A Word from Bob: You’re reading Part 2 of a mini-series on Biblical Empathy: How to Care Like Christ. Read Part 1: Biblical Empathy: How to Care Like Christ. I’ve taken this blog post and mini-series on biblical empathy from my book Gospel Conversations: How to Care Like Christ. In Gospel Conversations, you learn 22 biblical counseling skills. Empathy is one of those relational competencies.
Slamming the Casket Shut
I often learn from bad examples—you do the opposite. If empathy is climbing in the casket (see Part 1), then slamming the casket shut pictures its opposite.
Consider Job’s miserable counselors (Job 16:2). “Miserable” means troublesome, vexing, and sorrow-causing. They were the opposite of “comforters”—a word that means consoling, sympathetic, feeling deeply the hurt of others.
Instead of grace connecting, Job’s miserable comforters practiced condemning distancing. When we combine their bad theology (Job 42:7) with their cold hearts (Job 16:2), it is not at all surprising that they lacked relational competency.
They communicated superiority. “We’re better than you. You’re inferior to us” (see Job 5:8; 8:2; 11:2-12; 12:1-3; 15:7-17).
They communicated judgmentalism. “It’s not normal to hurt! Your suffering is due to your sinning!” (see Job 4:4-9; 15:2-6).
They offered advice without insight and discernment. “Here’s what I would do if I were you.” “Do this and life’s complexities will melt away.” “I have the secret that will fix your feelings and change your circumstances” (see Job 5:8; 8:5-6; 11:13-20; 42:7).
Eliphaz’s Miserable Counseling
Eliphaz (Job 4-5, 15, and 22) is the master of discouragement and dismay. He provides Job with conditional love while he curses God. Eliphaz teaches that God is good to the good, but bad to the bad. He does not know grace. He does know works: “You can manipulate God into being good to you by being good to him.”
What a petty God Eliphaz worships. Eliphaz says to Job, “Don’t live coram Deo—face-to-face with God. Don’t tell God your heart. Be surface.” He misinterprets Job’s words as venting rage at God rather than soul-sharing lament with God.
Bildad’s Miserable Counseling
Bildad (Job 8, 18, and 25) has a somewhat right theology with a very wrong application. “The issue is your sin!” Seeing only sin, he is wrong in Job’s case.
For God, the issue was Job’s response to him in his suffering. The issue was Job’s privileged opportunity to be a universal witness to God’s goodness. The issue was not Job’s sinfulness. Bildad does not know the man he calls “friend.” He labels (and libels) Job “the evil man who knows not God.”
Zophar’s Miserable Counseling
Zophar (Job 11 and 20) also presents a works righteousness. He believes that good works can cover shame.
Job’s View of His Miserable Counselors-Comforters
How does Job view their counsel? He longs for the devotion of his friends (6:14), which they aren’t.
He calls them undependable brothers (6:15), which they are.
They can’t handle Job’s doubts, treating the words of a despairing man as wind (6:26). He feels they say, “Forget it! Smile!” His dread remains. “If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint, I will change my expression, and smile,’ I still dread all my sufferings, for I know you will not hold me innocent” (Job 9:27-28). He experiences their total lack of empathy. “Men at ease have contempt for misfortunate” (Job 12:5).
Miserable comforters (Job 16:2) they are. Rather than communicating that “it’s normal to hurt,” they increase Job’s hurt. Having no compassionate discernment, they claim that his wounds are self-inflicted. “How we will hound him, since the root of the trouble lies in him” (Job 19:28).
They crush Job’s spirit through their long-winded speeches, argumentative nature, lack of empathy and encouragement, failure to bring relief/comfort, and their closed-minded, arrogant, superior, hostile attitudes based upon wrong motives and a condemning spirit (Job 17:1-5).
Of them, Job concludes, “These men turn night into day; in the face of darkness they say, ‘Light is near’” (Job 17:12). They are like the counselor who says, “Don’t talk about your problems, don’t think about your suffering, and don’t remember your past hurts. Forget those things which are behind!” They have no dark-night-of-the-soul vision, no 20/20 spiritual vision, and no long-distance vision; so they have to call the darkness light. Job, however, has long-distance vision. His heart yearns for God and he knows that he will see God (Job 19:25-27).
Job feels no rapport with them. “They torment me, crush me with words. I sense their reproach as they shame me. They exalt themselves. I feel so alone when I am with them. So alienated and forgotten. Here’s how my ‘spiritual friends’ make me feel: alienated, estranged, forgotten, offensive, loathsome. All my intimate friends detest me; they have turned against me, having no pity on me” (author’s paraphrase of Job 19).
They are unwise. They offer nonsense answers because they’re not paying attention to life, not learning life’s lessons. “You have not wisely paid attention to how things work in the real world. Your academic knowledge, your theologizing, is out to lunch. How can you console/comfort me with your vain nonsense, since your answers are falsehood? You are wrong about life, about me, and about God!” (author’s paraphrase of Job 21).
They are “sin-spotters.” They know confrontation only. Thus, they become co-conspirators with Satan the accuser who condemns men and curses God.
God’s View of Job’s Miserable Counselors-Comforters
What was God’s view of their counsel? After speaking to Job, Yahweh says to Eliphaz. “I am angry with you and your two friends because you have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7).
They failed to speak of God’s generous goodness and grace. Their God was a tit-for-tat God who could be easily manipulated by and impressed with works.
Our greatest failure in counseling arises when we speak wrongly of God while we speak to one another.
The Rest of the Story
While it can be helpful to learn from bad examples, we don’t want to stop there. So, join us for Part 3 when we explore biblical As If Empathy.
Join the Conversation
What did you learn about good and godly empathy from the bad example of Job’s miserable counselors/comforters?
Where else have you witnessed miserable counseling/comforting?
