Loss and Lament

Kasey Olander: 

Welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology to everyday life. I'm Kasey Olander. I'm the web content specialist here at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. We really appreciate you joining us today. Today's topic is a little bit heavier because we're talking about loss and lament. We're talking about grief and the feelings that accompany it because this is just a reality in the broken world that we live in. So, we are joined by two esteemed guests. One of them is Dr. Sam Won. He is Director of Ministry Formation and Adjunct Professor of Old Testament here at DTS. So, Sam, thanks for joining us today. 

Sam Won: 

I'm really happy to be here. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. And then we also have Rebecca Carrell, director of apprenticeships and adjunct professor in Media Arts and Worship Department here at DTS. Rebecca, thanks for being back with us. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Thank you so much for having me. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. Like I said, this episode has two esteemed guests and I think it's really a conversation worth having. But I especially want to talk to you if you're in a season of grief, of sorrow, of sadness about any life circumstances that you may be walking through. I just want you to know that the Lord sees you and cares for you. And it's for that reason that we want to have this conversation because it's part of the human experience in this world that we live in after Genesis three and in this current phase. So I want to say first off that the reason for having both of these guests, Sam just co-facilitated a lament psalm writing workshop here at DTS and has, like I said, the background in Old Testament. And then Rebecca recently did a chapel message at DTS. And so I'm excited to bring these ideas together and talk about how we approach this potentially tough topic as believers. So Rebecca, I'll start with you, but I'm going to ask each of you how you started reflecting in the areas of loss and grief and lament. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

It's interesting because every now and then the Lord will burden me with something that I may not necessarily have a ton of personal experience in, but I will start seeing it everywhere I go. And I think it was maybe about 12 years ago that a friend of mine lost her brother. And so I went to the funeral and I had to sneak in the back late. And right as I was sitting down, the pastor took center stage and his voice just thundered out into this packed house that today we are not grieving. He said it was so much passion. We are not grieving. We are celebrating because we know where our brother is. Now, I don't ever think death is something to celebrate, but I would not have felt quite so offended had this been a 107-year-old saint that had served the Lord all his life. This was a 43-year-old man who left behind a broken wife and two small children, and it had been a drug overdose. It was tragic on every level. And I felt for the pastor to take away permission to grieve was to do such a disservice. And what I wish he would have said was, "You have permission to grieve." 

And I think somewhere along the way, we have picked up this notion that grief and faith are incompatible or that grief and hope are incompatible and they're not. And so it was after that that it was like there was just this bee in my bonnet or this pebble in my shoe. And I just started seeing everywhere I looked, these examples of where we are shoving grief aside. And then I went through some loss of my own and I was amazed at how isolated I felt, the pressure I felt to put on a happy face when inside I just felt like my world had been torn in two. And so the chapel message I gave that you just referenced was a message that has probably been percolating in me for about 12 years. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. Ever since that really heavy experience. That totally makes sense. And I think a lot of us can relate to that either like put on a happy face or like, can't you give my friends permission to just be where they are? 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Right. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Right. 

Kasey Olander: 

Absolutely. Sam, what about you? How did you reflect on this? 

Sam Won: 

I didn't have quite the dramatic life event that Rebecca did, but it was like in pieces, there were these formative moments. So one of them was when I was in high school, my grandmother passed away in Korea. And so it was the first time I'd ever seen my dad who's a very typical Korean, stoic man, I saw him weep and just grieve in ways that was like almost strange to me because I'm like, "Who is this? This is not who I was used to." That was like maybe moment one. And then it was my first year here at DTS. I was a first year ThM student and we had arrived on campus and there was this pall. And it turned out that one of the beloved professors on faculty had died that summer or just really recently. So it wasn't anyone we would have known as first year students, but you could just feel that on this campus, something was amiss. 

And then I heard a couple of the most powerful chapel messages right at the beginning of the year in which a couple of our professors and one of them being Dr. Chisholm, who ends up a mentor to me, and they give these beautiful messages in which they stress death is not to be trifled with. If you minimize death, indirectly you're minimizing the life and the sacrifice of Christ because why would he even have to come and be who he is and do what he does if death is such a insignificant thing? 

It got me thinking. So that was more of like this cognitive like, "Okay. Something I need to really chew on." And then from then, as a young youth pastor, I had to do a memorial service for one of the kids in the youth group who had died of a chronic illness. So he was one of these children who all his life had just battled and in his teen years he finally succumbed. And I just remembered feeling like overwhelmingly sad. And so I had no desire to conduct a memorial service in which we were going to try to spin things. And so that was hard. And then later, I'm further along as a pastor and then one of our really beloved church members, she passes away from cancer. So now again, it's this moment where I'm like asked to go to be up to the front and have this shepherding role. And I felt no desire at all to try and make it into something positive. In fact, it was in these moments that I think like probably the spirit's leading, but I was starting to integrate like what I saw with my dad all those years ago. And then what I heard from the professors my first semester on campus. And so these things started to click into place. 

