There is always the potential for an awkward or even offensive interaction with family or friends this time of year when you are deeply grieving. The truth is, nobody has the perfect comment or response to your pain and sadness. Words can be meaningless or filled with pain. Avoidance can leave one feeling abandoned. Talking about other things so you don’t have to talk about your friend’s loss is unhelpful. You have to accept that almost anything you say or do can be taken poorly. And then you have to learn how to say and do something anyway. We’ll talk about that in the next post, but for now, lets look at a typical response to someone else’s grief.
So what is going on with your bereavement? Why does this time of year cause more anxiety instead of bringing peace and joy as it often has? The main reason I’ve observed is that others want you to normalize. They want to relate to you as they have in the past. You have a great personality and they know how to get along with you and enjoy you, but now, they are not so sure. Your friends that are most self aware and the most helpful are the ones that don’t try to hurry your grief along or change your moods. They are the ones that accept you and your feelings without judgment.
This is why it can be hard to be around people at this time of year. You don’t want the kind of help that they think you need. You want friends that are comfortable with who you are in the moment. These friends and relatives are hard to find for sure, but they are out there. Your concerns are not wrong, but staying away from the holiday activities may not be as helpful as you think. You really don’t want people to leave you alone, even if you say that to some of them, you want people to understand you without having to endlessly explain why you feel what you feel.
Chapters 3-14 of Job are filled with words; well meaning words in fact, from well meaning friends. Many of those words of these speeches are clearly true. And yet, somehow, they can still make you cringe as you listen to them.
What do these friends do right and where do they blow it? Before we get into that, we should be thankful for our friends and we should tell them that. There is a risk they will say or do something that is misunderstood, even hurtful. But we value them as friends all the same.
Here is a simple message from the first friend, Eliphaz.
“Can mortals be acquitted by God? Can Man be cleared by his maker? If He cannot trust His own servants, and casts reproach on His angels, How much less those who dwell in houses of clay?” Job 4:17-19
For this man of Wisdom, whose name means My God is fine Gold or a Strong God or Unique God, we find Eliphaz interested in one of two things. Either he is showing how God is righteous and does not make mistakes about the sinfulness of his creatures, human and even angelic. Or he is trying to show that Job might be about the best human being to ever live on earth but still comes up short in the sin department. The first one is defending God and the second is blaming Job for His calamity.
These as it turns out, are the two basic arguments that go through our mind much of the time when someone dies or suffers terribly like Job did.
Why is this happening to Job, he’s not such a bad guy, and by extension, why might it happen to me, since I’m not such a bad person either? And the second argument that is not as often commented on is that God is God and we have no business arguing with Him as He does what He pleases. Our arms are too short to box with God it seems.
There are other side issues of theology in Job but these two seem to dominate, not only the book of Job but much of the Old Testament and its culture.
Both are right and both need some explanation. As Paul suggests, centuries later, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” And as Jesus Himself offers from Calvary, “Not my will Father, but your will.” While there is truth in both of these ideas, neither of these beliefs are comforting to most grieving people today. Not at first at least, as one deals with the shock of grief.
My problem with these friends of Job is that they are making any arguments at all. After working with many grieving families, it occurs to me that they rarely need a dose of theology right after their loss. They need something more comforting than words, they need care.
To be fair to Eliphaz, Job could have been at the stage where he needed some theology. Maybe. But the care I believe should come first, often and always. That is the way of the Shepherd. Lessons are to be learned for sure, but the greatest lesson is that no matter what you are going through, God cares. And God cares through your friends and family if they are willing to show this kind of care.
In the next post, we’ll look more closely at that kind of care.
