God.
In fact, Scripture says, “In this life you will have many troubles.”
And
“Don’t be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering as if something strange was going on.”
And for me, the Lordship of Jesus in my life…has sometimes caused me great discomfort, it has soothed me at all…until I surrendered…then great joy and comfort followed.
Relationship with God does not preclude sorrow, suffering, it does not prevent deep sadness.
It doesn’t automatically change how we feel.
It does give us a place to stand in our suffering…we are not tossed by the waves of randomness and meaningless suffering…suffering without purpose or hope, we cling to our hope in the salvation of God.
It does give us a way to evaluate our feelings…and not be held captive, enslaved by them.
Our passage for today comes from the book of Lamentations.
A lament is a passionate expression of grief.
Paul reminds us that we do not grieve like those without hope, Lamentations reminds us that we do grieve deeply.
Lamentations is God’s word to us that gives dignity to suffering….to verbalizing our suffering.
God brought the judgment that the book of Lamentations “laments”, but he does not delight in our suffering.
The book of Lamentations consists of five poems describing the worst possible catastrophe.
Five hundred years of history, God’s covenant promises, the Davidic kingdom, the mighty Temple, all have seemed to vanish into the smoke of war and exile.
Children who were playing in their neighborhoods were now dying of hunger.
There are no words to express the grief, but yet it must be expressed.
We have not been given a five-point answer to suffering but five poems that give emotional expression of unspeakable sadness.
Lamentations is not the Bible’s final word on suffering…the cross, the empty tomb, and return of Christ, are the final word, but it is a part of God’s word on it.
A firm faith in God does not deny what we feel, it does help us to ultimately believe what it real.
We are to feel what we feel, but believe what is real.
I often emphasize the second part of that saying…so we will not be tossed about by feelings…because this is very destructive…for mental health and for relationships, not to mention spiritual health.
But the first part is very important as well…we are to feel what we feel.
To let go of either side is to fall into unhealthy and unbiblical, imbalance.
To believe what is real and fail to feel what you feel…is to become robotic, mechanical, to put suffering into a box and to miss God and probably the chance to engage fully with others around you.
It is to be less than fully God’s man or woman in your suffering.
To only feel what you feel and to fail to believe what is real is to be tossed by the storm, to miss God and to be unable to engage fully with others around you…because feelings, not facts, are mastering you.
The suffering in Lamentations was the result of God’s righteous judgment on Judah’s sin and therefore hope remained.
God’s judgment is because he is holy, his mercy is because he is love.
God will make a way to show his mercy even as he has shown his holiness.
Here is our scripture for today, two short verses…from which one very famous hymn was written.
Because of the Lord’s faithful love we do not perish, for his mercies never end. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness!
Lamentations 3:22-23
This doesn’t’ sound like a lament, but it is part of a book of laments.
It is a confession of faith in the midst of deep struggle.
A lament is not a cry of despair, but it is verbalized desperation.
What is the difference?
True despair doesn’t lament, because it has given up all hope.
Despair is a state of passivity…surrendered to circumstances.
Desperation is, well, desperate…but not passive.
Desperation laments…because it has not given up on God.
For the believer, it is when we are truly down to just one hope…God’s mercy.
You can say that is always the case…I understand…when we are desperate…we recognize this fact.
I want to read a lament, and a confident confession of faith that Bruce Brown wrote earlier this year:
In this case the lament is for past sinful choices that were ruinous…but it gives way to praise.
As a man pursuing my own desires and plans I was destructive to myself and those around me. I found deliverance, purpose, and meaning only by surrendering my life to Jesus Christ. God has been so merciful to me that I can truly join the Psalmist in saying, “The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.” (Psalm 16:5-6)
Today we lament the loss of Bruce, we asked God to give him more years, it was not in his purposes to do so.
Today we rejoice in the faithfulness of God in Bruce’s life, and in Bruce’s faithfulness to the end of his life.
We lament…Bruce and Rachel felt despair…but they did not give in to desperation.
We train to trust God for what is ahead in the small, “ordinary means of grace”…fellowship, prayer, Scripture, reflection.
*At the funeral of Robin’s mom…it was a time for me personally (like all funerals are anymore) to train to trust Christ…as I watched, in less than an hour, a well-lived life unfold before my eyes.
Things like that, can be ordinary means of grace…if we make the most of them.
Desperation, can, for the unbeliever (and sometimes for the believer) lead to foolish and destructive attempts to alleviate the pain and control circumstances that are beyond our control.
