Journal of Spiritual Formation & Soul Care Copyright 2016 by Institute for Spiritual Formation

2016, Vol. 9, No. 2, 147-150 Biola University, 1939-7909

Introduction to the Special Issue:

Suffering and the Christian Life
‫دﺣﺮج‬
Andrew). Schmutzer
Special Issue, Editor1

This special issue of JSFSC attempts to fill a serious need-helping peo-

pie face their suffering and using lament to do so. Suffering and lament are
topics close to my heart and I want to thank Dr. Steve Porter (Managing
Editor) for allowing me to pursue this special issue.
Nine articles are presented here, offering theological reflection, some
clinical innovation, and pastoral guidance. Suffering and lament are inves-
tigated in both the Old and New Testaments. So, a “spoiler alert”: lament
did not end with the older testament, and this issue has much “grist” for
thought when it comes to lament. Whether you are a pastor, counselor,
professor, student, missionary, or spiritual mentor, I wanted to bring to-
gether some articles that not only face issues of suffering with courage, but
named deep pain through lament-maybe the oldest exhale of worship.
Let me offer some orientation to the substance and pathos of this issue.
It is appropriate that serious discussion of lament is found in most of these
articles. Because suffering is so pervasive, the church needs the language of
lament for teaching and encouragement, for probing and performance of
liturgy. But we are afraid of others’ pain and so have lost our ear for grief.
Do not miss the connection: A lack of honest naming of suffering means
people also lack the vocabulary to engage misery. The sheer scope of suffer-
ing today—from toxic family dysfunction to persecuted Coptic Christians,
economic loss to cycles of addiction—has made something obvious: Christ-
followers are longing to lament!
Lament is a primal cry that desperately needs to be heard. Lament is a
profound enactment that makes meaning of suffering. We are in good com-
pany. From Abel’s blood that “cried out” (Gen. 4:10) to the martyred souls
protesting their stay under the altar: “How long. Sovereign Lord, holy and

1 Andrew T Schmutzer (PhD. Trinity International University) is Professor of

Biblical and Theological Studies at Moody Bible Institute, where he has taught since
1996. His latest books include Naming Our Abuse: God’s Pathways to Healing for
Male Sexual Abuse Survivors (co-authors, Daniel Gorski and David Carlson [Grand
Rapids: Kregel, 2016]) and Between Pain & Grace: A Biblical Theology of Suffering
(co-author, Gerald w. Peterman [Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2016]).

147
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true...?” (Rev. 6:10). Notice that they lament because God is sovereign,
not in question of his character ("holy and true”) or suspicion of his ability
("until you judge and avenge our blood”). Since humans have been relating,
they have been lamenting. And yes, "How long” is the language of lament.
For a rich study, read Numbers 14 and look closely at Gotfs lament to
Moses ("How long,” 3x)!
Carleen Mandolfo is surely correct, noting that life is lived in the "pain-
ful and yawning gap between the liturgical affirmation of God’s absolute
sovereignty and the empirical reality of evil triumphant.”2 what transform-
ing growth the church stands to gain if we give the next generation a fuller
teaching on discipleship with suffering, and the gift of words capable of
holding up their pain to God-local and global pain-in lament. But be-
cause popular faith views suffering as failure, people need permission to
grieve.‫ ؤ‬I offer the following observations and challenges that the contempo-
rary church culture must address if suffering is to bring transformation and
its language of lament viewed as necessary in the face of great pain and evil.4
F\Y‫>؟‬t١ if tue are serious about sociai justice, then our prater-dialogue
with God must stretch to incorporate the audacious language of lament in
print, prayer, and ritual. Lament vividly engages the Cosmic King about
issues of justice (e.g٠, Ps. 54). If words run out, "liturgy and ritual have the
capacity to move beyond the word-form to the underlying reality of suffer-
ing—entering the ineffable.”‫ و‬The language of our new citizenship includes
lament, because believers see suffering both honestly and eschatologically.
Is there an index of laments one can find at your place of worship?
Secoivd, tue must start corporately inviting lament, not merely allowing
it. A holistic theological anthropology understands the created intersection
of physical pain, emotional anguish, social isolation, and spiritual weak-
ness.‫ ة‬Lament only occurs where there is community solace, not commu-
nity information.7 Our soulful pleas should naturally turn to our Wounded
Lamb (Rev. 5:6). Our pleas should not come to church leadership, asking
for permission to collectively grieve with another’s burdens. We will lament
when corporate honesty catches up with our personal pain.
τ\ΰΐά, if the language of suffering is going to be reclaimed, there must
be a shift from Christianity as a "faith of answers” to one more willing to

2 Carleen Mandolfo, "Language of Lament in the Psalms,” in The Oxford

Handbook of the Psalms, ed. William p. Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2014), 114.
3 See Schmutzer, “Longing to Lament: Returning to the Language of Suffering,”
in Between Pain & Grace, 103-129.
4 For further discussion, see my recent essay, “Longing to Lament,” 122-128.

