Riding the Seesaw of Faith

When I was a kid, I loved playing on the seesaw at the playground because I felt so high up and the view seemed so amazing when it was my turn to be at the top…but it was never quite so enjoyable when it was my turn to drop to the bottom, with my feet in the mud.  But at least the down bit was only momentary. And although we often start our journeys of faith with expectations of being on a continual high, enjoying our new-found sense of God and his love forever more, it can feel that it’s all gone pear-shaped when we inevitably hit the low points where both the view and our faith in faith itself can feel quite different. Most of us live for the ups and simply endure the downs.

But this way of perceiving faith was recently challenged when our church began a Lent series on the book of Lamentations. Spoiler alert: Lamentations isn’t what you might call an upbeat “feel-good” book. In fact, it doesn’t appear to have very many ‘ups’ at all, and it’s ‘downs’ seem depressingly severe. In addition, the author (thought possibly to be Jeremiah) expresses some somewhat shocking sentiments - accusations and recriminations directly to and about God that can smack you in the face if you aren’t paying attention to the movement of tone and cadence throughout its five chapters.

The backstory to this book is that it represents a collection of five lament or funereal poems that give voice to the grief of God’s people in the wake of their exile to Babylon in 587 BCE. Unusually for an entire book of the Bible however, Lamentations focuses on human emotion: emotions that are raw, honest, dark, and even volatile at times. It will come as no surprise therefore that Lamentations is one of the most neglected books of the Bible for western Christians, being generally more comfortable with recitations about God’s goodness and majesty. Since other contemporary forms of communication such as literature, pop music and media all allow for the whole range of human experience to be expressed and explored, I wonder why Christians seem so reticent to acknowledge, to God or fellow Christians, experiential times of turbulence and bewilderment?  Perhaps Lamentations represents a powerful voice that we must learn to hear, especially in our present uncertain times.

And that 21st century uncertainty is often encapsulated by a feeling of being ‘besieged’ as we all try and navigate the threatening storm clouds that keep coming over the horizon of 2025. But what does it mean to feel besieged? In purely military terms of course, it means to be encircled, surrounded, trapped, blockaded from immediate escape, because of enemies encamped all around you. Sometimes we might feel this in a spiritual way, taunted or attacked by Satan, the enemy of our souls.

But our emotions will always be affected in any situation where we feel overwhelmed or flooded with fear, panic, grief and even anger. These emotions cause our bodies and minds to default to the fight, flight or freeze reactions. For instance, if we were in the kind of war zone we see on the evening news, where bombs are constantly raining down all around us, and we don’t know which way to run to reach safety.

Or perhaps a family member has just died, and you feel you’re drowning in grief, but you also have to cope with your child acting out their own grief… behaviour that has caused them to be suspended from school. And just when you think it can’t get any worse, the washing machine has just chosen this moment to pack up too! These are moments when we might feel besieged from all sides, at the end of our rope, causing us cry out to God, ‘enough is enough, I can’t take anymore’.

Judging from the tenor and tone used by its author throughout Lamentations, it would seem he often felt like this. But he wasn’t just an individual lamenting his own bad luck, this was a corporate cry, a prophet who was lamenting an entire nation’s plight. And the imagery he uses, the metaphors referenced, ring like a clarion bell of misery and anguish. ‘I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of the Lord’s wrath. He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship.’ (Lam 3:1, 3)

The author goes on to describe God’s actions against him with the following assertions: ‘He has driven me away, turned his hand against me, walled me in, weighed me down, barred my way, made my paths crooked. Like a bear lying in wait, like a lion hiding, dragging me from my path, mangling me, leaving me for dead. Like an archer who made me the target for his arrows, he pierced my heart.’  (Lam 3: 2-13)

This is pretty meaty stuff….and I wonder how we react to these strongly worded accusations against God? It might be shocking for us to see that instead of the usual plea for God to save his people from their enemies, that God is sometimes perceived as Israel’s enemy.  Now, just to make clear, the underlying context of Lamentations isn’t following the usual argument of a believer who is in dire straits, asking ‘how can God allow innocent people to suffer?’ Because Israel understood how their own actions, by not following God’s ways, had resulted in their painful experience of exile. There was no quibbling about that.

