Denial

Observing that Christians today “sing songs of orientation in a world increasingly experienced as disoriented,” Walter Bruggemann suggests that the church is in a state of denial:

“The church is less an evangelical defiance guided by faith, and must more a frightened, numb denial and deception that does not want to acknowledge of experience the disorientation of life. The reason for such relentless affirmation of orientation seems to me, not from faith, but from the wishful optimism of our culture. Such a denial and cover-up, which I take it to be, is an odd inclination for passionate Bible users, given the larger number of psalms that are songs of lament, protest, and complaint about an incoherence experienced in the world.”

While “we have thought that acknowledgement of negativity was somehow an act of unfaith,” the Psalms indicate that lamentation, complaint, cries of anguish are acts “of bold faith” (The Message of the Psalms, 51-2).

Reason #57 for singing the Psalms.