Sometimes you have to hurt others to help them. Iona Henry's
case is a prime example. She had been in the hospital for 83 days on
Demerol. She became dependent upon this drug for sleep, and
escape, for she could not stand to think of her future without her
husband and two children, all of whom had been killed. The doctor
told her she had to learn to sleep on her own, but she just could not
do it without Demerol.
One day a nurse came into her room and whispered to her, "I
heard something awful today in the nurse's dining room." "Tell me!
What did you hear?" responded Iona. The nurse let her have it.
They are saying that you are becoming a dope addict. Iona became
so furious. She could never remember a time when she was so
completely angry. She blasted their gossiping tongue, and vowed to
show the smart alecks she was no dope addict.
In a fit of rage she picked up a book and began to read. It was
already hot, and her angry rebellion made it worse. Her bed was
soaked with perspiration. When the two innocent student nurses
came with her Demerol, they stood wide-eyed in shock when she
refused. "The doctor ordered it," one of them stammered. "I don't
care," she raged. "Take it away." So they did. Iona said she felt
like the three Hebrew boys in the fiery furnace, and equally
determined. It was a night of horror, but she was committed to die
before she would ask for her Demerol.
She fought all night, and wanted to give up a dozen times, but just
before dawn she dozed off. When she woke up she was greeted like
a victorious queen. She had conquered Demerol, but she, and
everybody else, knew it never would have happened if she had not
been motivated by strong anger. Anger can be a friend that gives us
the energy we need to fight an enemy. Anger can be good, and the
nurse's did her a big favor by making her angry. Inoa's need at that
point was not for sympathy. What she needed was an internal
motivation to fight a weakness that could have destroyed her.
Job's situation was not the same things at all. Yet his friends
provoked him to anger. It is possible that the rage in his heart, that
kept him fighting back against their accusations, was of some value.
It did motivate him to think, and argue, and could have been good
for his circulation. There was no hint, however, that the friends
were acting in Job's best interest. They were just stubbornly
interested in getting Job to conform to what they felt was a proper
response to tragedy. The anger they kindled only made Job's misery
worse. Job did not need the same medicine that Iona needed. His
need was for a bridge of sympathy from which he could cross over
from despair to new hope. We often fail, as did Job's friends,
because we do not diagnose the need properly.
I must confess that I have assumed the same thing as Job's
friends were assuming. I have dealt with suffering people, thinking
that what they needed was an intellectual explanation. Like Job's
friends, I was too quick to give what I had, rather than listen to what
the sufferer needed. Someone wrote, "The intellect alone never
produced real sympathy. The will alone never can. It is born of
loving desire working with and in these." The comforter must be
ever asking, what does the sufferer need, and not, what can I do? If
you ask this latter question, you are striving to meet your need, and
not theirs. This is where Job's friends failed him. They did not love
enough to enter his feelings. They sought to change his feelings by
their intellect, and this makes people feel rejected, for they are not
being accepted as they are.
If you observe Jesus in relation to all kinds of people, you will see
that He always accepted people where they were. He did not
approve of where they were necessarily, nor did He expect that they
would stay where they were, but He always started with them where
they were, and not where He thought they should be. That is what
sympathy is. It is accepting a person where they are, even when
where they are is not acceptable. The woman at the well is a good
example. She was not living a life style acceptable to Jesus, but He
accepted her where she was, and the result was a changed life style.
This is what sympathy is all about. It is the ability to be with
another person where they are, and feel what they feel, and
communicate that you understand. Sympathy is the heart of
fellowship, and the key to oneness in Christ.
Someone said, "Sympathy is your pain in my heart." Animals
apparently cannot experience this. They have feelings, but not
sympathy. They can eat heartily while their friend or family
member lay dying, with no tear of pity, or sigh of sympathy. Only
man has this unique capacity to weep with those who weep, and also
to rejoice with those who rejoice. Sympathy includes the positive
sharing as well as the negative emotions.
