The rings of grief: Job and Eliphaz

Job 4:1-9

There’s a splendid chart I came across at some point in my life that looks something like this...

 It’s titled “Ring Theory.” There’s an inner circle, small, confined, and then several rings growing further and further out. In the inner circle is the aggrieved or afflicted. This is the person who is affected primarily by a loss. Then a step further out is significant others, parents, siblings and the like. Then a step further is true friends. A step further is colleagues. The last ring is lookie loos, which I think is Australian for people who slow down their cars to check out accidents or something like that. In this chart comfort goes in and on the bottom are the words dump OUT with arrows pointing away.

            The purpose of this chart is to demonstrate the appropriate way that we are to deal with grief in the case of any profound loss—maybe a death or maybe a personal loss of some other kind. The appropriate way to address all grief is inside-out, starting with those most closely affected and moving outward. This might seem obvious, but in subtle ways people do not get this. The principle is that those closest to the loss—a spouse, parents, maybe children—get to share their grief with ALL those further out. And the next ring gets to share their grief with friends and neighbors further out in the circle and so on. But nobody gets to share their grief in the other direction. No true friend gets to lay their emotional burdens on the family; no acquaintance or stranger gets to use an event as an excuse to dump their own issues on friends or family members. We’ve all seen this happen. If you haven’t it might be because you’re the person who does it.

            This is why I’m always nervous opening up the mic at funerals to whomever may come up. Most people who get up to talk at a funeral—90% at least—do a great job of honoring the person who died and they express emotions appropriately without laying their emotional burdens on those closer to the situation, but there’s sometimes that person who stands up and who, for whatever reason, lacks the emotional intelligence to understand on which ring they are standing. It’s a friend or acquaintance who plays up their emotions over those closer to the loss, or it’s even a close friend or extended family member who feels the need to tell the family how they should be feeling.

Job: Sitting with the questions

Job 1

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’” In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.”

So begins the book of Job.

And that’s just it, it’s the beginning of the story. Not the end. And we’re not even sure Job’s words are wise words—not yet. This is a perfect example of scripture that can be quoted terribly out of context, because Job’s supposition about God’s giving and taking is about to be put to the test over the course of the next 40-odd chapters. This story could begin with chapter 1, skip everything that follows, and resolve with God saying, “Well, guess Job was faithful. I guess he earned everything back and more!”

But it doesn’t. In-between the loss and the resolution: that’s where the book of Job teaches us about our role in the vastness of the universe, about how little we are, and about how our losses (and our gains) are only a small part in this divine play.

For forty chapters we are caught in the interplay of God and man. Who is God? Who are we? That’s the relationship the book of Job is concerned with addressing. Figures arise to question Job’s character—every conceivable angle is pursued for a reason why Job loses everything.

Everybody tries to tease out an answer. Surely it’s karma that leads to Job’s losses; surely, Job is secretly doing something he shouldn’t be doing. There has to be a reason for so much suffering.

Then Job proceeds to make his defense. He goes back and forth with the visitors who are certain the reason for the calamity has something to do with Job. You reap what you sow, after all. We will come to all this is in the weeks ahead as we venture further into the book of Job, but chapter 1 is clear: Job is blameless, faultless, above reproach. “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.” He even makes offerings in case his family sins in secret. If anybody was truly deserving of everything he had Job was the man.

And that’s exactly the point. What follows is a long-form discussion, debate, even a trial of what a person deserves in this life, and in the end Job is found wanting because Job is not God. Job is vulnerable. The book of Job explores how the things that happen to us—good and bad—interplay with our behavior and our role as created-creatures. Do we really reap what we sow? Is karma the rule of the day? Or are we subject to the random whims of the world, of Satan, and of the darkness that lives inside of us?

Standards, shame, and being special: Why it's easier to believe in God than to trust that God believes in you

1 Corinthians 12:1-13

Enter through the narrow gate, says the Bible.

            It is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to go to heaven, says the Bible.

            Sometimes the Bible seems to set a standard we cannot approach and sometimes we might believe because of this that there are only a few defining characteristics of the Christian faith. I mean, if there’s a narrow gate surely we had better be acting in a certain way to squeeze through it. And doesn’t the Bible say something about conforming to the image of Jesus? Doesn’t that mean we’re supposed to stop chasing what we want for the sake of what God would want for us?

            Anything good must be bad, we might think, if the way is truly so narrow.

This is one way to think and act as a Christian, but I don’t care much for it.

For one thing, for every example the Bible gives us of trying to conform to something else it gives us an equally strong example, like today, of the rewards and, indeed, virtue of being yourself, living out your gifts. Dr. Seuss was a Lutheran, perhaps you knew that. And Dr. Seuss was one of the best there ever was at teaching us that we are unique and special and, yes, a little weird, and that one of the most holy callings we have as human beings is to be you and me in all our strangeness.

            You are uniquely qualified to use the particular gifts you have been given. You are special. That’s the first word Paul gives us in 1 Corinthians 12.

            The second word is that, because of you being the only you there will ever be, you have a tremendous amount of responsibility. You must be you. It’s surprisingly difficult to be you, though, because there are many things in this world that want you to be something non-descript and ordinary. It’s these things that feed our belief that we have no special gifts to offer; that there’s nothing you are particularly good at. I hear people say that ALL THE TIME: I’m not really good at anything. Firstly, that’s a lie. It’s maybe a lie perpetuated by a world that suggests the only things a person can be good at are subjects in school, how you skate or hit a baseball, or how well you make somebody money. We test a dozen or so subjects in school, we participate in a few different sports and hobbies, we have what seems like a variety of majors if we go to college, and then there are jobs and careers that someday present themselves for us in the realm of “work.” But the truth is that these may have little to do with our actual gifts. At best our gifts help us to excel in other areas of our life, but part of the problem with standardized testing and ACT scores and work reviews and even job duties is that we sometimes confuse our performance with our gifts. If we struggle in one area we assume we are no-good at anything.

Show me a test that can measure empathy or humility or grace.

            Show me a Confirmation curriculum that will teach you to have faith.

            Show me a worksheet that reveals character.