Jesus asked, rhetorically, “Who of you by worrying can add a single day to their life?”
Desperation can become despair if it lacks faith.
And if I despair and refuse to take my suffering to God…why would I lament?
Lament is active…real Lament, is a sign of faith.
If God is not there…who would I lament to?
Stephen Crane wrote a poem I have quoted often because it is so profound in its concise honesty:
A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.”
An impersonal universe that is merely mechanical cause and effect, without divine oversight and guidance is a place where Lament is meaningless.
I would rewrite like this…
“Universe, I am sad, I am devasted…I am here, I am suffering!”
And the universe replies…with nothing.
A universe without God cannot reply at all.
The answer is meaningless silence to your meaningless suffering.
Atheist Betrand Russell put it like this:
“That man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”
“My soul’s house can only be built safely on unyielding despair.”
This is utter madness from an educated man with a high IQ…a man without wisdom.
He did not live this way, though he may have died this way.
You cannot build anything on despair…you can build something on desperation…if that desperation takes you God.
Because of the Lord’s faithful love we do not perish, for his mercies never end. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness!”
Lamentations 3:22-23
This was written in a book full of deep lamentations…verbalized grief.
*It was statement of faith not feelings…in the middle of a book of deep feelings.
Your mercies are new every morning…your faithfulness is great!
If God is not there…this is deep delusion.
Since God is there…this is deep foundation for our lives.
It was written in the context of terrible suffering.
Babylon’s two-year siege of Jerusalem was horrific.
Children starved, mothers were reduced to cannibalism, every aspect of society had devolved into utter chaos.
*It is impossible to imagine how bad this is when it happens, and it has happened often.
Even for those who lived it…it was beyond what they could comprehend.
Years ago it was my great honor to have lunch with a retired chaplain who had been a part of a small group of soldiers that liberated a Nazi death camp…he was the first one in.
He said that he remembers entering the camp and remembers leaving it, but the days in the camp, his mind had closed off to his consciousness.
It was too much.
Lamentations revolve around deep, terrible human suffering.
God had warned them of this judgment a century earlier through Isaiah, however when it actually came the warning did not relieve the shock or the suffering.
The book of Lamentations doesn’t end with a nice and tidy conclusion; it ends with them feeling like God has forgotten them.
The oldest question in the world is, “If God is there, and he is good, and he is powerful, then why is there evil and suffering in the world?”
Why am I suffering?
The common answers are, “He is not there, he is not good, or he is not powerful.”
Some religions, such as Buddhism and Christian Science say evil and suffering are illusion, they are not real.
We know this is nonsense.
The Bible gives a very different answer. It proclaims that God is there, he is good, he is powerful, and evil and suffering are very real.
It doesn’t offer simplistic answers to complicated questions.
It does offer a manifold response, that includes seven different themes, or motifs as answers to human suffering. The seven are:
- Suffering can be the consequence of sin.
- Suffering can be caused by Satan.
- God uses suffering to draw unbelievers to Christ.
- God uses suffering to sanctify Christians.
- God uses suffering for his own glory.
- There is mystery, we don’t know in every case why we suffer.
- Finally, we look to the cross of Christ.
Christ, God with us, demonstrated his goodness by dying on the cross for our sins, he demonstrated his power by raising from the dead.
And he will return to make all things new.
God has done something, he is doing something, and he will do something.
We live in the middle of his work to bring an end to evil and suffering.
In these middle days there are many reasons why we suffer but one answer will always be, we don’t know why?
Not for every particular suffering.
As we suffer we can cry out to God for mercy and help.
We can give full voice to our anguish.
We can, here on the other side of the cross, lack back and see Jesus’ suffering, paying for our sins and know that God is with us and that he loves us.
We can, on this side of the return of Christ, look at our suffering with hope, knowing that it will not have the final word.
But still…meanwhile, we groan.
Meanwhile we lament.
Lamentations is written in the form of human words of lament to God, and it is given to us as God’s word to humans.
Clearly it is good to process emotions, to voice confusion and grief.
Jesus modeled this for us, he wasn’t confused, but he lamented on the cross “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”
He lamented in the Garden, “I am deeply grieved to the point of death.”
Jesus modeled lament, but he modeled lament founded on a firm faith.
He surrendered in his suffering to his Father’s will.
In the garden he prayed, “Not my will but yours be done.”
On the cross he prayed, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.”
Does sorrow grip your soul today?
Does lament fill your mind?
God does not stand at a distance, unconcerned. His mercies are new each and every morning.
Your suffering may be great; his faithfulness is greater.
