I've been reflecting on the value of lament prayer ever since I went through a particularly dark time in my life many years ago. After not praying for some months, I found the lament psalms in the Bible as the door to hope, which opened me up to praying again.
Lament as the Door to Hope
Lament psalms are not decorous and “proper”; they do not conform to the way that many Christians think we ought to pray. They are utterly honest, and thus often abrasive, attempts to grapple with God over situations that do not seem right.
To know that such honest prayers were canonized in the Bible (as models for our prayer) and to be able to articulate my own pain (no holds barred) to the Creator of the universe—that is what reawakened my faith. I gained a sense through lament prayer that God was willing to take my suffering seriously. That was the kind of God I could trust.
Lament in Popular Music
As I have come to value lament prayer, I noticed that there were profound lyrics by various contemporary artists that articulated lament or protest to God, which people of faith could learn from.
Three pieces that have impacted me are “Bartender” by the Dave Matthews Band (2002), “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” by the Smashing Pumpkins (1995), and “Dear God” by XTC (1986). All three songs are formulated as prayers, directly addressing God with complaints, and calling on God for help.
Bartender
“Bartender” moves generally from petition to complaint. Intertwined with verses that address first “brother of mine” then “sister of mine” and then “mother of mine,” we find two verses where the singer pleads directly to God (the Bartender) to fill his glass “With the wine you gave Jesus that set him free / After three days in the ground.” Also interspersed between various verses is the cry: “I’m on bended knees / Oh, Bartender, please!” And once, “Oh, Father, please!”
In the second half of the song, complaint dominates, with the admission that the singer is overcome by another drink, which seems stronger than the one he’s been asking for. In counterpoint to the plea for resurrection life in the first half of the song, we find (also stated in two verses) this deathly admission: “The wine that’s drinking me / Came from the vine that strung Judas from the Devil’s tree / Its roots deep, deep in the ground.” Yet perhaps complaint doesn’t quite have the final word, since the song ends with the passionate cry: “I’m on bended knees / Oh, Bartender, please!” In this beautiful acoustic solo version, the song trails off into wordless, plaintive wailing.
Bullet with Butterfly Wings
The complaint in “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” is that “the world is a vampire, sent to drain” and speaks of “betrayed desires,” while the chorus articulates the singer’s experience that “despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage.” In the midst of repeating this line over an over, there is an external voice saying, “What is lost can never be saved.” Yet the singer yearns to be significant to God, almost screaming the line: “Jesus was an only son for you!” The song ends seemingly without hope, with the refrain, “I still believe that I cannot be saved”; the external voice has been internalized.
Warning: This song is in the “metal” genre. The music is especially abrasive (which makes it even more powerful). When I’ve used it in teaching, some older church people asked me to turn it down (or even off!). However, I used to play this song in the car on my way to band practice at church. My kids, who would often accompany me, came to call it “the church song”!
Dear God
“Dear God” also contains petitions, asking God to “make it better down here” and pleading: “we need a big reduction in amount of tears.” Specific problems are cited in the first two verses, including poverty and war, which afflict “all the people that you made in your image.” And in each case God is indicted as the cause of the problem. Starvation is because “they don’t get enough to eat / From God” and war is because “they can’t make opinions meet / About God.” And each verse ends by saying “I can’t believe in you.”
Then the third verse turns to the crazy things written in the Bible (“Your name is on a lot of quotes in this book”) and those people made in God’s image “Still believing that junk is true / Well I know it ain’t and so do you / Dear God.” The musical variations, from gentle to insistent, with violins at one point, make the lyrics especially poignant.
Then comes the bridge, where the music first pulls back, then increases in dynamic intensity to a climax. This section juxtaposes various elements of Christian theology (which the singer refuses to believe) with a list of wrongs in the world, followed by this declaration: “The hurt I see helps to compound/ That Father, Son and Holy Ghost / Is just somebody’s unholy hoax.”
But the song ends with a highly paradoxical statement: “And if you’re up there you’d perceive / That my heart’s here upon my sleeve / If there’s one thing I don’t believe in / It’s you / Dear God.” The question is why someone who doesn’t believe in God would tell this to God. Indeed, why they would write an entire song addressed to a God they don’t believe in? Because (and that’s the point of “my heart’s here upon my sleeve”) they desperately want to believe.
It was my engagement with lament prayer that led to my book, Abraham’s Silence: The Binding of Isaac, the Suffering of Job, and How to Talk Back to God (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021). Here I addressed examples of vigorous prayer in the Bible, including the lament psalms, prophetic intercession in the tradition of Moses, and the book of Job. These examples prodded me to ask why Abraham didn’t lament or protest when God asked him to sacrifice his son, Isaac. The book ends with a theology of lament prayer applicable to Christians in a world of pain and suffering. You can take a look at the Table of Contents and read the Introduction to Abraham’s Silence here.
About the author
Dr. J. Richard Middleton
J. Richard Middleton, professor of biblical worldview and exegesis at Northeastern Seminary, is a widely published in religious periodicals and journals and is the author of five books. His new book, Abraham’s Silence: The Binding of Isaac, the Suffering of Job, and How to Talk Back to God, is published by Baker Academic (2021). Special areas of interest include Old Testament theology, the doctrine of Creation, Christianity and contemporary culture, and the books of Genesis, Job, the Psalms, and Samuel. Dr. Middleton has been president of the Canadian-
American Theological Association (2011–2014) and president of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies (2019–2021). He also serves as an adjunct professor of Old Testament at the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology in Kingston, Jamaica.