If we assume no contemporary God-follower would dare to express such things however, I can assure you they do. In recent years, I’ve started walking alongside people in their times of trauma, confusion, and grief – partly through the ministry of Spiritual Direction and partly within a bereavement support group we run from our church.  And although 21st century disciples may not use animal metaphors or shake their fist so obviously at the sky, in sitting with those who are really struggling or grief-stricken, the truth is that they often exclaim very similar sentiments  - desperately wanting to escape their situation, feeling they’re being picked on by God or the devil, feeling broken and forgotten, blaming God for their pain. And their mantra is often ‘enough is enough’!

So, if we can overcome our shock at some of its less palatable aspects, Lamentations has much to teach us about both hearing and speaking the biblical language of lament.

But what is the art of lament and what do we need to learn from it?

 Well, in its most basic form, lament is a common human response to loss and distress, allowing us to fully face and name our pain. It creates space for future hope without glossing over our present trauma. It gives us permission to protest life’s difficulties, to scream, cry, vent, plead, and complain to God about his perceived actions (and seeming non-actions) and what all this feels like as we experience them in our lives.

In short, Lamentations (and many of the Psalms) model that we are allowed to ask God the hard questions without risking his anger or condemnation: Why did this have to happen? How could you allow it? Where are you in the midst of my pain? Lament allows for weeping without explanation, acknowledging the real, which may well be both messy and uncomfortable, without erasing or downgrading the ‘ideal’ for which we fervently pray.

Lament is a valid part of processing pain because there is nothing worse in human suffering than to feel unheard, forgotten, an ignored sufferer with no channel to receive empathy. I may never know why my circumstance happened, but I am allowed to say how I feel about it to God and others, if only to normalise my feelings.

Which is why those of us who sit with the bereaved, find that allowing full and sometimes extended expressions of crying, and anger are completely necessary. Making space for mourners to share their deepest despair and dark thoughts is actually therapeutic, eventually generating space for new perspectives on life.  Light slowly emerges from darkness, and with it, vision for potential ways forward become clearer - like stepping stones amidst a raging river.

Other characteristics I’ve noticed in accompanying those on the ‘downside’ of the seesaw is that there tends to be a lot of emotional ‘zigging and zagging’, sudden changes of tack which can veer from sobbing to laughing, abject despair to genuine hope in a nanosecond. Perhaps this indicates that the mind is having trouble keeping up with the wild swing of feelings happening in the heart?

And this brings us to the most popular verses in Lamentations, possibly the only ones that we can recite from memory. ‘Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. (Lam 3:21-25)

But here again we see an imbalance in our collective consciousness as a Christian community. Recitations of God’s character are laced throughout the scriptures, and demand to be factored into our contemporary perceptions of life. But in Lamentations, such assertions comprise only a few verses, outnumbered by an overwhelming swell of 154 alternative responses – mostly negative. It’s only human to hope for the best, but within the Christian life, emphasising the positive without giving equal time to the negative isn’t all that helpful in cultivating spiritual maturity.

Of this tendency, the Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggeman observes, ‘It is my judgement that this action of the church is less a defiance guided by faith and founded in good news, and much more a frightened, numb denial and deception that does not want to acknowledge or experience the disorientation of life.’ [1]

Hear therefore what the author states is required of us when our hope in God is severely challenged by circumstances.  We are exhorted to: ‘wait on God, wait quietly, in silence, in the dust of humility. To examine ourselves regularly and test our ways so that we know when we need to repent and when we need to appeal - to God for mercy or justice for myself or others. (Lam. 3 vs 26-29, 40).

There are always two sides to the seesaw of faith: reality and trust.

As we look around the world today, it’s not hard to relate to Lamentation’s presentation of this essential tension. God is good, but what is the good he is doing in our world that seems very bad? We may look at Gaza and Israel, Ukraine and Russia, the USA, and any place where profound bewilderment, uncertainty, suffering, loss, or poverty reigns and think ‘why’? Those in the Ukraine are doubtlessly feeling the tick tock of the doomsday clock ever more keenly but this isn’t new.  For the older generation living in the West, it was living with the threat of nuclear annihilation, but now it’s more likely to be manifested by a fear of the total extinction of the planet. Such universal existential angst makes it hard to manage our emotional and mental health consistently. And like in the time of Lamentations, solutions in the 21st century don’t seem to be obvious, quick, easy or simple.

