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This transcript has been edited for clarity and space.
Frederico Villanueva
Hi. I’m Rico Villanueva, Regional Commissioning Editor for Langham Publishing.
David Capes
Dr. Rico Villanueva, good to see you. Welcome to “The Stone Chapel Podcast.” I’m going to call you Rico. Your real name is Federico. But I’m going to call you Rico, because I feel like we’re friends.
Frederico Villanueva
Thank you! I like Rico. It means “rich” in Spanish.
David Capes
Well, listen, you are rich in many ways. You’re here to do a lecture for us at the Lanier Theological Library called “Tragic Lament,” and we’ll be talking about that in just a minute. But before we do that, let’s talk a little bit about you. For those who don’t know you, tell us, who is Rico Villanueva.
Frederico Villanueva
So, I am a Filipino. I studied Old Testament, and particularly my area of expertise is the Psalms of lament, the not so happy bits. Not the praise, but the lament. Part of it is because of my personal experience of depression. Second, is because of my pastoral experience. I saw in my 10 years of being a pastor that we only sing happy songs all the time, even in the midst of the sufferings. That’s what led me to the laments.
David Capes
You’ve published some in that regard as well.
Frederico Villanueva
Yes, my PhD dissertation was published by Brill. It’s entitled, “The Uncertainty of a Hearing: a Study of the Sudden Change of Mood in the Psalms of Lament.” And then I published a more pastoral version of that, entitled, “It’s Okay to Be Not Okay: the Message of the Psalms of Lament.”
David Capes
There was a very famous book in the United States called, “I’m Okay and You’re Okay.” But it’s okay, not to be okay, and that’s an important message that people need to hear in churches. Now tell us about your family.
Frederico Villanueva
I’m married. My wife’s name is Rosemary and have two adult children. My son, Emir, and my daughter, Faye.
David Capes
All right, great. And they live close to you.
Frederico Villanueva
My daughter still lives with us, and my son lives in Manila. By the way, I live in Manila.
David Capes
Manila is a big city, right? How many millions of people?
Frederico Villanueva
Maybe 20 million.
David Capes
That’s about the size of New York City, or maybe Los Angeles here in the United States. Well, we’re just delighted that you’re here. We’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. I heard you speak at the Institute for Biblical Research meeting, a year ago. I was really impressed with your presentation. I was impressed with the depth of which you were sharing. We wanted you to come and be a part of this conversation tomorrow evening at the Lanier Theological Library. (Federico lectured at the Lanier Theological Library in January 2025. You can find that video here.) Now let’s talk a little bit about the title, “Tragic Lament.” What’s the big idea of your lecture?
Frederico Villanueva
In this lecture, I will be talking about one of the main reasons why there is a continuing loss of lament, which I call tragic. Brueggeman calls it “costly.” I think despite all of the things that’s happening there remains no lament; it is tragic. The reason why there is a tragic loss of lament is because we have neglected that part of scripture. In order to to know the scripture fully, we need to recover lament. We need what I call the tragic laments. That’s the main thesis of the presentation.
David Capes
I’m thinking about Psalms. There’s a book in the Bible called Lamentations, that we probably should think about as well. There are lament passages in Jeremiah, but a lot of your work has been in the Psalms. Of all the Psalms, it seems like lament is one of the biggest categories. There are 150 Psalms. How many of those contain lament?
Frederico Villanueva
The scholars’ counts differ in detail, but generally it’s about a third or more than a third of the Psalms are lament, and that’s a lot.
David Capes
We are thinking about the tragic loss of lament in the churches these days. And we should think about the fact that we need to recover the idea that there is tragedy in life. There are tragic things that happen to everyone. And yet, when people, at least in the United States go to church, they just want to pretend to be happy. They want everything to be okay.
Frederico Villanueva
It’s the same in the Philippines. I think this happens in churches everywhere. We have a song in the Philippines that says, “laugh at your problems”. You just want to be happy when you go to the church. But then we all go through hard experiences in our life where there’s is no happy resolution whatsoever. How do you deal with that?
And that’s where the tragic laments come in. It creates a space for those whose experience is hurt instead of joy, death instead of life. So, they’re very, very important. Because we tend to not just ignore, but exclude, and deny these realities. Understandably so because it’s not easy to confront them or embrace them. We just deny them, but then, as a result of that, we live a life of continuous denial. That’s why some of the worship in churches, I would say, is shallow, because it has not dealt with our lives when they are in the depths.
David Capes
That type of worship goes to the heights. We want to talk about and sing about the mountaintop, but it doesn’t get down deep into the valley where many people are.
Frederico Villanueva
That’s why there’s no depth but only shallowness in many of our worship experiences. They don’t get deep enough. That can also limit our experiences of the real heights. Without acknowledging the laments, we can’t fully experience the joy, the praise.
David Capes
When there is a national tragedy like what we call 911 when planes flew into the World Trade Center buildings. Thousands of people died, and there was a national, maybe even an international grieving. It seems like we can do that, but we really can’t do it for the things that often matter for people in their individual lives. So, do you have any prescriptions for us? What do we need to do? Are there things that we need to do in order to recover lament in our churches?
Frederico Villanueva
Yes, one of the things that we need to do is to seriously consider scripture, the lament Psalms which do not have a positive resolution at the end. There are many that do, but many that don’t.
