Weep

Walking through grief with a friend is a tricky thing. How much do you try to help? To what extent do you try to lessen the pain with encouraging words? When do you just shut up, allow them to feel sorrow and be sad with them? How long can you do that before you’re just enabling negative thought processes? My experience has been that it’s even trickier in the often-weird subculture of Christianity. Add to those questions further complications like that Christians are supposed to have joy, God has a plan for you, all things work for good and other theological clichés that always sound better to the one giving advice than the one receiving it. This cocktail of awkwardness, good intentions, bad judgment and theological muddiness is one of the thinnest and most frequently walked tightropes I have experienced. I’m walking it right now. A very close friend of mine got devastatingly bad news yesterday.

 

I certainly don’t consider myself an expert on grieving, counseling, or anything else other than Little Debbie snacks and breaking bones. However, walking through grief with others seems to be something that gets sent my way with more than average frequency and, therefore, it’s something I’ve studied and taught on often. So I thought I’d offer some of my thoughts of the subject.

 

The most common and dangerous misconception here is that believers aren’t allowed to be sad. The joy of the Lord is our strength and everything…sooo….having faith “looks like” being super happy. All the time. Everyday. No matter what. This bad thinking often results in people saying and doing things that they think are “God’s work”, but in reality are insulting and harmful. Let me cut to the chase. When someone is devastated due to a genuinely crappy situation hearing things like, “God has something better around the corner”, “there are lots of people worse off than you”,  “don’t worry, everything happens for a reason”, or “God works in mysterious ways” is far more damaging than helpful. What you may not realize is that you are implicitly telling that person, “You don’t have the right to be sad, and if you are sad you don’t trust God.”

 

We take the verses about joy and faith and create impossible expectations of uber-happiness, which are fueled by self-help slogans and acronyms on bracelets but never touch reality. Let go and let God. What does that even mean, and how is it helpful to my friend who just got the short end of the stick while life beat him mercilessly with the long end?

 

I’m not saying “joy” verses aren’t there. I believe my joy brings God more glory than does my misery and, therefore, God desires me to have joy. But to only quote the happy verses during times of suffering is unfair and doesn’t really reflect the whole teaching of scripture. My view these days is a lot less “live your best life now, by smiling and thinking positive thoughts” and a lot more “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens…a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance…” (Ecc 3:1,4). Here are some other things to think about.

 

• When Elijah was depressed God did not rebuke him or say his faith was crappy. God’s response was to have Elijah take a nap and eat something (1 Kings 19). Sympathy.
• Jeremiah expressed so much grief in his book that he became known as the weeping prophet (see especially Jer 9:1).
• Job’s three friends gave a lot of horrible advice to their suffering buddy. But they got one thing right. When they first arrived and saw how distraught Job was, they silently sat with him for seven days while he cried (Job 2:13).
• Jesus sat in the road with Mary and Martha and cried with them even though he knew Lazarus would be fine (John 11:17-35).
• Jesus himself got emotional in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was so stressed his blood pressure was near stroke level. He repeatedly asked God to change directions and was disappointed that his friends weren’t there for him the way he wanted (Matthew 26:36-46, Luke 22:43-44)
• Paul did not instruct the Romans to cheer up sad people with pithy sayings and jokes. He told them to weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15).

 

To deny someone the right to feel emotions other than happiness is to deny them the full extent of their humanity. We are emotional beings. And while I hope to see a reality someday in which there are no more tears or pain (Revelation 21:4), that is not this reality. That is not this world. Now, let’s be clear. I’m not saying, “Let’s all get emo together, sit in a kumbaya circle and watch chick flicks till we have a good old fashion cry party.” There is a point when moving on needs to happen and healing should begin. But I think we often want to rush to that at the expense of the person suffering. Let them feel it for a while. That’s being human. This world has a wide range of emotions and the Bible seems to indicate God is ok with that. We should be too.