Sometimes we struggle to know what to say when someone goes through a hard time. That has always been true. In the book of Job, his three friends say many true things to him as he suffers the loss of possessions, family, and health. But they do so in profoundly unhelpful ways. At the end of Job, God has to step in and say: your friends have given you bad counsel, because they did not know who I am.
So in this article, I want to help you talk to someone who is suffering, going through trial, or maybe is simply sad. I also want to help you to know how to talk to yourself in such times. To do so, I want to point out three ways you should not counsel someone who is suffering, so that you can avoid these three bad ways of counseling and instead find rest in the God of all comfort.
Don’t say: you are suffering because you sinned (unless you are absolutely sure)
Now, sometimes people do suffer because they sinned. If you rob a bank, get arrested, and go to jail, that means you are suffering for something unjust you did. And the Book of Proverbs tells us about this kind of suffering. But sometimes, things are not so obvious.
Job lost his wealth and possessions. So he was poor. Was he poor because he sinned? Job lost his family and his wife despised him. Was he a terrible father and husband? Job lost his health. Did he have a bad diet or not exercise?
Would we judge Job in these ways? How many of us drive downtown in Hamilton and see the homeless, assuming that they must be there because of their choices? We are quick to speak, slow to listen, and fast to judge. The very opposite of what James tells us to be like in James 1:19. And it misses the heart of God as James 2:13 tells us, because there we learn “Mercy triumphs over judgment.”
Job’s three friends—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar—did not learn this lesson. Though they remained silent for seven days (Job 2:13), they were quick to judge Job. They say true things about God. But they all accuse Job of being the cause of his own suffering. They worked from the ancient Retribution Principle. You get what you deserve. If you suffer, it’s your fault somehow. So repent.
Eliphaz says in Job 4:7, “Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off?” This is a classical expression of the retributive principle. Bildad agrees in Job 8:6: “If you are pure and upright, surely then he will rouse himself for you,” and here he implies that Job is neither and so God will not defend him. Zophar claims that Job deserves worse because of unrepented sin, saying in Job 11:6: “Know then that God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves.”
But against their words, God says in Job 42:7–8: “You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.”
Job was right to defend his innocence. In Job 1 and 2, God claims that Job is innocent (e.g., Job 2:3). And in Job 42:7–8, God affirms that Job spoke rightly about him. The Book of Job gives us no place to say that Job’s bad behaviour led to his suffering.
Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar were wrong. They believed that Proverbial wisdom was always true, when in fact, Proverbs are principles that have exceptions. Job’s suffering constitutes one of those exceptions. He did nothing wrong, yet he suffered.
And the worst advice that we could give someone when we don’t know for absolutely sure is that they suffer because they have done something wrong. The same could be true for us. When something goes wrong, we often rack our brains about all the things we did wrong. But sometimes: life hits. It is uncontrollable. And it is not us.
We need the freedom to say: I don’t know. We need the confidence to avoid pre-judgment. Mercy triumphs over judgment. And we must be slow to speak, quick to hear, and deny the anger that makes us think: we know better.
Don’t say: I know exactly why God is doing this
We sometimes are over-confident in our theology and knowledge. So we see a problem, and we serve up a simple solution. Elihu illustrates this in practice. He comes near the end of the book, and Job 32:2–3 says he burned with anger at Job’s three friends and with Job himself, because Job justified himself rather than God. The emphasis here is on Elihu’s anger at everyone but himself.
They are all wrong. And Elihu thinks he knows why. Job needed to vindicate God’s righteousness, when he was concerned with his own. And Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar should have answered Job by emphasizing that God is much more important than Job. In other words, Elihu has a big God theology.
He looks at Job and says, look: all things that God does are right. So stop complaining. And move on. After he rages at Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, he then claims that he cannot stop himself from speaking on behalf of God. So, Elihu says in Job 32:18, “I am full of words; the spirit within me constrains me.”
And importantly, Elihu advocates for God’s justice as Job 36:3 illustrates: “I will ascribe righteousness to my Maker.” Now his advocacy is important, because Job throughout has asked God to be his own advocate to vindicate himself. Elihu puts himself on God’s side to vindicate God against Job!
So Elihu is saying: God is just. So what you suffer, well, it must be just too! So stop trying to say you are innocent. Again, Elihu is technically accurate when he speaks about God. He is factually correct, and yet he misapplies his true theology. Remember: God himself vindicates Job, and says that Job spoke rightly.
