Guilt is not our only hang-up. I once spoke to a group of university students about Christian responses to evil, and I suggested that our first response is silence, followed by lament. I couldn't read everyone’s response, the evening crowd had swelled beyond the capacity of the recital hall, but follow-up conversations showed another hindrance to lament: The perception of inactivity. Lament seemed too inactive, too passive for my advocacy-minded students. Where is the courage in lament? Where is the resistance? Where is the protest?
Lament names the world as it stands: Broken, yet in the process of renewal as the kingdom of God expands within it. New Testament lament is found on the lips of Jesus, "May your kingdom come". It's not a throw-away line. Praying "may your kingdom come" identifies -- without flinching or hesitation -- how things really are. There are dark, incomplete places in our midst in which "your kingdom" doesn't seem present; so we cry for the kingdom and in doing so lament its apparent absence. Children are sold into sex-slavery -- "may your Kingdom come". Totalitarian governments slaughter their own people -- "may your kingdom come". The earth groans under the weight of our misuse of it -- "may your kingdom come". Cancer ravages our bodies -- "may your kingdom come".
Over the years, I've learned that lament is shaped by those who've developed the habit of praying the Psalms. The Psalms -- and the praying and singing of them -- is the school of lament.
It's sad to me that so many Christians understand lament to be passivity. Lament instead names our broken world in the same breath that it cries out for renewal and liberation. Such lament calls for action, and not only for God's action but for mine. It calls for leaping into the wake of new creation as participants in Christ's kingdom drama! As our lips say, "Thy kingdom come", we pray -- we act -- as revolutionaries who protest against the darkness in this "present evil age" (Galatians 1.4). Lament of this sort propels us into the fray even as it calls on God to remain faithful to his promises.
In this way, praying the Psalms is a revolutionary act. Because praying the Psalms -- learning to lament -- is a compassionate protest until Christ's kingdom fully comes. Until then, we protest against the powers that work against God's life for creation -- death, sin, and the devil -- even as we bear witness to the agent of our deliverance. Lamentation isn't simply complaint. Lamentation is at once also confession: God, our King, is working to redeem creation in the Son through the Spirit.
That's why Bonhoeffer was so insistent that Christians learn to pray the Psalms. The Psalms are where we learn this language of lament. We need to learn it for the sake of our wrestles with pain, and for the sake of our companionship with others in pain. We have to learn the ways of unflinchingly naming our brokenness, our groaning, even as we unflinchingly call God to account. "God, remain faithful to your promise of renewal; may your Kingdom come!" We learn to lament in the Psalms because this lamentation isn't our own language. In the Psalms we find the pattern for lamenting as our true selves.
In lament we are confused, angry, and grieving people. But we are not just that. We have been given the script of the Psalms for playing our part in the drama: We are confused, angry, and grieving people who have been given the privilege of crying out to the Lord as his covenant people. Indeed, we are actors who have been clothed with Christ by the Spirit in the theater of God’s drama. Because of this, we can openly admit our confusion, anger, and grief without worrying that it will be the last word about who we are.