Rejoicing in Lament

In the terrible trial scene in Till We Have Faces, the gods strip away layer after layer of Queen Orual’s self-justification, and when she has been laid bare, she finally has something to say to them: “Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, ‘Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.’ A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”

When Todd Billings, a theology professor at Western Theological Seminary, was diagnosed with active myeloma in 2012, at the age of thirty-nine, God dug a word out of him. Rejoicing in Lament is the result. It is a remarkably honest account of his sickness and his “wrestling” to come to terms with it. Without sentimentality, he examines his complex responses to his diagnosis. He admits he has thought he somehow deserved it. He looks for causes. He worries that he might have misunderstood the Bible and that he might be dying because his faith isn’t strong enough. He asks “Why?” 

Out of those struggles, he emerges new trust in God. He doesn’t think we can answer the “Why?” question; God is God and we’re not, and He doesn’t reveal why He does what He does—at least, He doesn’t reveal it yet. That doesn’t leave Billings in fatalism, because, he says, God has proven Himself trustworthy throughout the history of His people as recounted in Scripture. Billings’s vocation is not to discern reasons, but to trust that God is God, good and sovereign Lord, in the absence of reasons. Christianity doesn’t give us a theoretical answer to the problem of evil. It calls us to trust the God who entered our condition to turn death into life.

At its  heart, Rejoicing in Lament is not a treatise on suffering, but a theological engagement with the practice of lament and the Christian meaning of the lament Psalms. While he denies that God is the author of sin, he is bold enough to say that the lament Psalms “blame” God for the bad situation of the Psalmist. After the initial shock of that word wears off, you have to admit he’s right: God could do intervene and save now, but He doesn’t. So, in that sense at least, the continuing pain is God’s fault. Yet Billings rightly emphasizes that this blaming God isn’t an  act of unbelief, but an expression of profound faith in the promises of God’s lovingkindness (hesed), the concept that he claims is the theological heart of the Psalter. If the Psalmist didn’t believe the promises, why would he be perplexed when God doesn’t keep them?

Psalms of lament give articulation to our deepest griefs, even to the grief of being abandoned by God (Psalm 22) and left in the darkness of Sheol (Psalm 88). They articulate our complaints against God, emboldening us in prayer. If complaint Psalms were not in the Bible, would we dare argue with God? God can handle it. But laments aren’t simply venting and self-pity. They move through confusion toward praise, and they aim at the glory of God’s kingdom. At base, they are appropriate prayers because the Psalms are the prayers of Jesus, whom we join as His body. Lament takes up our stories of sorrow and loss into God’s story in Christ. Reflecting on his condition and on the Psalms, he questions whether he wants people to pray for “complete healing.” Rather, he wants prayer to be faithful as he walks the path that God has given him.

In the latter half of the book, Billings broadens out the analysis. Lament is neglected in Christian worship, and that is unfortunate because it provides a way to participate both protest against the world as it now is and in hope for a world to come. Lament is also a means of Christian resistance to the death-denial that is so rampant in modern society. 

Rejoicing in Lament is a rich and balanced treatment of suffering, made personal and poignant by the author’s suffering. It is a gift to the church, a word of grace dug out from deep suffering.