friendship mistakes in Job (Last in a series)
Last in series
Finally, the third mistake that our friends make that Job’s friends utter, is the false application of the “God-is-enough-for-you” consolation, also known as the “just-trust-and-believe” response, or the “it-will-all-work-out-for-good” exhortation. As with much of the advice from Job’s friends, it is not that it is untrue - for God does work it out for Job’s good - but that it is inadequate in addressing Job’s situation.
For Job, he hears this from his trusted friend Eliphaz, challenging Job:
“Are God’s consolations not enough for you, words spoken gently to you?” (Job 15:11)
On several occasions, I’ve heard the equivalent in people’s sharing, either a simplistic “let go & let God” slogan, or even a more sincere, “well, she’s going to be OK, right?” question, even after I’ve shared the bigger picture about my daughter’s developmental challenges, and future health ambiguity. Or the surprisingly consistent refrain I’ve heard is, “Well, you are the perfect parents for this,” as though I had somehow qualified for the particular suffering I was experiencing and that being “a perfect parent” somehow explained what was happening.
As Robinson states, “if Job could accept Eliphaz’s approach, if it were not ‘too little,’ that is, unsatisfying for him, he could no doubt learn to live with his pain…” The essence of the “God-is-enough-for-you” consolation is that the right perspective would change everything for one who suffers; that ones’ suffering is most dependant on perspective and attitude, not on objective or experiential realities like pain, grief, or loss.
True to character, Job is not silent or ambivalent to this mistake. In responding to Eliphaz and his friends, he says:
“I have heard many things like these; you are miserable comforters, all of you! Will your long-winded speeches never end?” (Job 16:2-3)
Not only are the words of his friends deficient in supplying any comfort, but even his own attempts at communication leave him wanting.
“Yet if I speak, my pain is not relieved; and if I refrain, it does not go away.” (Job 16:)
I think Job gets it that it is just hard to talk about pain, suffering, etc. Not just as a friend, but as the person going through it. As Cline puts it: “Job’s experience is that speech and silence are both alike incapable of assuaging his suffering… Silence and speech from [his friends] have been equally ineffectual, equally judgmental, equally misdirected… Job is being difficult to please, of course… [it is because] there is nothing that his friends can do that will truly alleviate Job’s situation.” Job’s own journey through suffering uncovers to him that more words, better explanations, even silent reflection, won’t alleviate him from the pain, confusion or loss.
What makes this personal problem worse is that his friends don’t recognize the disillusionment and empty cycle of this conversation, leading them to keep piling on words and explanations and solutions “to fix” Job’s life.
“Job’s plaintive question tells us that he did not expect [his friends] to condemn him for expressing his honest feelings. He needs acceptance; he gets alienation. He needs intimacy; he gets loneliness.”
Even though Job begins to recognize that pain relief is elusive, the added pain of isolation worsens his circumstances. By now, Job’s friends aren’t saying anything radically new, but Job continues to have to defend and justify himself to them, bringing on additional fatigue and discouragement.
I know this feeling of fatigue and frustration in having to explain the complexity of my daughter’s health and its impact on her life and ours. It feels like a catch 22. On one hand, I can’t find enough words to capture the full picture of our experience, her health, etc. At some point, it is tiring having to always explain as much as I tire of not being able to say enough to get people to understand the experience I face. And yet on the otherhand, I tire of having to offer explanations, summaries, etc. of what’s happening.
So, while Job faces his own challenge, his complaint against his friends is how they are adding to the grief of speaking & inadequate words through the things that they say.
These three mistakes (see #1 here, and #2 here) that Job’s friends make are just a picture of the friendship challenge that Job faces. His confusion in suffering is not limited to his relationship with God. His questions and the grappling about his situation is spoken, often loudly, in the presence of his friends. In fact, it is even through the negative process that he goes through with his friends that enable Job to work out his conversation with God.
“…in spite of their rigidity, [Job’s friends] do promote the progress of Job’s thought. Some of the most important steps he takes spring from remarks made by one or other of the friends.”
John Goldingay says it well:
“The story of Job takes him through the three stage process – orientation, disorientation and new orientation – and the argument between him and his friends is about how you cope with disorientation.
The friends cope with it by denying it, as people often do when they refuse to acknowledge the reality of loss and grief and questions. The friends insist on fitting what has happened to Job within the framework of what they thought they already know about the way God relates to us and runs the world. In this framework, calamity is unintelligible…
Rather than revise their theology, they rewrite Job’s life.”
Its not like Job is the perfect friend. Or even the easiest person to be friends with in his suffering. But in the face of this pressure to live around the often painful mistakes of our friends when we suffer, Job offers a different model for friendship than what his friends offer him. The same endurance that James commends Job for with God is what carries him to remain engaged with his friends, even as they struggle to listen to him, to carry the burden of his suffering with him, or to resist the urge to apply logistical solutions to a deeper journey.
In this way, Job becomes a model for the difficult task of nurturing the kind of friendships that we need to have when we face difficult, painful and hard to understand seasons of life with God.