Outlaw Christian by Jacqueline A. Bussie

Author:Jacqueline A. Bussie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2016-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

I have heard many such things;

miserable comforters are you all.

Have windy words no limit?

Or what provokes you that you keep on talking?

I also could talk as you do,

if you were in my place;

I could join words together against you,

and shake my head at you. . . .

Surely now God has worn me out;

he has made desolate all my company. (Job 16:2–4, 7)

Many of us who have suffered deep grief in life have experienced what Job describes here: the add-on grief of becoming alienated from our friends and family by their well-intended but whitewashed proverbs of ashes.

Job’s words here remind us that miserable comforters—who 99 percent of the time are sitting pretty and not suffering themselves—make themselves feel safe from contingency by always asserting that people get what they deserve. Like many of us, Job’s friends want to believe that their good fortune is earned, which means that by extension, everyone else’s bad fortune has to be earned as well. When we spew clichés about suffering, we act like we are defending God, but really this is a ruse. In actuality, we are defending ourselves and our own relative prosperity. Outlaw Christians are wise to this trick and can spot it in themselves as well as others. I believe the book of Job warns us not to fall into the trap of being miserable comforters, but many Christians miss this point altogether.

The next time you are suffering and feel your chest being mortared by theological clichés about “God’s plan,” please remember that you are not, and were never, alone. The book of Job shows us that even God rejects these painful clichés as not speaking rightly. We owe each other more than clichés masquerading as compassion. We owe each other—and God—nothing less than ourselves. In the next chapter, we will discuss how better to live a life of faith beyond clichés and to give this gift of authenticity and deep listening to one another.

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