You don’t have to feel that this is true, it’s okay if you don’t, but it is essential that you know this is true.
Perhaps this all sounds foreign to you…you are not suffering; life is pretty good.
Rejoice if this is so…those who are suffering well, rejoice with you…they are happy for you.
But train now, left of the bang, to trust fully in God not in his good gifts.
Because you can be assured you will suffer…but we must not live in fear but in faith regarding what may come.
Each Sunday we are doing just that…we are training to trust.
We celebrate God’s goodness and his good gifts, and we confess our sins and our deep need for God…Sunday after Sunday
Application
At our grandson, Lev’s funeral earlier this summer our daughter Corrie read a lamentation.
I sat next to our daughter Casey, Lev’s mom, as she listened to her sister give words to her deep sadness.
I think it was the first time I can remember where this was done at a funeral…at least done well.
Then the pastor, in his message, did a great job of entering into the lament…while focusing on our gospel hope.
We felt desperate and deeply sad, but we were not left in despair.
In addition to Lamentations, you will also read in Ezekiel this week.
If you are behind or just now showing up to our reading through the Bible that began in January…I encourage you to start where we are, not back in Genesis…you can always catch up later.
Ezekiel’s setting is this:
The Babylonian king took ten thousand exiles in 597, this included all the officials, craftsmen, and leaders.
Seven years later the Babylonians would reduce Jerusalem to rubble.
The long siege and aftermath would lead to Lamentations.
The Temple would be destroyed and Judah’s downfall complete.
Ezekiel was among this first wave taken into exile.
At age thirty, had he remained in Jerusalem, he would have been beginning his priestly duties at the temple…but now, it was gone.
Instead, he is sitting 900 miles from home…thinking of all he had experienced, thinking of all he had lost.
But not just that…he was sitting before God.
He pinpoints his location in Babylon to a place where the 70-foot-tall storm god monument (a ziggurat) would have been visible.
There where the temple of the false Babylonian god of storms was located Ezekiel had his awe-inspiring vision of the one true God coming in a storm.
The most important part of his vision was the glory of God appearing like a human, the word is actually Adam (verse 26).
Christ is the second Adam, the one who undoes what the first Adam did (1 Corinthians 15:45-49).
This Adam was the king of the universe, sitting on his magnificent throne, judging the nations.
Ezekiel’s proper, and reflexive response was to fall on his face before this vision of God.
He was given a mission to speak to his people, to speak the truth of God in that desperate time and place.
Let me tell you what I believe to be a helpful approach to lament…to giving voice to desperation but not giving into despair.
- First, make sure you have a fully biblical and balanced perspective on suffering and sorrow.
“We are hard pressed on every side but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair.”
2 Corinthians 4:8
We start with right thinking.
We are hard pressed…we are being squeezed, it feels like it will undo us
But we are not crushed.
We are perplexed…this is confusing, unnerving…but we will not give into despair.
Hard pressed, perplexed…normal, not unusual, should not be surprising.
Crushed, despair…not what God has for you, not what you need give into.
*Imbalance:
-To give into despair, to believe it is good or necessary to doubt God’s goodness. To believe there is honesty and nobility in becoming apathetic and passive in suffering.
-Or to become enraged and shake our fist at God as if this is what true honesty requires.
*Imbalance:
-To suffering stoically, and silently. To believe there is courage in keeping the pain quiet and personally.
-To accept God’s will as cold, hard fate.
- Take your pain to God.
-You can blame him, distrust him, dislike him…if you want…but it will not help you…and you don’t have to.
-A lament is a trusting complaint
It is not shaking your fist at God, it is, like a child who doesn’t understand what her parent is doing…cries in anger, but yet clings to that parent.
“Terry, I do blame him, I don’t trust him, or like him.”
Okay, I think I understand…I am not saying it is easy, I am saying it is possible, and it is necessary to choose to trust him in order to move to active desperation away from passive despair.
*Of course, take your pain to others as well…we talk about this a lot, including last week.
- In your suffering, confusion, pain…live missionally
*Ezekiel was suffering, saw a vision of God…and was given a missional mandate.
*Philemon 1:6 “I pray you will be active in sharing your faith so you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.”
We are designed to live on mission with God.
We are not going to live with healthy thriving perspective…if we only focus on our own pain, hurt, and needs.
In the middle of our own struggles…we are to look to the interests of others.
It may seem impossible…and on your own, it may be…but it is where desperation meets restoration.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort. 2 Corinthians 1:3-7
*Time of lament, confession of sins, and confession of trust in God*