5 Phil c. Zylla, The Roots ofSorrow (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012),
88.
6 See, for example, Patrick D. Miller, “What is a Human Being: The Anthropol-

ogy of the Psalter I,” in The Way of the LORD: Essays in Old Testament Theology
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 122-136.
7 Zylla, The Roots of Sorrow, 88.
Sckutier. Introduction to the special Issue 149

find mystery in painful stories and uncomfortable questions.* Umtrvt "\s ‫ﻵ‬
precious reality-speech when meaning structures have collapsed.‫ ؟‬But the
"marketed church,” under mounting pressure to craft better answers, has
left little room for pained questions from the inside. Living amid so much
suffering, lament should be a standing invitation to worship in our pain,
not in spite of our pain. The danger is that the church, too often, provides
sanctuary only for Job’s friends, but not for Job.io But a theology of lament
presents a theological paradox: that lament and praise, sorrow and joy, ac-
tually belong together. Praise makes explicit the context of faith and hope
within which the lament is sounded.“ John Goldingay captures the issue:
"Better a God whose mystery we cannot understand, but who has given US
grounds for trusting when we cannot understand, than one whose adequacy
we cannot rely on, or whose interest we cannot be sure of.”
Tovè.١ because the Western church tradition has replaced the cor-
porate lament with individual confession of sin, the church has stripped
out opportunity for the sour cries and untimely groans of victims of many
forms of violence.¡3 Could the need for change be more obvious? Violence
consists of multifaceted destruction, whether in abuse, battery, trafficking,
terrorism, persecution, or genocide. The silence of the church-added to
the existing trauma of such victims—makes the absence of lament intensify
their suffering. With growing attention given to theologies of peace, why
is it such a sacrifice to help victims give voice to their suffering, those who
have been broken through various forms of dehumanizing trauma?
While confession is offender-oriented (i.e., seeking forgiveness for the
guilty), the sacrament of lament is victim-oriented, calling our brothers and
sisters to share in corporate grief (cf. Heb. 13:3). Lament is available for
horrific experiences of suffering, not just conviction of sin. The communal
cry can exist alongside individual confession. "For victims, lament is the
only sound that misery can make.”14
TVk\v١ lament is a powerful tutor to help the suffering lean into the ten‫־‬
sions of faith and doubt. Because suffering can shake one’s faith to its core.

8 Samuel E. Balentine, Prayer in the Hebrew Bible: The Drama of Divine-Hu-

man Dialogue (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 292.

‫ و‬Zylla, The Roots of Sorrow, 77.
10 Balentine, Prayer in the Hebrew Bible, 291.

11 Walter Moberly, "Lament,” in The New International Dictionary of Old Tes-

tament Theology and Exegesis, ed. Willem A. VanGemeren (Grand Rapids: Zonder-
van, 1997), 4:880. Moberly helpfully states, “Lament is surely one of those vital
areas where the witness of the NT must be seen to presuppose and complement that
of the OT, and indeed to be potentially deficient without it” (ibid., 883‫ ؛‬emphasis
added).
12 John Goldingay, Songs in a Strange Land: Psalms 42-51, The Bible Speaks

Today (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1978), 75.

‫ دا‬Mary Douglas, “Violence,” in Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics, ed. Joel B.
Green (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 810.
14 Balentine, Prayer in the Hebrew Bible, 290.
150 Journal of spiritual Formation & Soul Care

it is common to find a disparity between expectations and experience. But

this is precisely the point amid suffering-one laments that "gap” between
expectation and their experience. In the words of Iain Provan:

What is to be done? The answer advocated in the-lament psalms is nei-

ther to give up on the goodness of God nor to pretend that things are
better than they are. In the lament psalms, we see honest confrontation
of the fact that there is a gap between theology, on the one hand, and
experience, on the other ... trust is renewed in God’s goodness through
the process of prayer."

But untaught, this vibrant tension is not understood. Today, the scene of
contemporary faith is increasingly strewn with the critical stories of believ-
ers-turned-atheist, in large part because faith is held to be incompatible
with the realities of "real world” suffering. Today, faith and social honesty
are believed to be at odds."
Suffering is inevitable, but learning to lean into the tensions of faith is a
discipline one learns. Laments teach US to sit in the painful contradictions of
life and bypass the easy rationalizations. The truth is: faith without doubt is
myopic, and doubt without faith is a slow slide into existential meaningless-
ness.¡7 Samuel E. Balentine offers a profound reminder of this faith dynamic:

Perhaps the greatest irony of the biblical witness, and perhaps also its
most impenetrable legacy of prayer, is that when one loses faith in God,
it is precisely to God that one turns ... In the face of suffering our prede-
cessors in faith risked standing side by side with the atheist, and discov-
ered that they did not become atheists. Their questions were the same,
but their rebellion was different... The revolt of the believer is not that
of the renegade: the two do not speak in the name of the same anguish.^

So whether you are among the jubilant or downcast, joyful or doubter, I

pray you will find these articles a genuine tutor for the care of your soul
and those around you.
I welcome your reflections, stories ... and laments.

Andrew j. Schmutzer, Ph.D.

aschmutz@moody.edu

15 Iain Provan, Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says
and Why it Matters (Waco, TX: Baylor University- Press, 2014), 176; emphasis original.
16 R. w. L. Moberly, Old Testament Theology: Reading the Hebrew Bible as

Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2015), 255. Moberly offers a refreshing
relational study in his chapter on “Faith and Perplexity” (211-42).
17 Mandolfo, “Language of Lament,” 126.

18 Balentine, Prayer in the Hebrew Bible, 294-95‫ ؛‬also quoting Elie Wiesel,
Souls on Fire (New York: Vintage, 1975), 111; emphasis added.
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