Judging Sorrow (Job 9:1-15, 32-35)

[a brief comment from the Daily Office]

The book of Job is interesting because Job questions the understanding of justice found in the rest of the Deuteronomic canon: the idea that if a person is suffering, it’s because of his sins. The idea that the conditions of a person’s life reflect whether God is rewarding or punishing her for things she has done.

Job says, “No, I have done nothing to earn me this pain and hardship.” Job rebels against the biblical interpretation of suffering that other people around him believe.

But that doesn’t mean he thinks he’s perfect, either. He asks, “how can a man be just before God?” (9:2). On the one hand, he means that no one can sue God, as it were, for wrongful suffering and expect to come out of the lawsuit justified as the winner. There’s no one to oversee the trial because no one can judge God. God is not a human being, and everything He does is just. Being angry at God because he’s suffering is not the answer Job is looking for – he has no illusions that God will take responsibility for causing unjust sorrow.

On the other hand, it also isn’t possible for anyone to be just before God, to stand before Him and call oneself sinless. Just because Job has tried to live a good life and hasn’t done anything horribly wrong doesn’t mean he’s sinless. Everyone is a sinner, and God alone is just.

Then why, Job asks, do some people suffer while others don’t? More than anything else, Job wants people to know that bad things haven’t happened to him because he is a bad person who did bad things. They’ve simply happened through no fault of his own.

We all have something to learn from Job because we all reflexively judge people based on what we see of their life. Psychological studies have been done on things like the ‘halo effect,’ for example: we have a cognitive bias that makes us think beautiful people are also good people. The bias also works in reverse. We often assume that a person is very poor or homeless because of his own bad decisions. As a society, we’ve made some progress against the belief that sick people are to be shunned because there’s something wrong about them – we aren’t ashamed about most cancers anymore, because we don’t think a person somehow did something to deserve it. But we do have problems when dealing with mental illness. We do still think people just aren’t trying hard enough to get better when they’re depressed, and we still back away from the psychotic. We also sometimes blame victims of crime for putting themselves in a dangerous position or not being careful enough.

These knee-jerk responses are natural: we’re cognitive misers (our brains are wired to think as little as possible) and evolution has set us up to make certain connections. But Job reminds us that those connections aren’t necessarily true. His suffering, which found a place in the Bible, tells us that we have to work harder at being compassionate toward those in distress, and that we shouldn’t blame them or abandon them. No one is perfect, but no one deserves to suffer, either.

Prayer of the day: Lord, we pray for all people who feel abandoned under the weight of sorrow, illness and despair. We ask that each of them finds in their friends, family and community a place of comfort and respite, and a source of strength. We ask also that we be given the grace to better support the people who depend on us for help, and that we receive the wisdom to see beyond suffering to the human being who suffers.

Judges

Along with my blatant neglect of this blog, I've recently gotten out-of-step with several other things as well. I skipped praying the Daily Office for a while and, let me tell you, the action-packed book of Judges did not agree with that! Getting back into the swing of things, I found myself totally confused about what was going on. Who are these people? Why are they at war? Who is the man in the yellow hat?

It's interesting how clinical depression can be a vicious circle. You feel bad, so you're too tired to pray; you don't pray, so you feel worse; cycle continues ad infinitum. I hate to compare prayer to exercise, but it kind of is: if you'd just do it you'd feel better. It's a difficult situation for me because I've always connected prayer to a passionate desire for God, so the idea that I have to create that by getting into a prayer routine is foreign, because it's backwards.

Nevertheless, I think that this is a valuable learning experience for me, if I can learn how to draw a new kind of strength from prayer. What does it mean to want God when you don't feel like you want Him? The great experiment begins.

I know that I seem like a pessimistic crackpot pessimist but, really, there's a lot I have to look forward to. If all goes according to the current plan, I'll be welcomed into the Anglican Church in October (woohoo!!). I might me leading a Worship & Share session in September at my church, about liturgy (yay liturgy!); also might get to preach for back-to-church Sunday. If ministry team agrees, we're also going to start having daily prayer a few times a week, once we can get it started in the Fall (awesomeness!). It'll be good to have a prayer responsibility to someone other than myself...well, good for me, anyway. I miss the corporateness and the timeliness and the human contact.

So you see, lots of churchy goodness on the horizon.

But, even MORE awesome: two of my closest friends are getting married today!! YAY!!! I can't wait!

p.s. Pat, the elephant misses you a lot. You always cheered it up. The elephant will come visit you when you least expect it. And it's saving a great big hug just for YOU.

The Church of Jazz and Wallmart

I spent some time hanging out at the Jazz Fest this year (what else is new), and I suddenly realized that good church should be a lot like music festivals. And no, this epiphany had nothing to do with my beer-to-jazz ratio.

For one thing, people come up with catchy slogans at the Jazz festival. Such as: “I can’t decide whether that guy reminds me more of a hippy or a sex offender.” These catchy slogans hold just enough truth to get you thinking (‘you’re right: those neon mini-shorts and tank top are like something a hippie sex offender would wear’), are simple yet striking enough to get stuck in your head, and contain a hefty dose of judgmentalism. Exactly the way many sermons turn out, right? Good church will have sermons with catchy slogans. And, in order to preserve tradition, at least some of those slogans will be judgmental.

For another thing, the music at the Jazz festival is free, at least if you stay outdoors. You can wander in during the middle of a set, leave before it’s over, comment on the music, and eat snacks (you can also drink beer). Church is free, too, unless you go to one of those places where you have to pay for your seats. [note: although church is ‘free,’ donations are encouraged. You can donate to the festival by buying special passes that make you its friend.] I think a good church encourages people to walk in at various points, since that way the people who are ten minutes late won’t skip out entirely. Maybe if there were less parishioner glaring at perceived church-going infractions such as coming and going, we’d be a more welcoming place. Also, the potential for people to leave might encourage us to be more interesting and dynamic. We could have sock-puppets, for example.

Some churches have music that does make you feel like dancing, or at least responding in some way. I applaud them.

All in all, the Jazz festival welcomes everyone. Poor students and super-wealthy finance people, dudes covered with tattoos and professional swing dancers, children and the man in the neon shorts. Everyone just comes and enjoys the music and the atmosphere, and no one feels like they don’t belong.

In the opposite vein, I think churches should be less like Wallmart, which I’ve also visited lately (I bought suspenders and a hula-hoop. Don’t ask). Wallmart sucks out your soul. They don’t like you going unless you buy stuff. They really, really don’t like it when you try to take stuff for free. Wallmart tries to make you a conformist. They have very bright lighting.

In short, church should be more like the Jazz festival and less like Wallmart. It should probably also have a point, unlike this rambling post of mine.

Well, you can't please everyone.