And then the final piece was, once I got into the academic world and I'm teaching Old Testament and I teach in the psalms, I've done research in the psalms for even like my dissertation and the more I'm studying and the deeper I'm studying these things, I'm starting to see. It really grew my appreciation for God because what I saw in the scriptures was, "Oh, this validates what I've been feeling like death really is bad, God grieves it and God grieves even things like not just death, but any human experience that violates the imago Dei, violates human flourishing." And so that really just brought it to where we are today. And so I made it a point like when we were revamping our internship curriculum, for example, I said, "We need to put in a case study on grief because I think it's one of these gaps in our training because we're in the square in the middle of evangelicalism." And I feel like that's one of the places where you see these malformed theological practices. 

Kasey Olander: 

And that's a great transition because that's actually where I want to go next. You guys have highlighted a number of things. Rebecca, you alluded to different kinds of loss and you mentioned that there are different areas of grief, not just death. Although of course grief includes death but you're mentioning all different kinds of ... Like loss of human flourishing, injustice and other things to grieve. So I think that that's one misconception that we have this association of, okay, grief always just means death or like, “That's the only thing that I'm allowed to grieve. That's legal to be upset about that,” but there's a wide variety of human experiences that cause us sorrow and grief. So what are some other misconceptions or other malformed areas? 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Just to validate what you just said, seconds before walking in here, I was having a conversation with a student who is grieving the fact that he's still single and he wants to be married. And I said, "You are absolutely allowed to grieve that." And what happens when we don't give ourselves permission to grieve is we end up stuffing this very natural and God-given emotion that I think the biblical authors actually give us as a pathway to navigate the pain and the suffering of this life. He's not just mourning his singleness, he's mourning loneliness, he's mourning the lack of a family, he's mourning the lack of a legacy, he's mourning the lack of intimate fellowship all the time. And so one of the things that I think the church doesn't meditate on as often as it could is the fact that when we grieve, we are putting our spirit in alignment with the Holy Spirit and we are agreeing over the broken nature of this world. It is not of the Lord that we are lonely. It is not of the Lord that we feel cut off from community. These are things that we need to spend time, the appropriate amount of time ... I don't think we should live there. But the appropriate amount of time to process and grieve. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. That's a great example because that's not a life and death scenario, but that's a perfectly legitimate desire that's not being fulfilled right now. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Absolutely. And from where he sits, the Lord is answering this prayer for everybody else and he feels unseen. That's a cause for grief. To feel unseen and unnoticed by the Lord. We see that come up in scripture and the Lord always answers it. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. 

Sam Won: 

Yeah. So when I teach on psalms in one of our OT classes, I make this point. If you actually go through and take like what are classified as lament psalms throughout the Psalter, you find number one, it's a huge corpus. It's a big chunk of the Psalter. So one of the funny observations I make is if we were to do Sunday worship proportionally to what we see in the Psalter, which is considered like our Israels and our song hymn book, you would probably have to sing way more lament songs, but we don't sing any lament songs. I actually did this a few years ago. I asked students, "Can you name a single popular praise and worship song that you would say lines up with like a biblical lament?" We really couldn't come up with anything. And it's because I think our theology in the West and especially in evangelical circles is very triumphalistic. And so we want to put everything on the table and push it to the place where it's going to be all okay. And that is true. There is a day coming and what that does is it just minimizes all of the hills and valleys we travel before we get there. 

So when you look at actually what's grieved and lamented in the psalms, it's surprisingly very little dedicated to death itself. Actually, you mentioned some of it already. Injustice gets grieved a lot. It's the psalmist saying, "I am seeing something in the world and it does not sit well." This is not the way it should be if God is who he is. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

How long will my enemies triumph over me? 

Sam Won: 

Yeah. And so there's that. Loneliness. The psalmists are basically writing these prayers and songs saying, "God, I feel abandoned. I feel lonely." And it could manifest in the way that your conversation with your students. So when you look at what the biblical writers actually grieve, it's actually more these things. It's like bad human experiences. Things that feel like it's not right. And a lot of times that does manifest as this is not fair or it's not just. And that's why I think we have to be careful. So when we say a lament Psalm, that's a descriptive category. So it means we are just calling it that. We don't know internally what the writers would have considered these things. So we give them ... That's form criticism. It's we give these categories and say, "This is a lament Psalm. This is an imprecation. This is a Psalm of trust." I think they're way more organic though, like the boundaries between all of those are very fluids. 

Kasey Olander: 

Sure. They're not just restricted. 

