How Do Miserable Christians Worship?

[Apologiaphoenix]

Can you serve the Lord with sadness?

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Is the average worship service the balm of Gilead?
I’m reading through Carl Trueman’s Minority Report which is a series of essays he has written. If you have not read Trueman, you need to read Trueman. He is one of the most brilliant writers of our age I have read. Anyway, today’s essay was about authenticity and he talked about it being based on one he wrote called “What Do Miserable Christians Sing?” and it has been his most appreciated piece ever judging by the replies he has got.

After all, if you go to your modern worship service, the majority of worship songs are happy songs. They’re meant to invite you into the joy of the Lord. I’m not saying that’s always wrong, but let’s remember some people are coming to church and they’re not happy. They’re actually miserable.

For me, being a divorced Christian in the modern church setting is hard. It’s hard to be in the community of believers when your personal community was torn to shreds. It’s hard when you hear people who are supposed to be in your age group or even younger talking about everything going on with their children and their spouses and you think about what you have lost.

Then you go into a worship service and the songs are all about how thankful you are and the joy you have in Jesus. It’s really hard to sing those songs and be authentic. You would really like to experience that, but you can’t. Not right now at least.
Are there songs for miserable Christians?
Yes. They’re called the Psalms.

By all means, not all of them are, but a number of them are lament Psalms and they were just as much part of worship as praise ones. They are no less part of Scripture than worship Psalms. God wanted them to be in the Bible just like He wanted joyous Psalms to be in there.

God wants us to have hymns of misery.

The Bible assumes sometimes we will be miserable. This isn’t just in the Old Testament. It’s in the New. Jesus is the man of sorrows, familiar with suffering. Paul says about death that we mourn, but not like those who have no hope. He also says to mourn with those who mourn.

By the way, sometimes, that is extremely helpful.

We can fault Job’s friends for what they did, and we should, but they did one thing right definitely. What was that? For the first part of their visit with him, they sat with him. They were silent. They were just there.
Sometimes, you may think you need to cheer up someone who is miserable, but sometimes, what they really want is not so much to be cheered up. They just want to be heard. They want to be understood. They don’t want a solution. They just want a friend.

I still remember one of the best sayings I got in my divorce. I was told, “Today sucks. Tomorrow will also suck, but it will suck a little bit less.” Of course, that moves in fluctuations. Sometimes, it hurts more than it did yesterday, but the general principle is sound.

Sometimes you will come to church miserable, and that is fine. Sometimes you will leave that way, and that is fine. If anything, we need to give a place for people to express misery at church. Those who are miserable can push the community away while at the same time wanting the community.

God gave Scripture to express negative emotions just as much as happy ones, and there’s a place for both in worship. Let us remember that God’s goal is not to give us temporary happiness. His ultimate goal is our holiness, and we will pass through some unhappiness in that.

Sing a song of misery if you need to.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

[KingsGambit]

Some churches have introduced laments into their services. The idea seems biblical enough.

[Faber]

I've heard that some churches baptize their converts in vinegar.

[3 Resurrections]

Can we serve the Lord with sadness? Absolutely, even in the middle of it. This was a really meaningful post, Nick. Thank you for putting these thoughts in print.

You touched a rather poignant memory of mine. In the last church I attended for about 16 years, the church and the pastor in particular went through the most distraught time when he and the church were betrayed by one whom they had trusted implicitly. I won't spell out the details, but the pastor and his family experienced one of the most agonizing episodes you can imagine with an offense to one of his young children that there are no words for. I remember the following week after the church had been besieged by the news media, watching the pastor down in front of the congregation leading the church in the worship song "God is good, all the time, through the darkest night, His light will shine..."

I watched him that morning, thinking "How on earth can he possibly be singing this song, when I know what he is going through?" To this day, I remember him standing there, looking down at the carpet as he sang, almost forcing himself to feel faith at that moment. I never respected this man so much as at that moment when he had that "Job" experience to wrestle with.

At times like that, singing songs to a heavy heart truly is like vinegar upon nitre, and taking away a coat in the bitter cold, as Proverbs 25:20 once wrote.

[rogue06]

I've heard that some churches baptize their converts in vinegar.

[One Bad Pig]

This is sort of a disjointed ramble, sorry. Probably one of the hardest things I've ever had to do was sing "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee" at my grandfather's funeral. On the other hand, I'm reminded of the last words of St. John Chrysostom as he was ruthlessly driven into exile by cruel soldiers: "Glory to God in all things."
When you're miserable, your focus is on yourself. In worship, our focus is to be on God. In too many worship songs today, the focus is on ourselves and how we feel.