Elihu shows us you can have right theology but still be wrong in the moment, because applying that theology to life is harder than it sounds.
But again, look at Job 37:14–15: “Hear this, O Job; stop and consider the wondrous works of God. Do you know how God lays his command upon them, and causes the lightning of his cloud to shine?” This is almost exactly the kind of thing God will say beginning in Job 38. Elihu is right and wrong in different ways. Right in the abstract, but wrong in the practical application.
We cannot use big God theology as a club to smash our enemies. Theology is always an arm around a shoulder, not a club to bludgeon our enemies. Mercy triumphs over judgment every time.
Don’t say: God has rejected you because you are suffering
The last counselor that gives bad counsel is Job himself. Now, he was innocent. God affirms it. He spoke rightly of God. God affirms that too. But Job wrongly interprets his experience. In other words, he sees his suffering in the wrong light.
He thought it meant God cast him away, forgot about him. It’s why he desired to advocate for himself before God over and over in Job. He just needed a chance to get into his presence.
So he says in Job 30:19: “He has cast me into the mire, and I have become like dust and ashes.” He says a few verses later, “I cry to you and you do not answer me; I stand, and you only look at me. You have turned cruel to me; with the might of your hand you persecute me” (Job 30:20–21).
This is the dark night of the soul. Because he suffers, Job interprets his experience, feelings, and pain as God rejecting him. In a sense, he believes in a different principle of retribution. Yes, he claims innocence. But he still interprets his pain as if God has turned his back on him.
This is Job’s fundamental error: Job thought God did not love him because of his pain.
So what changes his mind? What makes him repent, that is, change his mind about God turning his back to him? Just like Asaph in Psalm 73, Job needed to see God’s face. He needed a restored vision of the God who is who he is, the I AM:
- the one who created time but is beyond all time
- the one who changes everything yet remains unchanged
- the one who knows our suffering yet never suffers
Job needed to see him. Then he knew. And he repented, changed his mind, about his grief, about his dust and ashes.
So Job says in Job 42:3: “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” Again, God vindicates Job in both Job 1 and 2 and here in Job 42:7 by saying, “My servant Job has spoken of me what is right.” What Job repented of is something very specific: “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”
So when Job says in Job 42:6, “therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes,” we have a concrete notion of what he means. And it is worth pointing out that in Hebrew this is a tough verse to translate; the phrase “repent in dust and ashes” more literally reads, “repent concerning dust and ashes.”
So we need to ask: what does he repent or change his mind about, when it comes to dust and ashes?
Well, in Job’s final speech he had said, “God has cast me into the mire, and I have become like dust and ashes” (Job 30:19). God hates me. And I am dust and ashes, or dust and soil more literally. And it is exactly this that Job repents of, thinking that he had been cast into dust and soil because God cast him into the mire.
That’s why he says: “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (42:3).
God loved him. And we know this from Job 1–2 and from Job 42. God restores Job’s fortunes. He thought God cast him away. But God did not. He had more for Job.
“I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (42:3).
So what?
What are these wonderful things that Job saw when God spoke from the whirlwind? I am taken with the Apostle Paul who quotes Job frequently in Romans to speak about the mystery of the Gospel, of the man Jesus Christ, who is innocent in his suffering but whose death and resurrection vindicates not only himself but justifies many.
And as Paul says in Romans 11:33, echoing Job 42:3, “How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”
At the end, when we speak to those who suffer, we must avoid pre-judging people as if their sin caused it; as Jesus tells us in John 9, men are not born blind because of sin but in order to glorify God. And we must not use our theology as clubs like Elihu. And we must not think God hates us or others who suffer.
Instead, we must look into the whirlwind as Job did, to see God, the eternal Son from the Father who came for us and for our salvation.
- From the whirlwind, he took humanity to himself.
- From the whirlwind, the innocent Son from the Father lived for us.
- From the whirlwind, the Just One rose for us.
- From the whirlwind, our Redeemer lives and so our flesh will see life again.
And because of the one who came from the whirlwind, we know for certain that nothing will separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus, whether pain, poverty, or loss. What would profit a man like Job to have everything but lose his own soul? And what would it profit us to not count it all joy when we undergo trials, knowing that God will vindicate and reward us in the end?
Counsel comfort. Hope in God. And look to Christ, because our Redeemer lives and our Advocate makes intercession for us every day before the Father.
