When you don't have the whole picture...

As the book of Job continues, we are introduced to Job's three "friends,"  sometimes known as his "comforters," although we don't need to read very many chapters before we discover that they weren't much of a comfort at all.
Job's dilemma and the level of his suffering was perplexing to them and they didn't know how to respond to his pain. They lived with a worldview that was very black and white: good people will be blessed and bad people will suffer for their misdeeds. And to be fair to them, this philosophy is not completely wrong. We see it all through the Old Testament book of Proverbs: do good and you will see good fruit; do evil and you will end up reaping the consequences of your actions.  It's common sense in a way. We all understand that someone who has smoked all their life is at greater risk of lung cancer than someone who hasn't. Or that someone who fails to weed their garden will end up with a jungle at their back door. It's simple cause and effect.

And so Job's friends had a very straightforward explanation for his suffering: you must have sinned, Job, and that's why these terrible things are happening to you; your children must have sinned, and that's why they died in a horrible accident. It's totally understand-able that this only increased Job's despair and wasn't a comfort to him at all. On top of his grief, loss and pain, he now also felt judged and criticised by those closest to him.

The problem was that neither Job nor his friends had the whole picture of what was really going on. You and I have read the first two chapters of Job, and so we know that it was Satan who was attacking him and his family. Job's friends had simply no idea that this was going on behind the scenes... and so they came up with their own conclusion: all of this suffering must be Job's own fault; he brought it upon himself. It's like the photo at the top of this blog post: the shadow appears to be of a cow riding a scooter. It's only when you have the whole picture that you realise the shadow is due to some clever posing by three creative people.

In real life, we so seldom have the whole picture. We don't know the things that happened in a person's background; we don't know the difficulties they may be facing at home or at work; we may be totally clueless about what is going on behind the scenes in the spiritual realm. How important it is that we guard our hearts from judging others and seek instead to understand them and their situation. How important it is to take time to pray and seek God's perspective before offering our own criticism and advice to a friend in need.

Job's friends seem to have missed out that step. They didn't take time to seek God's understanding and so they had to fall back on their human understanding and limited perspective. Let's not make the same mistake.

Read on in the post below for more about the danger of incomplete theology.