Daily Lesson for August 27, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Job chapter 4 verse 1 and chapter 5 verses 17 through 27:

Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered:

17 ‘How happy is the one whom God reproves;

   therefore do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.* 

18 For he wounds, but he binds up;

   he strikes, but his hands heal. 

19 He will deliver you from six troubles;

   in seven no harm shall touch you. 

20 In famine he will redeem you from death,

   and in war from the power of the sword. 

21 You shall be hidden from the scourge of the tongue,

   and shall not fear destruction when it comes. 

26 You shall come to your grave in ripe old age,

   as a shock of grain comes up to the threshing-floor in its season. 

27 See, we have searched this out; it is true.

   Hear, and know it for yourself.’

It has been said before and I have found it to be the case that church people are good at offering help in times of immediate and short-term crisis, but find it very difficult to give sustained help in times of long-term, chronic affliction.

I think much of this short-coming is actually theologically based. 

Our church communities are set up to deal with short-term illness because our theology tells us everything is curable — through prayer, medicine, time. So we have our casserole guilds who can come and help sustain a family in crisis for a week or so.

But long-term affliction is another matter. We have no systems to deal with it within the church. And I think there is a deeply theological reason behind our systemic inadequacy. We simply think that God is supposed to fix everything so long as we deserve it to be fixed. 

This was Job’s friends — seen here in Eliphaz’s words. At first they  rush to Job’s side to lend aid. But as time went on and the book of Job goes on and on, these friends begin to sound more like enemies. They wonder why Job isn’t better; they begin to blame him for his suffering. There must be something wrong with someone who suffers so much for so long. 

The church has to change both its theology and also its systemic care. Medicine has advanced to such a point that it can keep people alive longer. That said, it also means medicine can keep people chronically suffering and/or ill alive longer. This means a week or two or even a month of help and care is still not enough. The community must learn to more fully accept illness and disability as a sustained part of life, and to organize itself around suffering’s presence rather than its cure. 

A theology of suffering presence would completely reorganize our life together. It would slow us down. It would demand that we be more attentive.  It would mean that we be more helpful. It would require that the whole community be more organized, present, and also more patient. 

It would totally change our entire theological understanding and also our organizational makeup. For the sick and disabled and chronically depressed would be included in the center of the community, as people to be included and cared for and not just problems to be solved. We