Sinful Sympathy Series

Tragedy so often leads to bitterness against God. Mark Twain

had a daughter who died at the age of 21 because of diphtheria. His

wife also died young. He became so angry and bitter that he lashed

out at God with the very gift that made him famous, his pen. He

wrote and imaginative tale about Noah's Ark. Three days out of

port in the flood Noah discovered he had left behind the tsetse fly,

and had to go back. Mark Twain comments on how thoughtful God

was to make Noah go back for this creature, so that men could be

afflicted with its dreaded disease for all these centuries. The story

was such a bitter and sarcastic slam at God that his relatives would

not allow it to be published until 50 years after his death.

Job was not so direct in his bitterness over tragedy. He avoids an

attack upon God, but he curses his birth and his life, and complains

that God allows life to go on in such misery. It was shocking to Job's

friends to hear him expressing such bitter emotions. The way he was

handling his emotions was not pleasing to them, and they could no

longer sit in silence and let his outcry against God go unchallenged.

Chapter 4 is the beginning of the speeches of Job's three friends,

and his responses. Eliphaz is the first to speak, because he is the

oldest, and has seniority. The three speak in the order of their age.

The speeches get more and more radical, as they go from mild

rebuke to vicious attack, because Job refuses to respond to their

advice as they expect him to do. These three men were true friends

of Job, and not enemies. They traveled far, and stayed long, to

comfort Job in his misery. We have to commend them for their

effort. The reason they failed is because they were ignorant, and not

because they were evil. They were just like all of us tend to be,

inadequate of our understanding of how to help the grief stricken

suffer.

As we commend their heartless attacks on Job, let us keep in

mind, they represent us, the majority of well-meaning people who

make life's burdens heavier, because we do not understand

sympathy. We will learn little from the study of Job's friends, unless

we see ourselves in them. The most caring and compassionate of us

make some of the same blunders they did. The closer we are to the

sufferer, the more likely we are to be as foolish as they were. We

need to learn from their mistakes how to be true comforters. This

means we must learn what sympathy is all about. For the basic need

for all who suffer is sympathy. This is a neglected virtue in the

Christian life, because we think of it as a sort of weak second rate

virtue, unworthy of major attention.

This is a tragic attitude, and it leads Christians to be no better

prepared than Job's friends to meet the deepest need of the sufferer.

We handicap ourselves by failing to develop the capacity for

sympathy. There is no way to become truly Christlike without this

virtue. Jesus became a man to make sure He had the powers of true

sympathy, and that is a primary basis for our comfort. Heb. 4:15

says, "For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize

with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted

as we are, yet without sinning." The sympathy of Jesus is the key to

His ministry of His intercession on our behalf, and the key to our

security. We know that even if nobody else understands us, Jesus

does. That is what sympathy is all about. It is the ability to feel

what another feels, and to be able to understand why they feel the

way they do.

Sympathy is one of the key ingredients to being a blessing. Listen

to Peter as he makes it one of the links in the chain of successful

Christian living. He writers in I Peter 3:8-9, "Finally, all of you,

have unity of spirit, sympathy, love of the brethren, a tender heart

and a humble mind. Do not return evil for evil or reviling for

reviling, but on the contrary bless, for to this you have been called,

that you may obtain a blessing." Peter would agree with Edmund

Berke who said, "Next to love, sympathy is the devinest passion of

the human heart." This is what Job's friends lacked, and what all of

us lack so often, to be the blessing Peter says we are called to be.

Job's friends did just what Peter said to avoid. They responded to

Job's negative emotions with their own negative emotions, instead of