Lament/Complaining Prayer Analysis

Lament / complaining prayer is to bring our sorrow to God. As Bill says, “the lament prayer serves to articulate the problem that has arisen for the prayer. Characteristic in this articulation are hard and accusing questions (e.g., “Why?”) mediating complaints that something terribly wrong has occurred in the life of the suppliant.” Laments are common in the Old Testament but they are not common in the modern day church of the West. The modern day church forgets the necessity of lament over suffering and pain. The absence of lament in the church isolates suffering individuals and it also promotes indifference to injustice through silence of pain. When lament is lost and injustice is common, the church will lose the witness to the world. I agree with Brad, Bill and West that we need to recover lament in the church.
Divine-human dialogue
Our current practice in the church is that we must not question God. Bill raises a good comment that “if God is a God whom we cannot question, then what kind of God is to whom we are committing ourselves?” West says that …show more content…
Brad argues in a psychological direction about object-relations and ego development. I agree with Brad that “where there is lament, the believer is able to take initiative with God and so develop over against God the ego strength that is necessary for responsible faith“ . If we are unable to initiate, we are only left with praise. As Brad says “the outcome is a ‘False Self’, bad faith which is based on fear and guilt and lived out as resentful or self-deceptive works of righteousness. The absence of lament makes a religion of coercive obedience the only possibility.” The “I-lament” as expressed by Job is a good example of taking initiative. The “I-lament” can be well accepted by contemporary culture of promoting “I” and the church should not have difficulty to recover lament prayer in the