Jamin Bradley

Modern worship music is a tad dishonest in its rampant positivity. Sure, it’s packed with many generic storm metaphors, but most of it doesn’t dig deep enough. There’s nothing wrong with positive worship music, as the Bible is full of such songs, but when our entire collection is nothing but the top 100 songs on the Christian charts, we worship in a way that the Bible does not.

The ancient songbook of the Psalms is 45% lament songs—the darkest one being Psalm 88, which ends with, “You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness.” The inspired Scriptures themselves recognized that there needs to be space to bring the darkest parts of our lives to God, lest we take them to another source for healing.

Tired of dealing with a severe anxiety disorder, Chad Gardner of King’s Kaleidoscope wrote a controversial psalmic song a few years back that gave an honest voice to the darkest places of his life, asking twice, “Will I waste inside the silence where the fear is f***ing violent?” There’s a different version of the song where the word “vicious” has been substituted for the first curse word, and the line is artistically replaced by silence the second time it’s used (kind of like how David Crowder always backs off the mic during the sloppy wet kiss/unforeseen kiss line of “How He Loves” to let people choose their own lyric).

Christians will, of course, argue if Gardner should have cursed in his lyrics or not, but he does capture a psalmic tradition that is quite beautiful: He is honest about his pain, he brings it before God, and he finds a way to ground himself in God. He does not curse at God, rather, he curses about his pain. It’s certainly not congregational music, but it is honest in its lament.

Are you in pain right now? Is the fear unspeakably violent? Does darkness feel like your only friend? You don’t have to pretend it’s okay. You don’t have to choose to rejoice as though that’s the only way to worship. You can worship in sadness just as much as you can worship in joy.