Denver based group The Fray’s song “You Found Me” has recently been splashed across the pop culture grid, finding plentiful airtime on pop and rock radio stations, and used to promote television shows on the ABC network such as Lost, and Grey’s Anatomy. Of interest is the song’s popularity given its overtly theological disposition. The song opens with its narrator finding God, “on the corner of 1st and Amistad”, the translation of which from Spanish incidentally conveys the notion of friendship, “smoking his last cigarette” and asks God where God has been. The narrator describes an experience of suffering he has been through and then accuses God of never leaving any messages or sending any letters, though in the end he acknowledges being found, though still asking why God had taken so long. The song at its heart is attempting to work emotionally and experientially through the theological category of theodicy. Some, especially those hearing the song from the perspective of their own faith, may hear a song of accusation denouncing the love or goodness of God. However, another possible theological perspective sees the song as akin to many of the Psalms, a lament born of faith, complaining to God in faith and waiting expectantly for an answer. The song then could be seen as a contemporary expression of lament, expressing the same existential, though faith rooted angst voiced by many of the psalmists in the scriptures.
Isaac Slade, The Fray’s frontman and lyricist affirms this assertion that this song is born of a faith attempting to reconcile a trust in the unseen with his own lived experience, which on the surface appear at odds with one another, saying, “It demands so much of my faith to keep believing, keep hoping in the unseen. Sometimes the tunnel has a light at the end, but usually they just look black as night. This song is about that feeling, and the hope that I still have, buried deep in my chest.” To some this faith may be difficult to discern, and may even appear absent because of the confrontational manner in which it is expressed. However to Slade this confrontational tone is the intended representation of his faith. In a different interview he asserts, “"I kept getting these phone calls from home - tragedy after tragedy... If there is some kind of person in charge of this planet - are they sleeping? Smoking? Where are they? I just imagined running into God standing on a street corner like Bruce Springsteen, smoking a cigarette, and I'd have it out with him.” This is of course exactly the picture conveyed in the song, a person of faith having it out with God, and perhaps leaving the narrative, and thus the listener without resolution as the song fades. As troubling as this may seem, especially in light of what Old Testament Scholar Walter Brueggemann calls the “dominant American cultural ideology of success, continuity, and the avoidance of anything messy…”, this is not a unique expression of faith within the history Christianity and Judaism. These same types of expressions can be found in the Psalms.
Denise Dombroski Hopkins calls the Psalms that mirror this type of simultaneous expression of distress and faith, laments, picturing them as “complaining in faith.” She suggests that most laments share a similar structure, beginning with an often short, emotionally charged address to God often punctuated by questions such as “Why?” or “How long?”. They tend to move to the complaint itself as the psalmist describes their suffering and their enemies, and often accuses God of not caring about their circumstances. These expressions seem to often be married to petitions that follow their complaints, their motivations for making the complaint, and at times end with a confession of trust, or a vow of praise; however these concluding expressions of resolution are not universal to all psalm laments.
Hopkins’ psalm lament structure can be readily seen in what can be described as The Fray’s contemporary lament as Slade finds God on the street and asks God where God had been, and eventually “Why’d you have to wait?” In the subsequent verses Slade lays out his sufferings, revolving largely around, “losing her, the only one who's ever known/ Who I am, who I'm not and who I wanna to be” In the bridge Slade finally lays out his accusation, mainly that God has been absent for years, and that God never communicated with him in that time, concluding, “You got some kind of nerve taking all I want.” The song then ends not with a justification or a refutation of these accusations but simply with a resigned acknowledgement of being found, which in reality seems to be all Slade had wanted to begin with. It must be granted here that the song does not precisely parallel the psalm lament format given the repeating chorus, a standard cultural convention of a typical pop-rock song. Additionally Slade never finds his way to actually making a petition, explaining his motivation, for example his innocence, though one may see that as implied, or praising God. One may be able to see glimmers of a confession of trust in his resigned acknowledgement of being found, but that acknowledgement is left with so much ambiguity that the state of Slade’s trust at the end of the song can be seen as up for debate. However given, according to Hopkins, that it is the first two portions, the address and the complaint that are common to all laments, and that the other portions show themselves to various degrees, this can truly be seen as a contemporary expression of a Hebrew lament. Perhaps this will reveal itself even more clearly through a comparison with a specific psalm lament.
A psalm which seems to closely parallel Slade’s expression of faith in crisis is Psalm 88. Like Slade the psalmist cries out to God from “the depths of the pit” and only receives silence in return. The psalm ends with the same lack of resolution with the psalmist writing, “You have caused friend and neighbor to shun me; my companions are in darkness.” In the end Slade seems to be expressing struggles very similar to those expressed by the psalmist, in an uncannily similar voice. In this light perhaps this isn’t a contemporary expression of a Hebrew lament after all, but a lament common to the experience of faith in The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and Peter, John and Paul expressed in a contemporary form.
