Introduction¹

There is a stubborn tendency in many Asian churches to hurry past sorrow. We sing bright songs, offer brisk assurances, and move quickly from crisis to consolation. But grief does not usually convert into praise on command. Dr. Federico “Rico” G. Villanueva—Old Testament scholar, pastor, and Regional Commissioning Editor for Langham—reminds us that the Bible gives God’s people a language for dark times: lament. His meditative work as a scholar in the United Kingdom, together with his pastoral experience in Manila, drew him to the Book of Lamentations in the Bible. He no longer saw it as a morbid antiquarian curiosity but as a vital resource for congregations that need biblical honesty in times of suffering.

To provide context, Lamentations has often been perceived as distant or obscure because of its intense expressions of grief, its poetic structure, and its focus on the destruction of Jerusalem—factors that can make it seem historically remote and emotionally heavy for contemporary readers and churches. As a result, it is sometimes treated as a relic of ancient tragedy rather than a living theological resource. Dr. Rico’s work challenges this perception by showing that Lamentations offers a biblically faithful language for lament and hope that remains deeply relevant for communities experiencing suffering today.

Biblical lament, Dr. Rico argues, is not mere complaining. It is a complaint addressed to God. It names the wound, asks the painful “Why?”, and yet does so inside a relationship that trusts that God can hear and answer (cf. Psalm 13; Jeremiah 12). The difference between despair and biblical lament, he insists, is the one to whom the cry is directed. Lament is poured out before a God who is both a holy judge and a merciful covenant-partner.

Why Lament Matters for Asia

In many Asian cultures—Filipino, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and beyond—norms of “saving face,” stoicism, or public composure often discourage open grief. Dr. Rico notes a familiar pattern: emotions are managed or suppressed, funeral dirges and other expressive practices recede, and Christians usually default to platitudes rather than honest speech about pain. The resulting spiritual cost is real: people are taught to deny or domesticate suffering rather than to process it faithfully.

This cultural background makes Lamentations especially relevant for Asian Christians. The book refuses sentimental or facile answers. It stages, in stark poetic form, the theological questions we instinctively ask in times of catastrophe: Where is God in the devastation? Has God abandoned covenant promises? Is suffering always deserved? Lamentations forces us to hold these tensions without collapsing into either naive optimism or cynical fatalism. Dr. Rico points out that in our age of political violence, natural disasters, and communal traumas, we need liturgies and pastoral practices that teach us how to pray through darkness, not around it.

Lament as a Strengthening of Faith

A striking pastoral insight that emerged from the interview is that lament strengthens the “faith muscle.” In many contexts, Christians are encouraged to say, “God is in control,” and then to move on, yet such pieties can leave faith untested and unformed. Dr. Rico suggests that lament trains believers to honestly face doubt and fear before God—thereby maturing relational trust rather than eroding it. When we name what wounds us in God’s presence, our trust is not brittle hope but becomes faith that has been stretched by sorrow and held by God.

Dr. Rico illustrates this ecclesially: worship that endlessly rehearses victorious themes risks excluding those going through seasons of bereavement, depression, or injustice. By contrast, when congregations provide space for lament—private and public—people learn a candid language of faith that can hold pain without losing hope. Dr. Rico’s pastoral practice bears this out: after years of teaching lament and creating spaces to voice sorrow, members of his congregation began to stand and share painful testimonies in corporate worship—an expressive vulnerability that signaled new pastoral health.

These pastoral convictions are not merely personal observations but are rooted in Dr. Rico’s sustained scholarly engagement with the Psalms, Lamentations, and the broader biblical tradition of lament.

Beyond his work on Lamentations,² Dr. Rico has long explored lament through his Psalms scholarship. In his commentary, he treats themes such as thanksgiving and lament, depression and the lament Psalms, communal lament for today’s church, and even the imprecatory psalms as pagsusumbong sa Diyos—honestly telling God about the wrong done to us.³ His broader method reflects a deeply contextual approach: reading Scripture through Asian experiences of sorrow, weaving in local stories, and allowing the biblical text and cultural realities to illuminate one another without forcing easy resolutions.⁴

This is why lament, for him, is not simply an exegetical topic but a pastoral and cultural bridge—one that gives Asian believers permission to pray truthfully in their own voice before the God who hears.