Sam Won: 

Yeah. In a lament and oftentimes complaint alongside statements of confidence. So anyway, I think that that, first of all, we just see modeled and it's not just in the Psalter, the prophets. Boy, they grieve a lot of things. And oftentimes it is those failures of a community to show this is how you love your neighbor or this is how you love God. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. And I like going in that direction because that already compares what we see in scripture to what we see practiced a lot of times in our churches or in our Christian expectations. A lot of times, I almost think one of the misconceptions too is, well, bad things shouldn't happen to me. Something about, I don't know if it's songs or some kind of popular content, I shouldn't be suffering. And okay, so that already is another like misplaced expectation. Whereas in Scripture, we see that all the time. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

I call that an emaciated theology of suffering. 

Kasey Olander: 

Talk more about that. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Oh my goodness. In America, there is almost never a ... I should say in the West, there is almost never a reason to suffer. For the most part, you can get a little piece of plastic and you can buy anything you want. We have food in abundance, which our ancient brothers and sisters would not have really been able to imagine. The average Jewish person would have still had ... Sandra Richter said this in her book, Stewards of Eden, I think it's 60 hungry days a year. 

Kasey Olander: 

Wow. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Right. We have these magic machines that make cold spaces hot and hot spaces cold. We don't have to sit in our feelings ever. We can anesthetize, we can binge-eat, we can binge-drink, we can binge-watch Netflix, we can do all of these things. And the problem with that is that it malforms us, like you said, Dr. Won, into people who don't know how to suffer, can't comfort the suffering, can't stand in the face of pain, don't know how to minister to people who are in pain and who turn funerals into celebrations. And honestly, I think it starts when we're very young because what do we tell our children when they come to us crying with something that to them is a very real hurt. We say, "Don't cry. Don't cry." We praise people who manage to muscle through their pain instead of saying, "Hey, let me be a safe place for you to feel that. Let me create some space. And you know what, honey, mommy's going to cry with you because I can see how sad you are and that makes me sad. And so let's just sit here and let's think about why we're sad and let's talk through it." 

So I think that if we can't come to a place where we learn how to sit in suffering for a minute and feel it and allow the Lord to shape us and form us, I don't know that we'll ever learn how to grieve properly or even approach the things that we do grieve properly. I don't know that we'll have a proper sense of justice if we don't have a proper sense of grief. 

Kasey Olander: 

Oh yeah. Yeah. That's a good word too. It's almost like we just emphasize the parts of the Bible, the rejoice in all circumstances. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

I say it again, rejoice. 

Kasey Olander: 

Cherry picking the parts that make us comfortable or the parts that we like. And it's not obviously that we should ignore those parts. Obviously those are part of scripture, but it's looking at the whole thing. How many of these things can we qualify as lament psalms? And also the fact that it's so encouraging to me that people in scripture are lamenting different things besides death in addition to death. Like people are lamenting just the vast array of human experiences that are unjust. So what are some other ways ... I would do want to go back to the lament psalms in particular. Maybe talk a little about their structure, if you wish Dr. Won. 

Sam Won: 

Sure. So form criticism has helped us in biblical scholarship to come up with categories. And I think the genres are generally pretty solid. Just because they're not implicitly derived, it doesn't mean that our descriptive categories are bad. And so what you normally see in a lament Psalm are some of the common elements and they're not always going to be in every Psalm, but you will see a formal complaint. Like the psalmist makes very clear, I am not generally sad. This is what's making me upset. And then there's often going to be like some word of confidence. This is the interesting thing. These laments almost always include, "But I trust in you or I know you are this. I believe this." And then there's often ... So there's two kinds, there's individual and communal. I think that's an interesting thing too, because I think in the West, we simply don't think communally very often. It's not natural. That's a little bit more of an Eastern thing. 

And so you have individual like national or communal and in the individual ones, you'll also see like motivational statements. So the psalmist might say to the Lord, "Here's why you need to deliver me. Here's why you need to hear my prayer." Like one of my favorites is just saying, "If you don't deliver me, there's going to be no one to praise you." It's kind of this intense emotional appeal to God and it's almost like you're trying to twist his arm and just say, "Do you want worship? Well, you got to come through for me then I'll worship you." So there are these statements that sound like vows, like if you do this ... And sometimes we almost are uncomfortable with how transactional that might sound. And then the two, there's two main kinds. There's open and closed. So some really just never resolve. The psalmist just finishes the psalm and it's not clear whether it's ever been answered or whether it's going to get fixed, but he just ends with some sort of, "I'm still hoping, I'm still going to hold on, but things are not good." 

And then there are closed laments where the concluding statements seem a little bit more definitive or a little bit more concrete. And so those could almost sound like, "I wonder if this was written after the fact." And this is a psalmist who's looking back and saying, "At the time, here's what I was going through." So those are just some of the technical ways in which you can analyze these psalms that feel like laments. But I think the boundary between a lament and an imprecation is very thin. Sometimes it's just organic. As I'm complaining, there's this organic shift and so if you're really God, here's what you need to do to those people who are doing these horrific things. So imprecation’s not like a wholly separate category. I think it's a type. And the most fascinating ... I'm rambling, but one of my favorite things is to compare what we call psalms of trust and they look almost identical to the psalms of lament in form and structure, except one goes into lament, one goes towards, "But this I call to mind and I have hope and I'm going to trust in you." 

