I found it difficult to keep this brief today but lets start with Job’s friends who show up and sit with him as he
grieves. But then they decide silence isn’t enough and start being “helpful”:
“Your children must have sinned— that’s why they died.” “Just face it, Job. You
must have done something for this to happen.” But Job won’t accept that. He
doesn’t know about the divine wager, but he knows it is not helpful for people
to explain things away. Job does not lose faith. But Job asks God to answer,
and God answers.
Having said this it would seem that the chain of
events and suffering are things that Job might not have scripted for himself.
In truth, were I Job, I’m not even sure I would understand how God had answered
my question. People have long turned to Job to ponder the question of why bad
things happen. The question of where God is in tragedy is one with which we
still struggle. Yet I find comfort in the idea people were wrestling with this
issue thousands of years ago too.
As some of you may know I have been writing,
reflecting on and reading about grief over the last couple of years. I have
done this as I try to get to grips with why, as the church, we are gifted with
a number of resources to assist us in supporting those who are grieving and yet
we seem in this current age to be very poor at supporting grief work. By the
way I don’t claim to have the answers to why there is suffering in the world
but I do believe that the way we grieve and face it, rather than run from it,
helps us grow in love.
A very helpful biblical image comes from this Book
of Job, where there is a call for engagement with grief that does not seek to
offer ‘proverbs of ashes’ or build up ‘defences of clay’ (Job 13:8). Rather,
those engaging in the care of the church community at a time of grief are to do
so with wisdom and serenity (Moe, 1995, 81-91).
Some forms of grief are ‘acceptable’ (for
example, a family death due to natural causes) – but this does not seem to
apply to traumatic losses such as divorce, loss of a job, a child given up for
adoption, or imprisonment. Appropriate tools and techniques need to be used to
assist the traumatised person in working through grief.
Part of the process of recovery and healing for
those suffering loss is experiencing hope (Wright and Strawn, 149-157) Hope is
the assurance of ‘healing’ and in this case does not mean a ‘cure’ or the
removal of the experience, but the realistic prospect of being able to work
through the grief process to a point where life can be lived fully, loss no
longer drags the grieving person down, healthy group relationships can be
maintained, and effective responses decrease the possibility of being
traumatised again.
Hope is offered in the parables of Jesus, in
light of the experience of loss and suffering the people are dealing with. Church communities have many resources that
contribute to and promise new growth from grief work. This book of Job in the
Hebrew Scriptures tells us that his companions had seven days of silence to
mull over what all Job’s losses meant (Ramsay 2011, 368-373). Time to work as a
community to support Job’s wrestling with his tragic losses.
Any grief work process employed to deal with loss
needs to be able to bring the traumatised person to a point of:
1. Safety: in body, relationships, environments
and systems
2. Trustworthiness: consistent, predictable follow
through
3. Choice: even with limited options
4. Collaboration: partnering with others and
finding supports
5. Empowerment: supporting the development of
skills, knowledge and resources
(Boss, 2006; Neimeyer, 2011; Winokeur, 2012)
To be engaged with the world is to suffer. Even
after the painful trauma of birth is over, a little child suffers the pains of
the digestive system learning to manage itself, first teeth breaking slowly
through the gums, the panic as mother incomprehensibly leaves the room even for
a moment. In the best of economic and social circumstances, there is always
sickness, tragedy, death, unexplainable twists of fate, love-sickness,
homesickness, hurtful disagreements, mental illness, and the death of loved
ones. Add poverty, war, natural disasters, political oppression, and brutality,
and you have life.
How can I bear this suffering? Christians, who
ritually embrace the suffering of Christ and the world in worship, can
nevertheless devolve into “Why did God do this to me? Why isn’t God answering
my prayers?” during a bout of suffering. By concentrating on the exclusively
personal in this way, I can avoid the questions pertaining to both what I
believe is God’s and my personal responsibility as a human being. If I wallow
in “Why did God do this to me?” I don’t have to worry about someone halfway
around the world, or even down the street, for that matter.
Maybe at the moment my suffering meets your
suffering, the moment our eyes meet, an alchemical change takes place. I am in
you and you are in me. Suffering makes us one. Learning to suffer with you, I
learn empathy for others I don’t know. And from my observations and experience
suffering opens my soul to love. And when my suffering meets God’s suffering,
we become one in that suffering, incarnate in the world, bearing this suffering
for I-Know-Not-What. The promise of God through Jesus Christ and the hope I
gain from living out the life he called us to helps me to trust living in the
incomprehensible vortex of the cross. My suffering, your suffering, God’s
suffering, bringing forth new life. How can I bear this joy?
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