Lamentations 3: Hope Amid the Ashes

Many of us know Lamentations 3:22–23 as an island of consolation—“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.” Dr. Rico cautions, however, against isolating that fragment from the book’s fuller movement. He describes chapter 3 as a summit in rugged terrain: it climaxes in the proclamation of God’s steadfast love, but that proclamation sits amid graphic images of communal devastation and persistent grief. To extract 3:22–23 from its context and to treat it as a private motto risks sterilizing the book’s raw, moral, and ethical gravity. Lamentations teaches us that hope can be confessed in the same breath that remembers the dead, names injustice, and refuses to short-circuit the lament process.

Pastoral and Communal Implications

Dr. Rico’s interview yields concrete counsel for pastors and leaders who want to bring lament into ordinary ministry rhythms:

Teach lament biblically. Preach and preach again on laments—Psalms of lament, Jeremiah’s cries, Lamentations—so people gain vocabulary and scriptural shape for sorrow. Dr. Rico recommends teaching series and seasonal emphases (e.g., during Holy Week, after disasters, and during national crises) so that lament is not exotic but familiar.

Create sacred spaces for mourning. Corporate services should make room for brief, ritualized moments where grief may be voiced and held. Public lament signals to those who are suffering that they are not alone. Dr. Rico stresses memorials and public prayers as practices that support processing grief in communal solidarity.

Use lament pastorally. Laments provide language for counseling those with depression, grief, or trauma. Dr. Rico has used lament intentionally in pastoral care and even as an indispensable resource for dealing with depression, testifying that lament can be a spiritual aid in deep psychological distress.

Model honest leadership. Leaders who lament teach authenticity. When pastors own their questions and afflictions credibly and authentically, the congregation learns that faith can wrestle with questions without losing its trust in God.

Lament as Christian Ethics

One of the most urgent insights that came out of the conversation is that lament is not only spiritual but ethical. Dr. Rico insists that lament registers moral outrage. It shows what grieves us and thereby reflects what God grieves about injustice and sin. If the church refuses to lament public evils, such as war, genocide, and corruption, it risks forfeiting prophetic witness. He cites contemporary failures of Christian responsiveness as reasons why some observers turn away from the faith. Lament, properly practiced, reclaims the church’s moral imagination and compels compassionate action.

Christ and the Hope of Lament

Finally, the Christian heart finds its truest model in Christ. Jesus’ cry from the cross—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”—is, theologically, a lament woven into the very fabric of redemption. Dr. Rico affirms that the cross sanctifies lament. God does not recoil from our questions. Instead, in Christ, he enters the depths of human abandonment. In the resurrection, we find the final horizon that gives lament its hopeful frame, yet hope does not erase the tear. It transfigures it. The church’s task is to hold both sorrow and resurrection together as companions on the pilgrim way.

Conclusion: A People Trained to Weep and Wait

For the Asian church, often shaped today by evangelical cultures that struggle to make space for lament, Lamentations becomes both an invitation and a corrective. Dr. Rico’s pastoral and scholarly witness urges us to recover lament as a disciplined, Scriptural practice, a way of crying truth to God that both grieves and trusts, both indicts injustice and clings to covenantal mercy. As CTIA seeks to bridge academy and church, doctrine and devotion, this reclaimed meaning of lament offers a formation that is theologically serious, pastorally tender, and culturally responsive.

Dr. Rico’s final appeal is simple and urgent. In seasons of widespread suffering, we have the laments of Scripture—words to speak when ordinary language fails. Let the church teach them, practice them, and thereby become a people who can weep with those who weep and wait on the God whose steadfast love endures amid the ashes.⁵

Dr. Rico Villanueva currently serves as the Asia Regional Commissioning Editor for Langham Publishing. He earned his PhD in Biblical Studies (Old Testament) at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom. His PhD dissertation on the Psalms of lament was published by BRILL with the title, The Uncertainty of a Hearing: A Study of the Sudden Change of Mood in the Psalms of Lament (2008). In addition, he has written several books on lament published by Langham: It’s OK to be NOT OK: The Message of the Psalms of Lament; Lord, I’m Depressed: The Lament Psalms and Depression; and commentaries on the book of Psalms and Lamentations in the Asia Bible Commentary (ABC) series. He recently finished his second PhD in Philippine Studies at the University of the Philippines. His thesis is entitled, “Hibik at Himagsik” (Lament and Revolution). Dr. Rico teaches part-time at several institutions: Asian Theological Seminary, Asia Graduate School of Theology, and Ateneo de Manila University.

John Leones Jr. is a faculty member and current chair of the Theology Department at the International Graduate School of Theology. He is married to Awit and has two children, Timothy John and Trinity Jan. An ordained minister and church planter, he previously served as the pioneering pastor-teacher of Borongan City Evangelical Church in Borongan City, Eastern Samar, Philippines. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Theological Studies with AGST.