Eliphaz had the capacity to sympathize, but he quenched it by
responding to Job's depression with a defense of what is right and
best. Let's not do to Eliphaz what he is doing to Job. Let's
sympathize with Eliphaz, and try to feel what he was feeling. Job
was the one hurt deeply, but he forgave him in the end. It is quite
easy to understand Eliphaz. My tendency is to do the same thing he
is doing. If someone is negative, I want to rush in and counteract it
with the positive. If someone is down on life, I want to present to
them the joys of life. If someone is attacking God, I want to defend
God. It is perfectly normal to respond to any negative with a desire
to counteract it, for the good of the one held in its grasp. But it is
not good just because it is normal.
One of the key lessons of the book of Job, as I see it, is just this:
What are normal and natural human feelings are not necessarily the
best. What we need to see is that the normal is tainted with sin, and
is below the level where God expects us to live. Knowing this, we
can then, by His grace, go beyond the normal, and natural, to
feelings and responses that are pleasing to God, and helpful to man.
It was normal for Eliphaz to respond to Job with a defensive attack.
Think of your own response to the folly of your children. How many
have said, "How can you be so stupid?" "You know better than
that." "You should be ashamed of yourself."
The sympathetic mind says, "I will let these natural and normal
impulses remain unexpressed until I put myself in the other persons
shoes." You do not really know another person until you try to do
this. George Eliot said, "The only true knowledge of our fellow man
is that which enables us to feel with him." Had Eliphaz put himself
in Job's place, and tried to inner into the feelings that would arise in
such a tragic circumstance, he would have been a comforter, rather
than an irritant.
Before you criticize anyone for their feelings, and negative emotions,
try to put yourself in their shoes, and feel what they feel.
This sympathetic approach will cause you to resist the normal
response of criticism, and come through with an attitude that
comforts and encourages. The key to being a good counselor is
sympathy, and the key to being sympathetic is honest self-examination.
What would I do or feel in the same situation? That is
why Jesus is the supreme sympathizer. He has been there, and
though He never fell, He knows how easy it would have been with
the defective nature all other men have. We have this fallen nature,
and, therefore, should be able to easily develop the power of
sympathy. Ella Wheeler Wilcox put it into poetry-
I treasure more than I despise
My tendency to sin,
Because it helps me sympathize
With all my erring kin.
He who has nothing in his soul
That links him to the sod,
Knows not the joy of self-control
That lifts him up to God.
So I am glad my heart can say
When others slip and fall,
Altho I safely pass that way,
I understand it all.
This poem points out a vital truth: You do not have to fall, to
sympathize. You do not have to actually experience what another
does, to understand. You have the capacity to feel, to some degree,
what it would be like to have the actual experience. Eliphaz could
have felt what it would be like to lose his whole family and all his
possessions. Maybe not to the same degree as Job, but enough to
grasp what Job was going through, and to sympathize.
Christians who do not suffer often fail to use their capacity to
enter the suffering of others, and the result is, they are often like
Job's friends, and very unsympathetic. Vance Havner refers to this
in his book Though I Walk Though The Valley. He watched his wife
die, and went through a terrible time of depression. He writes, "We
read in the Bible of a great multitude who have come out of great
tribulation. I have joined the society and their fellowship is precious
because they know. They do not make light of my troubles. Only
fair-weather travelers who have known little sorrow do that."
Havner, a great evangelist known by millions, obviously had to
contend with some of Job's friends. That is, Christians who could
not grasp his sorrow and depression. They were critical of such a
man of God feeling as he did.
God forbid that we should ever be so callous, and a pain to any
member of the body of Christ. It is easier for those who have
suffered deeply to be more sympathetic. Those who are more likely
to be like Job's friends are those who have not suffered, and do not
bother to develop the power of sympathy. Most of us are in this
second category. The more we can feel with others in that which we
have not experienced, the more we become like Christ, and can
minister to others with a truly sanctified sympathy.
