Judgment versus Lament

I may have written about this before but a few years ago when I was serving a church in a midsized community an “adult” bookstore opened. At the next meeting of the clergy association it became a topic of discussion. The general idea was that we as leaders of the church community we ought to come out and condemn said bookstore as an affront to moral decency and against biblical morality. It is a typical church thing.

I differed with the popular sentiment and suggested instead that as a group of clergy we should write a lament of our shortcomings as churches, as a community, and as people who are subject to the creation of such a bookstore. I also asked if anyone had gone to the bookstore and visited with its owner; none had. They just looked at me and to a person they asked, “What is a lament? What do you mean?”

la·ment  (l-mnt)

v. la·ment·ed, la·ment·ing, la·ments

v.tr.

1. To express grief for or about; mourn: lament a death.

2. To regret deeply; deplore: He lamented his thoughtless acts.

v.intr.

1. To grieve audibly; wail.

2. To express sorrow or regret. See Synonyms at grieve.

n.

1. A feeling or an expression of grief; a lamentation.

2. A song or poem expressing deep grief or mourning.

I pointed out that there is a whole book in the bible called Lamatations (it is a collection of poems lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem) and that the book of Psalms was filled with such laments (see Psalm 3,22,57, and 139 for individual laments and Psalm 12,44, 74, 80 for corporate laments). The point I was trying to make was that instead of judging this man and his bookstore and his patrons, we shown acknowledge and confess that we are as a people guilty of the sins that make such fare popular.

Surprisingly, the group agreed with me and asked if I would begin the writing of such a lament. I did and sent it to the other members of the clergy a couple of which added stanzas to the lament and then we sent it to the local newspaper where it was published; a group of clergy confessing corporate sins rather than condemning others. It was a good moment.

I wish as a religious community we do more of that rather than lambasting each other all the time. We have an excellent example in today’s Roman Catholic Pope Francis who constantly asks people to pray for him as he seeks to be a faithful disciple of Jesus. It is the act of a humble man with clear visions of what the church should be about, living out the teachings of Jesus by caring for each other. Oh, he will condemn. He has condemned the crass materialism of our country and others and we chaff from that because he is right, despite the judgment of Rush Limbaugh and his like of being a Marxist. Limbaugh and his political and news commentator kin would be wise to learn the acts of lament; but I’m not holding my breath.

In addition to the church, I feel public servants, politicians who regularly practiced the art of lament, would much better serve us. And we voters should do the same.

It would serve us well to confess/lament, that we are folk who do not take the time and effort to study political issues and positions statements of politicians well enough to be informed voters. We should confess that we are easily led by those who have the most money to spend and manipulate our thinking and voting instead of thinking for ourselves and doing our own research.

News commentators should lament and confess that they are more interested in selling the news than reporting the news that would be of greater help for an informed populace. (Have you ever compared the number of times a news piece is hyped in contrast to the length of the piece itself?)

Finally, politicians should lament and confess that they are more interested in re-election than in doing what is right for the country; that they are more influenced by corporate and big money contributors than they are by the interests of their constituents.

It is easy to judge and condemn and I confess I have done a great deal of that in this article and most other articles I write. It is much harder to confess and to strive to do what is in the common good, but it is what I feel we should be doing.

May the year of 2014 be a year of lamentation.