And so it's really fascinating that you can sing the same song, pray the same prayer, and yet there's some examples where the psalmist goes one way and there's others where it goes the other way. So my pet theory is that this is God's way of saying, "Some of you have this kind of faith and I see you and I hear you." Others of you have that kind of faith where you're able to say, "We're going to celebrate at this funeral and I see you and I hear you too." So that's ... Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. And it's funny, it almost comes across like, "Hey God, maybe you forgot about this. Let me remind you." 

Sam Won: 

Sure. 

Kasey Olander: 

Because of course we don't think that God forgets things or anything like that, but there's a kind of honesty there that I think is really refreshing. Same thing with all of those elements that you've outlined. That there's a particular complaint. It's not that God doesn't know what's going on, but it's expressing, "Hey, this is what I'm upset about. This is what I'm grieving in addition to having that confidence." And you talked about the psalmist looking back after the fact. "Oh, I better take on all that sad stuff and just go with the trust line in there." The editor wasn't like, "Okay, no, let's leave that part out." They don't negate each other, but the part of trusting in God is coexistent with the, "Okay, I'm upset and I don't see where you are or whatever those things may be." And so that's another thing that I feel like you've highlighted there is that there are these seemingly contradictory ideas. Maybe we find it easier to try to be black and white about stuff, but these seemingly contradictory ideas that are actually just reflective of the human experience. Our emotions are mingled together and maybe to some degree we're like upset about this thing while happy about this thing. And there are a lot of circumstances in our lives that evoke these, again ... Maybe tensions is a way to phrase it. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Yeah. Humanity is not tidy. Our emotions are not typically organized. The psalms are highly organized, but within that structure, we see just this beautiful picture of what it looks like to be human and it's messy and the psalms are so honest. I love that the Lord has preserved for us. Even when we are so broken and we can't find our own words, the Lord has preserved words of anger, words of hope, words of deep grief. He's preserved all of it because it's all part of the human experience. 

Kasey Olander: 

Oh yeah. Yeah. What a gift that is to be able to come to him without having to come up with something or tidy ourselves up before we start praying and not pretend, "Okay, God doesn't know. I can just pretend like I'm okay." 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Oh, no. Come with all of your emotional dirt on your face because he sees it anyway. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. Exactly. Which then kind of brings us to, okay, if we can come to God that way and start with vulnerability there because that's what's true and that's what's honest, then how do we facilitate that among one another? If we've been taught from such an early age, don't cry and then, "Okay, crying people freak me out. I'm not really sure what to do with the hurting." Instead of trying to shove people off to this side, how can we foster community with one another that is like genuine about our human experience? Sam? 

Sam Won: 

I think recognition is like one of the things that it seems super simple. That's almost too obvious, isn't it? But I think that's the step we often struggle to ... That's step one is just simply to say to someone, "Man, I can't even imagine what you're feeling right now." I would feel like that too, I imagine if I was in that situation. And so rather than jumping to, let me help you, let me heal this, let me fix this. Not be in a hurry, but rather to just say, "I'm going to just be here and I'm going to just let you vent, let you feel all the feelings. I'm going to let you go through all the ups and downs, but I'm going to be here." And I think that's something we don't do really well. In internships we call it the fixer mentality. 

So tons of people who go into ministry ... I don't know if it's a chicken or the egg thing, but often, when you end up in seminary, you see so many of these fixers and their general approach to wanting to help other people is to fix them. And those people generally are not the other type, which is the embodied presence. So some people are great. That's their natural disposition is to say, "I don't have a whole lot of solutions, but I'm going to be here with you. So I'm just going to be, whatever you need me to do, I'm going to do it, but like I don't have any solutions." And so I think getting out of that fixer mentality might be a great first step to just say, "This is really uncomfortable, but I think I need to allow this person to stay here and I need to be with them in it." 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. I think that part of that is, like we said for a variety of reasons, growing up and stuff, uncomfortable for us. I think also it's one of those things where it feels different on the receiving end than it does on the giving end because you're like, "Well, I'm not helping. If I'm just sitting here, I'm not really accomplishing much." But on the other end, like receiving somebody who's just being that embodied presence is so different and so helpful much more than the fixer who's trying to give you three easy steps. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Yeah. I've thought a lot about what life must have been like when Jesus walked the earth and people tended to live very close together in little villages of 150, 200 people. And then there were people who lived in cities too. But when someone died ... And this is just talking about grieving death. When someone died, the whole village felt it. Because if you live with 200 people, you feel it when someone's gone. They had a period of mourning where you would wear clothes that illustrated that you were mourning, where the appropriate thing to do was to weep and to wail and to let that emotion out. And then you lived in this tight-knit community where you were not the only one that felt their loss. And so I've thought a lot about how in my own seasons of deep grief, the most difficult thing was the loneliness. It really was just feeling utterly abandoned by people that I really thought would show up for me. And so I think one of the first things we can do is commit to entering someone else's heaviness. 

