Being With Suffering
One of my favorite illustrations is from a 2013 article in the Los Angeles Times entitled, “How not to say the wrong thing.”
The chart came out of an experience that Susan had when she had surgery to treat her breast cancer. A colleague was begging to come see her and when Susan said she didn’t feel like having visitors, her colleague replied, “This isn’t just about you.”
“Really?” Susan replied, “My breast cancer is not about me?”
And so this theory developed.
When someone is in pain or sick or in a time of great loss, they are at the center of the circle. This person can cry and complain and talk any way they want. But if you are outside of the center of the circle, the rules change. Following the person in the center of the circle, the concentric circles go out in order of closeness – those who are the partner and children of the affected, close family members and friends, colleagues, acquaintances, Facebook lurkers. Wherever you are on the circle, here are the rules. You offer comfort to those who are closer to the center of the circle. You process and dump your own struggles to those who are farther away from the center than you are.
Silk and her cowriter Barry Goldman say it this way:
When you are talking to a person in a ring smaller than yours, someone closer to the center of the crisis, the goal is to help. Listening is often more helpful than talking. But if you're going to open your mouth, ask yourself if what you are about to say is likely to provide comfort and support. If it isn't, don't say it.
There is a lot to talk about in the book of Job. Its core question is the question of suffering: how can God allow good people to suffer? And what are we to make of a God that allows such suffering?
Future posts will explore this issue but I want to talk about how we are with those who are suffering. That seems to be nearly as important as the question of suffering itself to the writer of Job because out of 42 chapters, 38 chapters are devoted to a dialogue between Job and his friends.
Initially, Job’s friends follow the rules of Susan Silk’s circle theory perfectly. They come to Job as soon as they hear about his great loss to comfort him. They tear their robes and sit with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights because his suffering was so great. This is such a beautiful display of friendship. One of the greatest gifts we can give anyone is to honor their suffering.
After 7 days, Job begins to speak. He wonders why he was ever born and to express how deep his suffering is.
And his friends cannot stay silent.
What’s striking is that if you were to pick up a Bible and open it to one of his friend’s speeches without looking at the context, you wouldn’t know that they are the example of “what not to do.” Their words are beautiful and deeply theological.
Eliphaz, who speaks first, declares his faith in God:
“As for me, I would seek God,
And to God I would commit my cause. (Self-righteous much?)
God does great things and unsearchable,
marvelous things without number.
He gives rain on the earth
and sends waters on the fields.” (Job 5:8-10)
Bildad, who speaks second, holds hope for Job’s future:
“God will yet fill your mouth with laugher,
and your lips with shouts of joy.
Those who hate you will be clothed with shame,
and the tent of the wicked will be no more.” (Job 8:21-22)
Zophar, who speaks third, reminds Job that actually God is gracious,
“Know that then God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves…
If you direct your heart rightly, you will stretch out your hands toward him.” (10:6,13)
Each of their speeches are full of theological depth and careful thought. They could be written by any seminary student in their declarations of faith and observations about how God works.
Have you heard some of these attempts to comfort before?
- Encouraging the person who is struggling to “keep the faith”?
- Telling them it will all be okay in the end?
- Reminding them that it could be worse?
- Extolling the goodness of God in the midst of their suffering?
Job refuses to have any of it. The depth of his suffering clarifies his understanding of their responses:
“Those who withhold kindness from a friend forsake the fear of the Almighty.” (6:14)
He calls out the violence of their attempts to set him straight.
And then he says this: “you see my calamity and are afraid.” (6:21)
Daniel Berrigan put it this way: “They must mask their dread with bravado.”
Another commentator, John Holbert said this: “Eliphaz must destroy Job; if not, Eliphaz himself may be destroyed. He is fighting for his theological life.”
Job’s suffering and his capacity to be in the pain with such integrity is deeply unsettling to his friends and to their understanding of God.
If you can lose everything for no apparent reason... If God is not pulling the levers of control... If Job can rage against God so fiercely… Then none of us are safe and God is not safe and all the mental arrangements we make with God are no guarantee at all.
Our capacity to be with those in suffering without fixing or saving or advising or explaining is directly related to our capacity to be with our own suffering or the potential of our suffering and how we allow God to be with us in it.
Back to the article – the book of Job is an invitation to examine what is happening inside of us when we encounter the great suffering of another.
Encountering suffering is difficult for all of us. We want to rationalize it or push it away because we are afraid that it could happen to us.
This fear invites us to look at our own theology.
Do we believe God is there to fix our problems?
Do we think God gives us what we deserve?
Does our faith extend beyond wellbeing?
What Job discovers in his suffering is that God does not give answers but that God is present. Job’s healing comes in the honest questions, in the raging, in the being with, in the silence.
I invite you to pay attention to your own responses to suffering. I invite you to watch the news and consider the suffering in others. Think about your friends and family members who are struggling. Notice what is happening inside of you and what it might tell you about how you understand God and your own fear of suffering. It is natural for all of us to want to justify or fix or advise or placate suffering but Job invites us to go deeper.
We are invited to sit with suffering and know that God sits with us. We are invited to let go of our need to control and to just be in the mystery and paradox without trying to control or fix.