I wonder what situations you face today that cause you to seesaw between these two sets of reality? You know that everything hasn’t spun out of God’s control - yet pain is still there.  Even as you say, ‘God is faithful’, you also know that ‘God’s ways are not our ways’, so he may not fix that difficult situations when you want or the way you want.  We can count on and declare God’s essential goodness and mercy, but this doesn’t necessarily diffuse or erase our strong emotions or our perceptions. There is little doubt that God is still active, but sometimes quite invisibly so.

The fact is, despite our preference for thanksgiving and praise, learning to lament as well is often necessary for sustainable spiritual growth. I find it interesting for instance, to note that modern day Jews continue to gather at the one remaining wall of their long-destroyed Temple in Jerusalem to weep and implore God to act on their behalf. Do we operate any kind of ‘wailing wall’ in our lives? If we don’t, could we perhaps give ourselves permission to metaphorically construct one and use it regularly? What might that look like for you? Some Christians I know paint sombre pictures, or write their own Psalms, songs or poems to give their pain better definition and therefore validity.

And if you chose to express your darkest despair in these ways, what benefits might there be? Counsellors know that giving vent to feelings staves off many forms of depression (often caused by suppressed feelings with nowhere to go). Openly acknowledging difficult inner anxieties or pain also prevents unprocessed emotion being passed on to innocent others who have nothing to do with the root of our lament. Getting cross with the slow lady on the supermarket till or a well-meaning colleague are perhaps not the most fruitful places to take our pain.  Better to let off steam by identifying and working through that pain with a wise and mature friend or trained counsellor – both of whom are more likely to be able to absorb your strong emotions and perhaps ask good questions to help you understand what you are experiencing.  And of course, there’s always the possibility of booking a session with God himself.

Finally, let’s remember again that the author of Lamentations wasn’t just wailing for himself, but for his nation, for his sense of the world. If we summarise the array of emotions expressed in Lamentations 3 without apology or explanation, I think we’ll all be able to relate to feeling rejected, disoriented, disappointed, bitter, ignored, helpless, humiliated, despairing, heart-broken, fearful, defiant at times, vengeful, repentant, and ultimately hopeful. Culturally, we are persuaded to distract, numb or shield ourselves from uncomfortable emotions but it seems the Bible is inviting us to fully engage with them and integrate them into our praying too.

And this is particularly relevant as we consider the upcoming Easter story and realise that Jesus’ disciples were doubtlessly feeling many of these emotions after witnessing Jesus’ horrifying death. Never has the word ‘besieged’ felt more relevant as we see them hiding themselves away in the upper room the next day, probably afraid that there was no way back for them, no way out, no obvious way forward.

And of course, we also witness Jesus’ own display of emotional intensity throughout Passion week – his heart-breaking lament over Jerusalem, the blood-beads of anguished sweat in the Garden of Gethsemane.

And then there were his final words before he died…

‘My Lord why have you deserted me?’ and ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit’.

Reality and trust side by side. But very carefully balanced.

Perhaps willingly embracing the world of Lamentations instead of ignoring such scriptures, equips us to remember the hurting, the bereaved, and the besieged with more compassion. Even as we allow ourselves the privilege of weeping for ourselves when appropriate, we might also learn to weep for countries and peoples for whom feeling besieged is their everyday reality.  No wonder Jesus declared, ‘Blessed are those who weep...’ (Matt. 5:4).

Most importantly, maybe we’ve seen through Lamentations that the life of faith will always be like riding a seesaw – alternating between the realities of the ‘downs’ of life (with all the accompanying feelings of pain and tears and the joy) and the perspective we sometimes gain from the finding ourselves in the ‘high seat’. Both positions represent God’s grace and kindness. Lament is a vital part of this seesaw dance, a holy act, one of the ways God knits together the ragged edges of our human brokenness with the work of our renewal.

[1] Walter Brueggemann, Spirituality of the Psalms, (Fortress Press, 2001), p. 26.