And just know that part of what it means to be the body of Christ is we rejoice with those who rejoice and we mourn with those who mourn. We weep with those who weep. And that requires a discipline and an intentionality that is foreign to us because we do leap to what makes us feel good because we have so much in our culture that makes us feel good. We don't ever have to sit in suffering. And I've also found ... And it's funny that we're having this conversation because right now I've got some close friends who are grieving the loss of their 16-year-old daughter. So I'm in this. And I have found what has surprised me is that their daughter, she'll come up in conversation, we will have our moment, we will cry about her, we will talk about her, and then it'll go on for a few minutes, and then we move on to something else. It's not like our relationship has centered around the grief. The grief is a piece of it, but it's not the only piece of it. And usually when we're grieving something, just to have someone else acknowledge it and cry with us or hold space for us to cry or be angry or put our head on the table, just to hold space for someone to do that gets them through those moments faster. 

And I've thought a lot about in ... Oh, it's in Galatians 6, I think, where we're to bear one another's burdens. And what I feel like I've seen is in taking on and agreeing to intentionally shoulder some of their burden, I feel as though I've seen perhaps it has lessened it somewhat for them. There is nothing that fixes the loss of a child. Nothing. However, it is better to go through it with people than by yourself. And so if we can't do anything else, we can just consistently show up. Yeah. I think that I've seen, and for the people who have shown up for me in the past, that's just been what has ministered to me the most. I said this in the chapel message, the church tends to be fabulous first responders. We are first at the scene with the casserole and the flowers and the food and the words and all the things and we clean their houses and we help plan ... We are good at that. But those who are bereaved, who are deeply grieving, whether it's a death or something else, need long-term care providers. 

Sam Won: 

Yeah. I loved that line. It was a great way to conceptualize the reality that you're talking about. And I think part of that is that there is in our Christian thinking almost a guilt. There's a point at which I feel we start to look at the grieving person and say, "That's enough." I feel like your faith is in jeopardy because if you're still angry at God or if you're still struggling with this, then do you really believe the Bible? Is Jesus real to you? And that's the part I think has done so much harm to people. 

So my colleague, Dr. Aaron Switzer, has a great way of putting this. He has a background in counseling and crisis care. And he said, "Grief is like this wet towel and you ring it and you ring it and you ring it and water just keeps dripping out. Now at first you ring it and it's pouring out. You could fill a bucket, but over time you ring it and it's dripping. And then now it's damp, but nothing's coming out." And he said, "The thing is, everyone's towel's different." So some people may have like a hand towel and they ring it and they ring it and then there's a certain amount of time goes by and then it feels like it's starting to dry out. And he said, "Some people are carrying beach towels and it's loaded and there's no amount of wringing that seems to get the towel dry." Those are the people I think we look at as Christians and feel uncomfortable with because we're like, "Hey, I feel like the expiration date's gone by. And so why are you still like this?" 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Two weeks and a casserole. 

Sam Won: 

Yeah. So I think that speaks to what you're talking about. In the short term, we're very good about acknowledging, "Oh man, those tears, those are real. I'm feeling them with you." I think it's the duration that makes some people uncomfortable because we are not sure if our theology would allow that to be the case for a believer. But I feel like there's just nothing in scripture that says, "Here's the expiration date or here's the terminal date." Once you hit this point, it's time to just rejoice and we just don't know. Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

Right. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

And for the early believers, I think they had an understanding that suffering was actually the norm and the pockets of joy were where heaven broke in on earth. And so that's where I start to think about an emaciated theology of suffering. Pardon me. That's where I start to think about an emaciated theology of suffering where it's just so foreign to us that we don't know what to do with it, but our ancient brothers and sisters lived with it. It was in their face all the time. They did not always have enough food. They did not always ... If something happened to their cloak, their cloak was gone and they were cold at night. So we have so much comfort that you're taking my comfort if you're uncomfortable and if it's two years later and you're still grieving and I have no capacity for that, well, that loss is going to be there for the rest of their life and they're going to have pockets of grief for the rest of their life. And so I think it takes ... What I want to see is a softening in the American church and an increased ability to endure the uncomfortable, because I think that's what we're lacking. 

Kasey Olander: 

I also wonder if part of it ... I don't know who started saying “how are you” as a greeting here, but it's not a question. It's just you say “good” and you move along. You don't actually want to know how you are you know? 

