Miserable Comforters

 “All of my best friends despise me, and those I love have turned against me.” This is what happens when you disgust your friends, as good ole Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar did with their “one time best friend”, Job. Job gives us a perfect example on how severe affliction feels, how it distorts our perceptions and how our anguish screams out our deepest human pains. They are raw, they are real and they are disturbing. Job was in such anguish that his own wife who had experienced loss herself and pain from her own experience of her husband’s testing, had despaired to the point that she could no longer bear his sufferings, and ill-advised him to just curse God and die. Instead of encouraging him to stay steadfast until his troubles had passed, she no longer could endure it herself. She never blamed her husband for their loss and suffering, but held to and acknowledge his integrity. But from a human’s point of view, she felt that dying at that point would bring him resolve and peace. Yet Job responded to her by telling her that she was talking like a foolish woman. “Should we accept only good from God and not bad?”, Job ask.

The words that Job spoke in Job 3 expressed his devastation. He said things like, “Let the day perish on which I was born…”, “Why did I not die at birth, come out from the womb and expire?” He felt that it would have been better that he not even be born. Job had no idea what was going on in the heavenlies. No idea that satan was seeking permission to unleash his evil wrath on Job. Did his words accurately represent Job’s deepest beliefs? No, they did not. Like David in Psalm 22:1 and Heman the Ezrahite in Psalm 88:14, Job’s words were cries of pain. Like the puss of infection oozing from the sores on Job’s body, so the words of demoralization and desolation oozing from the sores on his tormented soul. You and I may never know the extent of Job’s anguish, but from our own experience, I believe that we can draw our own conclusions.

The one thing that we seek when we are wounded is a sympathetic companion to help bear our circumstance. When troubles hit us full force and we have prayed and sought God in them and yet have no answers, we can be assured that there is always more to the picture than we may be able to see, and that we may not be at fault when they do hit us. However, in Job’s case his friends had an overly simplistic explanation for evil and that was, “God rewards righteousness with prosperity and iniquity with destruction”.  You can hear it in every word that they say to Job. This resulted in their misunderstanding and wrongfully diagnosing Job’s spiritual state. They just wanted Job to confess some secret sin that he was hiding. Job’s evaluation of what they were saying to him was perfect, “miserable comforters are you all” he said to them.

They had badly misapplied truth and reproved Job at the worst time that they could ever have chosen to reprove a friend. Some of the things that they said were truth, as when Eliphaz said, “Behold, blessed is the one whom God reproves; therefore despise not the discipline of the Almighty. For he wounds, but he binds up; he shatters, but his hands heal.” This is a true statement! But the statement being true did not make it right. In its context of what was said, it’s clear Eliphaz assumed Job’s afflictions were God’s reproof for a hidden sin for which he should repent, Job 4:7–8. But Eliphaz’s assumption was wrong. It’s true, God’s corrective discipline is redemptive. But Job’s suffering was not God’s corrective discipline, and that was the difference. Eliphaz misapplied this truth and therefore damaged Job. We must take great care when we presume. Presumption, can spring from the skewed wisdom of our own experience, as well as from the ignorance of our inexperience, which can result in misdiagnosing a problem and misapplying biblical truth. And this only adds insult to injury. It’s easy to critique Job’s comforters because, unlike them, we have the advantage of seeing the big picture. But in our real-life situations, how often have we made the same mistake and given ill-timed reproofs?

I know that I have been guilty of this myself. There were times that I have reproved someone in angry, defensive, with accusing words, assuming they were rebellious from a soul-core, only to discover later that they oozed from a soul-sore. I wrongly reproved when I should have carefully probed and applied the balm of patient, gracious, kind, forbearing, servant-hearted, quick-to-listen, slow-to-speak love. I may not be there friend, but I am headed in that direction! Discerning the difference between soul-core words and soul-sore words is no easy thing. They take time to ponder and time in prayer before giving an answer according to Proverbs 15:28 “The heart of the righteous studies how to answer,”. In the words of John Piper, “Restoring the soul, not reproving the sore, is the aim of our love.”

Hold Fast,

-Bren