Today our third Job post: how not to be a friend! (It seemed a good idea to include some notes too about praying towards being a good friend, so they’re at the end…)
Job’s “friends” play a key role in the book. No: they’re Job’s, yes, real friends, even though they get things horribly and destructively wrong. (Which God does sort out.) Chapter 2: all Job’s children have been killed, his possessions have been wiped out, and now he has a foul and painful disease. He sits on the town dump in a state of numbed bereavement. Friends Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar go to `sympathize and comfort him`. And what they do on arrival is, as is so often remarked, so right:
`When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.` (NIV)
Seven days and nights sitting with him on the town dump, and saying nothing, because what is there to say?: that is serious companionship. And then, Job opens his mouth, and he howls. He curses the day of his birth: “May the day of my birth perish, and the night that said, ‘A boy is conceived!’… for it did not shut the doors of the womb on me to hide trouble from my eyes. Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb?… Why is light given to those in misery, and life to the bitter of soul; to those who long for death, that does not come?… Oh, that I might have my request, that God would grant what I hope for, that God would be willing to crush me, to let loose his hand and cut off my life!` (ch3, 6:8-9).
Are believers allowed to feel like this? Yes. And that would have been a good time to stay silent. Instead, and perhaps understandably after those long seven days, Eliphaz misjudges the situation, and his words are deeply unhelpful: `Think how you have instructed many, how you have strengthened feeble hands… But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged… Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed? As I have observed, those who plough evil and those who sow trouble reap it` (ch4). Then Bildad piles it on quite astonishingly: `When your children sinned against [God], He gave them over to the penalty of their sin` (8:4). And this pattern repeats through the following 20 chapters, as Job howls his grief and incomprehension, and his friends keep trying to bring him back to the idea that his tragedies are the result of his sin.
We see how there is a time to speak, and most surely a time to stay silent. But also, whether we like it or not, their destructive remarks are the result of bad doctrine. As we noted last week, chapter 1 makes clear repeatedly that Job is `blameless and upright`, showing us clearly that such suffering cannot be assumed to imply either sin or God’s displeasure; just as when in John 9 the disciples asked Jesus, `Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?`, Jesus answered firmly: `Neither!` (This can be so important when someone tells a believer that the reason they haven’t been healed is their sin or their lack of faith.) Bad doctrine – even when it has the weight of tradition behind it (15:10-19), or an apparent new revelation (4:12-17, which raises the issue of how we evaluate supernatural experiences, especially when they do include some things we know are right) – bad doctrine, wherever it comes from, can lead to our being very destructive as friends…
It’s not as if the friends are always wrong. Eliphaz in 5:17 is saying much the same thing as Hebrews 12:5ff, it just isn’t what’s going on here; and his 5:9-13 is real worship, with 5:11 in particular very much like Mary’s words in the Magnificat. And they seem genuinely to want the best for Job, sometimes attractively so (see for example 5:17-26, 11:13-19); but because they have so thoroughly got the wrong end of the doctrinal stick, this doesn’t help at all. But also they are being insensitive; are they really listening to Job? (Thinking through these things, we should start responding in prayer: Lord, please keep me from these same mistakes!) Job pleads with them (they are in the majority) to stay silent: `Do I have the strength of stone? Is my flesh bronze?… A despairing man should have the devotion of his friends… Do you mean to correct what I say, and treat my desperate words as wind?` (ch6). `If only you would be altogether silent!` (13:5).
And then things start to get nasty. Eliphaz in 15:13 and Bildad 18:4 comment on Job (not surprisingly) losing his temper (17:5,10,12). But the three friends are human beings too: if they couldn’t bring themselves to be silent, this would have been a good time to walk away briefly, since as they stay their emotions drive them to what Job experiences now as personal attack. We watch Zophar’s frustration in ch11, and then Bildad in ch18, Zophar in ch20 and Eliphaz in ch22 each feeling the time has come to be `brutally honest` (another thing for us to pray about?) And here is how Job responds: `How long will you torment me and crush me with words?… Have pity on me, my friends, have pity… Why do you pursue me as God does? Will you never get enough of my flesh?` (ch19). (Picture too the interchange in 17:10-18:2, which is especially dramatic.)
This isn’t the whole story. Atkinson comments that `The first rule of ministry to people who are depressed` (like Job) `is that you will almost certainly get it wrong`, and will quite probably be misunderstood. And what makes it hard is that there actually are things Job needs, at the right time, to hear, and God Himself will say them: but what if we are in the place (as we today usually are) where God doesn’t speak directly, and His mouthpieces might be us…? But if our Job-equivalent is a believer, God can (sooner or later) speak to them through Scripture; and we can pray (but not nag!) towards that. There is a time when God will speak, either directly or just possibly through us, but we do not want to speak before that time. Certainly as we become exposed to this mighty book, and to the titanic, conflicted questionings and anguish of Job, and his friends’ disastrous comments, we become more ready to be biblical, loving, and as necessary silent, rather than superficial, when faced with others’ suffering; even as – possibly – we seek, and pray, to grasp what may be God’s Word for the sufferer’s comfort and growth, at the moment finally when it’s right for it to come.
And this too is not the whole story. The next two weeks we’ll give to thinking just what God wants us, now, to receive, from Job’s agonized, near-blasphemous, yet sometimes extraordinarily prophetic words…
PS All of us want to grow as better friends. Here are some things we can pray will characterize us, to that end…
RESPECT – expressed affection – realistic appreciation
Encouragement, not competitiveness
Aiming to give out; not sucking energy from them
Understanding – acceptance
(These come from the Spirit’s power to help us reach out in respect; Luke 14:12-14, John 4:4-7)
HONESTY…. openness… freedom
Genuineness/seriousness… not triviality/hypocrisy/superficiality…
Truth-speaking (Prov 27:6 – but don’t forget Job’s friends…)
Reliability/confidentiality/trust
COMPANIONSHIP – Time
Communication – listening to their story
Investing in shared interests, shared experiences/ history
Investing in shared life with God, sharing in the kingdom’s growth
LOVE – selflessness – being a giver not a taker
Loyalty
Risking openness to hurt
Forgiveness
The power for all this comes from Christ’s Spirit (Gal 5:22; 1 Cor 13:4-7); He mends us, helps us grow like Jesus, helps us become genuine friends… Holy Spirit, thankyou that You are helping us grow!