Rebecca Carrell: 

I've had to learn that with grieving people. You don't ask them how they are. You say, "It's so good to see you. " Because if you ask them how they are, they have to lie. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yes. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

I've felt it when I'm just crushed on the inside and someone's like, "How are you?" And I know they don't want to know. And so then you lie and then you feel bad for lying. And so it's just so much better to say, "I'm so glad to see you. It's so good to see you today." 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. You're like, "We're walking past each other in the hallway, how do I have time to actually engage with that question?" 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Exactly. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. I feel like that's one of those things that is acutely ... I don't know if painful is the word, but there are a lot of things that grief really highlights about our society. One of them is just the casual “how are you?” that doesn't really hurt a person who's not in a season of grief. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Right. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. And there are also, I think we do it to ourselves and to other people, but essentially the things that you guys have highlighted are adding insult to injury when we make people feel guilty or embarrassed or sad about being sad. We're disappointed that we are suffering. It's not just the suffering itself. It's also, now I feel guilty about it because I haven't moved on yet. Or now I feel like I can't talk to people about it because they have this expectation. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Oh, the masking? 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Wouldn't you agree? 

Sam Won: 

Sure. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

It's just the pressure to mask and put on this happy, happy, joy, joy front is so soul draining. It's so difficult. And it robs us of our authenticity when in fact the church should be the very place where we can go with our broken hearts because when it's ... I'll just beat this like a drum. When someone takes the time to acknowledge it, gives you that hug, lets you cry, you feel better and you move through that portion of today's grief faster. But to not acknowledge it leaves it like internal bleeding that just keeps bleeding. 

Sam Won: 

Yeah. And this will go to how we don't lament and grieve even other human experiences really well, is that part of the thing that we can do that's loving is to not minimize, but actually recognize like, "Yeah, that's a real hurt." And rather than trying to like brush it off and just say, "Well ..." so one of my pet peeves is when people do the at least argument and say, "Well, at least you're not starving in Africa." And I'm like, "That serves no benefit. That does nothing good in this moment." The person who's probably really sad is not ignorant. They're probably aware of others who are suffering and probably if we were to do like a suffering Olympics, they would say, "Yeah, I'm probably more bronze right now compared to this person." 

So you mentioned this in your chapel message, I'm so glad you did. John 11 is one of my favorite places because what Jesus shows us is this incredible emotional intelligence. Now, some people are going to say, "Man, why are you reading these psychobabble terms into the Bible?" I'm like, "Okay. I won't call it that, but what I see is the narrator clearly giving you panel with two characters, Mary and Martha. And throughout the gospels, they've already been established as comparison contrast figures." 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Yes. 

Sam Won: 

Here's the thing though, that's never meant to be one's right, one's wrong. I believe the purpose of the Mary and Martha presence is to show you, here's two different ways that faith operates. So Martha wants to process. She's like, "I need your words." 

Rebecca Carrell: 

She needs words. 

Sam Won: 

I need you to tell me it's going to be okay, affirm what I believe and say I'm not believing in false hope. Mary's not there. And I think the narrator gives you clues. It's not because she doesn't care that Jesus is there. He notes that when she heard he was there, she sprung up and went with such urgency that the people around were like, "Wait. What's going on?" So I think she was so despondent she was lost in her just sadness. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Totally agree. 

Sam Won: 

So she's in her room, she doesn't want to be around anyone, but then she hears Jesus is there. She goes to him and then she quotes almost word for word exactly what Martha said, but without the argument at the end. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

And she falls at his feet. 

Sam Won: 

Yeah. And then Jesus sees this. There are no words. It's this incredibly strong description of emotion. And then our famous favorite Sunday school verse, right? I memorized a verse, he wept. But what I see there is Jesus saying, "You're both sad and you're both sad in different ways and one's not better than the other and I'm going to love you both in your sadness." That would be a wonderful thing for us to learn from and model, I think, because that's part of that. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

I love that so much. It's one of my favorite things about that narrative. And then I also love verse 36 where the Jews who were with them, they said, "See how much he loved him." And it was some time before I caught that because you read it so quickly, Jesus wept and the Jews said, "See how much he loved him." But there's a pause there. There's some space in between those two verses because Jesus wept demonstratively enough that the people around him felt compelled to comment. So this was not a tear trickling down the side of his face. This was open, demonstrative, loud, grieving. He entered into their sadness. That is just one of the most precious things about our savior that I think has given me more comfort than anything else. 

