“How can your empty clichés comfort me?
    All your explanations are lies!” (Job 21:34)

When our children are little and we want them to stop crying, we say, “You’re okay. It’s okay. Everything is okay.” Sometimes it’s true. But more often it’s dismissive. And what are we really saying except, “Your suffering is bothering me. Please stop expressing it!”

We never grow out of this discomfort with others’ suffering. Pain is a shared experience, whether we mean it to be or not. We have many ways of shaming the hurting into silence; we tell them it’s not as bad as they say, others have it worse, they should be grateful that it isn’t worse. Stop whining. Put your big girl pants on. Everyone has to do it. It’s temporary. You can handle it. This is what you get for [fill in the blank]. Deal with it. What we’re really saying is: I am powerless to help you, and it hurts, so if you could please stop hurting me that’d be great. Who, I ask, are we actually trying to help?

Job called his friends out. He said you know what’s really unhelpful right now guys? Lies. Telling me that what’s right in front of my face is not right in front of my face. Telling me it’s not so bad, it’s okay, everything is going to be okay when my skin is *literally* falling off, my children are dead, I’ve been robbed and wrecked and reduced to my final breath – not helpful. You’re supposed to be comforting me, and all you’re really worried about is you.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again: humans are miserable comforters. The fact of the matter is most of the time we don’t have the emotional capacity to carry others’ suffering, and though we want the best for the people we love, we’re too arrogant – or too scared – to admit we’re not it. So we try. And we lie. And we drown ourselves beside them.

When I was a little girl, my grandparents had a pool. I was out swimming one day with some of my cousins when the younger sister went too far into the deep end and started to drown. I remember watching her flail and scream, “HELP!” and panicking because I had no idea what to do. Of course I would have pulled her out if I could have, but I was smaller than she was and could not swim! But her older sister yelled, “I’ll save you!” and dove in after her. I remember watching the younger sister almost pull her under in her panic, and I watched them both struggle back to the side of the pool.

I have never seen my grandfather angrier than he was that day. He came tearing out of the house, ripped the life ring off the fence, and shouted, “Do you see THIS! NEVER THROW YOURSELF IN TO SAVE SOMEONE WHO IS DROWNING! You throw THIS!” and he threw the life ring down on the ground so hard the smack terrified us all.

I feel his rebuke to the corners of my spherical soul.

My cousin had meant to be brave and valiant. She did all she could think to do in the moment. But she had relied too much on herself, and my grandfather was right. She could have gotten them both drowned.

In the book of Job, Job is drowning in disillusionment, and he’s going to drown them all.

Why do the wicked prosper,
    growing old and powerful?
They live to see their children grow up and settle down,
    and they enjoy their grandchildren.
Their homes are safe from every fear,
    and God does not punish them. (Job 21:7-9)

Job confronts them with the truth: not everyone gets what we believe they deserve. Of all the facts of life, this one is the hardest to reconcile with a good God. Life. Is. Not. Fair. His friends have done what most do; clung to the belief that cheaters, thieves, liars, the greedy and selfish and cruel, will eventually get what’s coming to them. They have clung to the belief that their own prosperity is the direct result of God’s favorable opinion of their righteousness. They have lived in denial, and Job is making them face what they do not want to face: LIFE. IS. NOT. FAIR.

They spend their days in prosperity,
    then go down to the grave in peace.
And yet they say to God, ‘Go away.
    We want no part of you and your ways.
Who is the Almighty, and why should we obey him?
    What good will it do us to pray?’
(They think their prosperity is of their own doing,
    but I will have nothing to do with that kind of thinking.) (Job 21:13-14)

When I was teaching, a colleague of mine told me one day, “Don’t worry too much about cheaters. The honest kids will call them out. It bothers them when someone else gets the credit they worked for without doing the work.” And you know what? It was true. I didn’t have to police the cheaters because their hard-working peers were angry enough to turn them in. Job has seen too many people get the blessings he got without putting in the work. He’s angry. They cheated, and he didn’t. No one hates a cheater as much as the cheated! But he’s angry because he knows God already knows, God has the power to do something about it, and he appears to have done nothing to stop them or punish them for it. It is God Job accuses. And even he cannot believe his wrath’s audacity.

My complaint is with God, not with people.
    I have good reason to be so impatient.
Look at me and be stunned.
    Put your hand over your mouth in shock.
When I think about what I am saying, I shudder.
    My body trembles. (Job 21:4-6)

It’s not like Job wants this to be true. That is what his friends don’t understand. He’s not saying any of this to justify or excuse his own actions. He is just in a position where he cannot deny it any longer. I can hear weariness in him when he says,

Look, I know what you’re thinking.
    I know the schemes you plot against me.
You will tell me of rich and wicked people
    whose houses have vanished because of their sins.
But ask those who have been around,
    and they will tell you the truth.
Evil people are spared in times of calamity
    and are allowed to escape disaster.
No one criticizes them openly
    or pays them back for what they have done.
When they are carried to the grave,
    an honor guard keeps watch at their tomb.
A great funeral procession goes to the cemetery.
    Many pay their respects as the body is laid to rest,
    and the earth gives sweet repose. (Job 21:27-33)

I can hear him saying, “Guys, I can’t pretend anymore. I am tired of pretending!” Grief has a way of making us crave something real.

The question is – will Job’s friends finally throw him a life ring? Or are they going to keep throwing themselves in instead?