Lament

I have heard that complaining can be distinguished from lamenting by the fact that the lament has an element of hope.

In a book that discussed Christian art, I was reading a critique that many art expressions deemed Christian a lack a realistic, or relevant acknowledgment of sin. I see a version of this critique in popular Christian music. I don’t hear songs that have the kind of lamenting over sin and its footprint that I read in books like Jeremiah for example. I personally don’t have the cultural niche for lamenting. When something awful happens I just want to get over it and feel comfortable again. I feel (whether self-imposed or not) pressure to have a consistent happiness. It might be captured by the expression, “I’m a Christian, I can be broken or anguished. Shouldn’t I have joy knowing that I’m saved?”

I want to say a thought about the pressure to be happy. It seems that I and those around me don’t have a cultural frame work to experience each others trouble. If someone approaches another with a phrase of complete despair, it is awkward and uncomfortable. I, speaking for myself, want to avoid it.

I feel pressure to think that if someone is suffering or lamenting there must be something wrong with that person. When perhaps in reality they are acting very appropriately in their context.

Maybe a place start digging the foundation for a right lament is in art things.