Sam Won: 

Yeah. I think that little statement is you're right. If you glance over it, you'll miss some important things. I think the other thing it does is it lets you know, don't misunderstand what was going on earlier because it would have been easy for some to hear or read the story and think, " We must not have loved him that much. He tarried. Why didn't he go right away? "And so it's the narrator's kind of artistic way of saying ... And by the way, people saw it and they knew this was real. So it's saying," Don't think for a second Jesus was just like putting on a show or trying to just fake an appearance. "He loved Lazarus too, not just Mary and Martha. And so, yeah. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Yeah. That's just beautiful. One of the things that has struck me about Jesus is that I think more often than any other descriptor, he's called compassionate. And the New Testament authors will often say he was moved with compassion and his compassion always moved him toward the object of his compassion. And I think that's where we can stand to grow, is to keep our eyes open, to watch for the hurting, and then to allow our compassion to move us toward them. Jesus never ran from a hurting person. Never. Not once. 

Sam Won: 

And he found the people that society by and large either buries or marginalizes. He found the widows, the foreigners, the orphans, the women, the people that society would normally say like, "Your troubles are not worth my time." And then he finds them and then when they do or when they come to him, he doesn't just move on and say, "Look, I've got more important things to do." That's true. He is compassionate and he also seems to just have this special sense of, some of you are blessed to have families and means and so I think you're going to be okay, but some of you, I don't know who's going to take care of you. That's that famous, he saw them like sheep without a shepherd. So that's the other thing real quickly. I think lament is a really good theological mirror because it will reveal to you kind of the things that your heart and your soul value because if it's precious and it's lost or damaged or harmed, you will feel emotion. 

It's like ask any parent watching their kids suffer. It is some of the deepest hurt that you will ever feel. So what you lament tells me a lot about your like theology, your beliefs and the condition of your heart. And so I think one of the things I see that is sad to me is we don't lament the things that break God's heart. We grieve death and we may grieve like some intense loss if it's personal, but we don't do communal. We don't look on the other side of the world and say, "My goodness, I can't imagine what's happening with these families who lost people in the fire in Hong Kong or the flooding or war." We're just quick to just say, "That's not my problem." 

And so I feel like, well, if you look at the psalms though, and also the other biblical places where you see lament, they're showing you what they value because it's echoing what God's value. It's like, I'm lamenting the fact that there's a group of people who are being treated horribly That's worth grieving. I'm lamenting the fact that these people are being oppressed. That's worth lamenting. But I feel like we've made that feel like we shouldn't do that. Like that's not worth our time or that's social justice. That's not gospel centered stuff. 

Kasey Olander: 

As though they're different. Yeah. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

As though they're different. Right. Right. 

Kasey Olander: 

You talked about Jesus moving towards the marginalized, and I wonder if today's culture has made the grieving the marginalized, has made the suffering the marginalized. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

I think so. And I think there's also an element of if you look at who was marginalized in the culture of the first century, this is an honor shame society and you would give honor to get honor. And so the people who were marginalized were the people who had nothing to offer. And I think the same is very much true today. But the widows were marginalized because a widow brought nothing to the table except her need. The orphans were marginalized because they brought nothing to the table except their need. Well, you know what? We bring nothing to our salvation except the sin that makes it necessary. We bring nothing to the Lord that the angels can't give him in abundance. We bring nothing to the table. And while we were yet sinners, Jesus died for us. And so I think that we do live in a very transactional society where we tend to give in order to get, which is completely antithetical to the gospel nature of living, which is an outpouring because the Lord is always pouring in. So yet that was a very long way, Kasey, of saying yes to your statement. Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

I feel like we have come such a long way in this conversation. We've talked about especially how to cultivate communities that are okay with grief and even such a crucial step of acknowledging grief, naming people's emotions and even acknowledging that it's fine to grieve things besides death. It's fine to acknowledge our losses and to see that modeled in scripture with Jesus, with the Psalm. We see Old Testament, New Testament, that the Bible really speaks to our human experience and praise God for that. 

So I want to give you guys just ... If you have any closing thoughts, either to someone who is in a season of grief, because we've talked about the appropriateness of lament as an emotion. And so we acknowledge that all of us have been there and probably will be there again if we're not right now. So any closing thoughts? 

Sam Won: 

Sometimes the students will ask, then what should we learn from the laments in the Bible? And I do think there is some practical things that we learned through them as you start to recognize the form and the way that the psalmists and other biblical writers lamented, what you realize is there's always an element of, "I'm coming to you. " That's really important. Don't underestimate that. The old saying that the relationship is okay as long as you're talking, even if you're fighting. It's when someone goes silent that you start to worry, is this relationship dying or even dead? And so I think God's view ... And I see this more in Job, that would be a whole other conversation. But Job is a great study in what God's not offended by is our anger, frustration, sadness. What he is offended by is if you decide he's not the one to go to with those things. So when you go silent, I think that's where God feels like, "Now you've turned away from me." So the laments always have this element of, "Yeah, I'm directing this at you, Lord, but it's because I know you're the one who can bring me out of this and you're the one who is faithful, you're the one who's good." So there's this right and correct appeal to who God is. 

