Gen Z might find faith through lament as much as praise – Billie Eilish helped me see why

It was Boxing Day at Kowloon Union Church in Hong Kong. I’d been invited to teach a workshop on the theological foundations of how music shapes worship. Instead, I proposed a more experimental title: 2am Theology: Gen Z, Billie Eilish and Trauma Theology. I expected maybe 15 people, but 40 showed up. Many were parents who’d brought their teenagers, knowing their kids loved Billie Eilish.

Instead of teaching about music theology, we moved through cycles of scripture readings (primarily lament psalms), extended silence, Billie Eilish songs, more silence, then Gospel passages, followed by congregational prayer. The question and answer session at the end created space for participants to process what they’d experienced.

We sat in a circle as Billie Eilish’s whispered vocals filled the space: “I don’t wanna be you anymore.” We’d just read Psalm 88 aloud - the one that ends without hope, resolution or any “but God is good” disclaimers.

A young girl in the back row had tears streaming down her face, the kind that come when someone finally gives you permission to stop pretending. “This is the first time church has felt like it knew what my life actually feels like,” a girl in year ten told me afterward.

The questions nobody asks

During the Q&A, a young girl asked: “What is suffering?” Just like that. The hardest, most straightforward question. She wasn’t asking how to overcome it. She was asking because no one had given her language for what she was experiencing. Church had given her victory testimonies and breakthrough songs, but maybe no one had said: “This darkness you’re feeling? It’s real. You’re not failing at faith.”

Then someone asked about my own faith journey - the struggling part, rather than the highlights reel. “We’ve heard enough success stories,” he said. “We want to know how someone can struggle, but keep walking with God anyway.”

Each person shared struggles they’d never voiced in church. Depression. Suicidal thoughts. Anger at God

After the workshop, I sent participants a feedback survey. The responses were enlightening. 73% said traditional church services make them feel like they have to “perform okay-ness.” 40% had left church in the past five years, though they hadn’t stopped believing. They simply “couldn’t be honest about struggling.”

These weren’t people rejecting faith. They were people who felt they could only stay in church if they pretended to be someone else.

One participant wrote: “I’ve been a Christian for 15 years. Tonight was the first time worship felt designed for people who are tired and scared.”

Why Billie Eilish and psalms of lament?

For this workshop, I designed something intentionally different. But what if we let Billie Eilish, a popstar who speaks about depression without offering toxic positivity, into the sanctuary alongside scripture’s own unflinching engagement with suffering?

Research helps explain why this pairing resonates. Eilish’s production techniques create what scholars call sonic intimacy, a sensation that the artist is singing directly into the listener’s ear. This functions similarly to ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response), offering a sense of proximity that proves particularly powerful during experiences of isolation and loneliness. Listeners consistently describe her voice in therapeutic language, crediting it with medicinal qualities for their mental health.

Beyond this lies a deeper theological resonance. Eilish’s music refuses premature resolution, choosing instead to inhabit the space of unresolved suffering. This mirrors what Walter Brueggemann identifies as the church’s costly abandonment of lament - a whole category of biblical prayer that once gave voice to pain, protest, and the absence of easy answers.

A third of the Psalms are laments. Yet we’ve largely excised them from contemporary worship. We’ve given Gen Z Psalm 23 while hiding Psalm 88. In this workshop, we alternated these neglected Psalms with Eilish’s songs. Psalm 88: “You have put me in the lowest pit.” Then Eilish’s ‘When the party’s over’. Then John 11:35: “Jesus wept.” No explanation. Just acknowledgment.

We moved through the cycle. Psalm 22 and Eilish’s ‘Everything I wanted’. Psalm 13 and ‘Bury a friend’. Some people cried. One person stepped out for air. Nobody tried to fix it.

Trauma theology frames lament psalms as a form of trauma-sensitive liturgy. These ancient prayers provide a vocabulary for processing pain while creating a pathway toward trust and eventual praise. This movement doesn’t bypass reality; rather, acknowledging trauma becomes the precondition for healing. Psychologists and theologians increasingly recognise this pattern: transformation requires honest reckoning.

Many in Gen Z seem to live in Holy Saturday - the day between crucifixion and resurrection. Traditional worship often races to Sunday. Yet Saturday is where much of life happens: climate crisis, pandemic, debt, anxiety. Billie Eilish sits in Saturday with you. The Psalms do this too. Jesus on the cross does this: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Hungry for faith

After the formal Q&A ended, I invited the introverted to come and talk with me privately if they wanted to. A long queue formed.

Each person shared struggles they’d never voiced in church. Depression. Suicidal thoughts. Anger at God. Doubt about everything they’d been taught. It felt like listening to confession. No one wanted advice. They just wanted someone to say: “This is real. You’re not broken. God can handle this.”

The Bible Society’s Quiet Revival report showed Gen Z returning to church in encouraging numbers. 16% of 18–24-year-olds now attend monthly, up from 4% in 2018. This represents genuine spiritual hunger. Yet the deeper question my workshop participants pose is about retention. Young people may be coming to church, but are they finding spaces where they can bring their whole selves? Where their doubt and despair isn’t immediately pathologised?

Among my participants, 40% had left church - though they hadn’t rejected faith. In their words, they simply “couldn’t be honest about struggling.” This suggests the challenge isn’t only attracting Gen Z. It’s creating church cultures capable of holding suffering without rushing to fix it.

Many in Gen Z seem to live in Holy Saturday. Traditional worship often races to Sunday

The Quiet Revival study notes that church attendance appears to reduce anxiety and depression among young women. It creates stronger community connection among young men. This is genuinely hopeful. It also indicates that mental health - the very thing Billie Eilish and the lament psalms address so directly - is a critical factor in Gen Z spiritual engagement.

In my experience of working with Gen Z, biblical illiteracy often isn’t simply about lack of church attendance in childhood or disinterest in scripture; it’s about which parts of scripture we’ve shared. When we looked at the darker psalms, they saw themselves.

Many churches create profoundly safe spaces for lament and honest struggle. Yet triumphalist theologies that can’t sit with Holy Saturday risk alienating a generation. They rush from Good Friday to Easter Sunday without the in-between. Meanwhile, this generation experiences unprecedented levels of anxiety, depression, and climate grief.

Jesus spent time with those who were suffering, the marginalised, the doubting. The Psalms were written for people in crisis. Brueggemann reminds us that lament as a form of prayer, though nearly absent from contemporary church practice, belongs at the heart of authentic Christian faith.

Maybe faith doesn’t require the absence of doubt. Perhaps it’s showing up with your doubt anyway. Listening to Billie Eilish whisper everything you’ve been too afraid to say. And realising that God might actually have room for this, too.