Malformation

 

Reflection on Job 19.21-27 and Luke 10.1-12

There’s a story in the bible concerning a tribal chieftain of the ancient near east called Job, who, in the prime of his life loses everything. His children are killed when a building collapses. His livestock – his livelihood, his wealth, his resources – are stolen by violent men who murder those employed to care for the animals, also leaving their dependents fatherless. Quite understandably, Job’s wife falls into a deep depression.

Four friends of Job do something beautiful beyond words. They come to him and sit with him, in silence – for there are no words – for seven days and seven nights. Simply holding him in meaningful connection through their presence.

And then they open their mouths and put their feet in it. They try to control, to correct, Job’s thoughts and feelings. To belittle them. They attempt to fix their friend. To explain and justify what he has gone through. Every which way, it is ugly as hell.

Eventually Job has had enough. He calls on them to be silent again, and emphatically states his belief that, even having lost everything, he would see God restore to him all that he had lost.

If I wanted to get rich quick, I would put a swear jar in my church for every time I asked someone how they were and they replied, oh, you know, there’s always someone worse off.

This is abuse, beloved. This is how abusers seek to exercise control over their victim. By conjuring up a hypothetical someone to diminish our emotions and responses to our emotions. To belittle us and invalidate our experience. (Even if the hypothetical someone existed, it would not help them one bit to be told, oh well, there’s always someone doing better than you.)

But we have had these words spoken over us so many times over so many years, have internalised them and spoken them over ourselves, that when I call it out as abuse, I am questioned or dismissed, and when I call it ungodly, I am told that I am going too far.

This is also spiritual abuse, because we have been taught that this response is how we put others before ourselves, as mature Christians ought to do. But Jesus said we are to love our neighbour as – or in the same way as, or according to the same measure by which, we love – ourselves. For the extent to which we are able to accept and love ourselves is the extent to which we are able (the limit on) to love our neighbour. If we habitually belittle ourselves, we will habitually belittle them.

If you came to me and told me that you were expecting a baby but that it had died in the womb, or that your sister had cancer, or that your marriage was falling apart, or that you were waiting for the results of medical tests, and I said to you, oh well, there’s always someone worse off, would you feel heard? Would you feel valued? Would you say I was being pastorally sensitive? Would you come away glad that you had spoken to me, feeling that even if there was nothing to be done – no answers – that somehow you felt more at peace? No, you would not.

And yet, we say these very words to ourselves all the time.

Read that again.

In the Gospels, Jesus sends out his apprentices ahead of him, to every place he intended to pass through. He instructs them to seek out hospitality, and to be present to whoever welcomes them. He also instructs them not to insulate themselves against the emotions, but to remain vulnerable – no excess resources, no financial get-out-of-jail card, not even shoes to shield them from feeling the ground beneath their feet. On entering a house – on being invited into a life – they are to proclaim peace. They are not to seek to control or fix, but to be led by the one who has welcomed their presence, validating whatever they place on the table.

And Jesus promises them that healing will come, wherever it is needed, through their vulnerable presence with their neighbour. Through meaningful connection.