And so I think part of this is to say, it is a good question to ask is like, who am I going to with this though? And so I shouldn't be ashamed to just go to God with it and just say, "I don't have answers and I'm frustrated. I'm seeing the news and this really makes me angry. Lord, how long are you going to be mocked? Don't let this go on anymore." He can handle that. Like what he can't handle is you just shutting him out and just saying, "You know what? I don't think you are the answer anymore. I don't think you can really do anything anymore." And so, I think even some of the most difficult passages are imprecations, but if you look at all the imprecations in the Bible, the one thing you never see is the person writing it, the psalmist or the author. The key to the biblical imprecation is they never take vengeance into their own hands. What they're really praying is, "Lord, you're the judge, you're just, you're good, and how long are you going to let these evil doers mock you by using unjust scales, dishonest weights, by oppressing people, by violently stealing, by living off of the sweat of another's brow?" And so the imprecation is not coming from a place of bloodlust, it's coming from a place of really in a sense like a righteous imagination. 

And so I think those are a couple of things that are like guardrails to say, "Is my venting healthy or maybe is it like verging into gratuitous or maybe unhealthy lament grief or even anger?" So I think those are just some of the things that give us like, "Oh, okay. There is actually like a rhyme and a reason to how these people are processing their grief, their anger, their frustration, sadness." 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. That's helpful because it's not like God doesn't know what we're already feeling and he's made it a safe place for us to come to him with a pattern, with a model for how to do so, honestly. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Yeah. I love the places in the psalms where they shift and they turn their eyes and they allow the Lord, the Holy Spirit to remind them of who God is. And knowing that there is someone listening to this that was probably drawn by the title and in a place of deep grief yourself right now, I would be remiss if I didn't remind you that everything you are going through right now, every trial, every temptation, every loss, all of this has an expiration date. 

And the fact of the matter is that Paul, who went through unimaginable suffering and torture said these words in Romans eight, "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." He wasn't talking about a splinter or a hangnail. He had been lashed, he had been shipwrecked three times, beaten with rods. He had been stoned, left for dead, he had been left naked, he had gone hunger. This man had endured the kind of torture that most of us will never even be able to imagine. And he said, "Our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us because when Christ comes back, he will make all things new and all things right. And there will be no more crying and no more pain and no more suffering and death will be put to death." And so there is coming a day where you will be able to look back at the things that you have endured and you will say not worth comparing when you think about the riches and treasure we have in Christ. That's our more real reality and we can borrow from that future joy. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. Our hope is in resurrection and Jesus coming back. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

A hundred percent. And he's coming. He's coming. 

Sam Won: 

So I love that you use that text because I was actually ... I wanted to just share this because this is a lament that you don't see in the place you'd expect. It's actually an Ecclesiastes. And it's just Kohelet, he's teaching about all these various realities of life. And I always look at Ecclesiastes as the counterpoint to Proverbs. So Proverbs gives you, if the world works as it should, here's how it works. Do this and then you see this. Wisdom looks ... Ecclesiastes is the other side saying, "Actually, the world is not always going to work that way." But in chapter four, he says this, "So again, I considered all the oppression that continually occurs on earth." This is what I saw. The oppressed were in tears, but no one was comforting them. No one delivers them from the power of their oppressors. So I considered those who were dead and gone more fortunate than those who are still alive. And there's no happy ending here. In fact, the context for this is it's the chapter in which we get the famous two are better than one and a cord of three strands is not easily broken. 

So I think a lot of people don't realize that part of the context for those verses, it's not necessarily marriage, it's really saying woe to any of us who are apart from God, because if God's not with you. So I love what Rebecca did to close that closing thought because the answer to this doesn't come until revelation. Because Kohelet just leaves it at, I saw the tears, no resolution. I can't dry them and no one's drying them. And then what does Jesus say he does? I'm going to wipe away every tear from their eyes. And so it takes a long time to get there, but the ark eventually bends to, "Oh, that's who will dry their tears." He's that champion that Kohelet was like lamenting that he couldn't see and that felt like wasn't there, but God's like, "Be patient. I haven't forgotten. I haven't abandoned and I will eventually wipe away all those tears." So just love that you went there- 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Where else would we go? 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. He has the words of eternal life. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

That's right. That's 100% right. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. Yeah. So we hope that you're encouraged today in the hope of resurrection, but also that should the Lord tarry, that Christianity and yeah, knowing Jesus is a safe place for lament, for grief, for the gamut of human emotions and experiences. So we pray that you would go to him with that. And thank you guys so much for being here. I'm grateful, Sam and Rebecca, that you were able to join us. 

Rebecca Carrell: 

Thank you so much. 

Sam Won: 

Yeah. I really enjoyed the conversation. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. I did as well. And I want to thank you for listening too. If you like our show, go ahead and leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. It's a great way to support the show and help other people to discover us and hopefully to encourage them as well. So we hope that you join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology to everyday life.