In the same way that our advice may be premature, so also may our reassurance. In our efforts to assuage the suffering of our loved one or friend, we reach out by offering hope of a better future. Because we can’t stand our helplessness we try to lift their depression.
Just as giving advice can communicate that we don’t understand the depth of their emotional pain, the magnitude or significance of their loss, or how they feel, so can our reassurance. It can communicate: “I don’t want to hear any more of your suffering.” Sometimes that’s true–we do find it hard to bear. But we risk shutting off communication. That may increase our friend or love-one’s sense of isolation. We’re telling them to keep their deepest suffering to themselves.
At the end of his first efforts at comfort, Job’s colleague Bildad reassures Job of a happier future. “[God] will yet fill your mouth with laughter, and your lips with shouts of joy,” he says (8:21). This is not his only blunder in this chapter, but it is one we also make. He demonstrates he doesn’t want to hear any more of Job’s pain. He and the others already sat through hearing Job’s desire to die. He’s heard enough and, like the others, unloads all of his traditional wisdom strategies in order to “answer” Job.
Have you experienced a loss where a loved one tried to provide you with reassurance you found premature? Have you offered others reassurance at a point where your friend stopped talking? or changed the subject? How did you both resolve the impasse?
I’m pleased you found my blog helpful. Thanks for letting me know.
Gordon Grose
Friend of Job
I think premature assurance and giving advice or trying to fix it has been the most hurtful of all the responses to my wounds in life. It is interesting to me that Job’s friends at the first did the one of the best things I could do… sit with him, just be with him, but ended up doing all the wrong things. I am just as guilty, though. I think we all are so uncomfortable being with someone who is suffering that we are compelled to do or say something, anything to try to make it better. The problem, though, is we are not God and most times there is nothing we can do or say that will make it better. God’s name is I AM and to be Godly often simply means to be, or to be with. One of the most comforting verses about God in the Bible is “I will never leave you or forsake you.”
Judy, Thanks for sharing your personal experience.
FYI I sent my agent a new book proposal (Tragedy Transformed: How Job’s Recovery can Provide Hope for Yours) last month. He said my proposal was “thorough,” which I take to mean he liked it. He’ll be “shopping” it to publishers this month, wo you can be in prayer. If no publisher is interested, I’ll self-publish. I can sell as I speak. I’ve been using my Job material to teach local Sunday school classes, and build interest. March 9 I give my all-day workshop to a church in eastern Oregon.
God bless,
Gordon
Friend of Job