Unpleasant Things are Unpleasant
September 09th, 2023 by G.
Job 3. Job has just had everything bad happen to him, including boils erupting all over his flesh.
He does not curse God. Instead he curses the day he was born.
Sometimes in our circles I have seen a tendency to think that someone who doesn’t like a trial or adversity is being unfaithful. the logic seems to be that if God sent you the trial then being angry at the trial is the same at being angry at God. Job’s example shows otherwise. Unpleasant things are unpleasant. Unhappiness when something unhappy happens is not faithless.
Comments (4)
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
September 09th, 2023 13:34:32
E.C.
September 9, 2023
A lady I work for just had her emotionally abusive daughter move out of her house. She’s been on edge and increasingly miserable for the last year, and now she has people telling her she has to forgive her daughter, even as she deals with the fallout from this bad situation.
I told her she doesn’t have to be happy about the situation, she can be a little bit mad for a while as she works through cleaning up the apartment her daughter trashed as well as dealing with the emotional damage her daughter caused. I had to remind her again today that she can let herself feel the truth that she was taken advantage of, without nursing a grudge or becoming bitter, and that while God commands us to forgive all men, He never gave us a timetable for that forgiveness. That letting things go gradually as she heals is better than holding them close for the rest of her life.
Part of the reason we came here was to learn to feel things – deeply. That duality is very present in Lehi’s final discourse as well as in the temple. So no, I don’t think being unhappy sometimes when life sucks is a bad thing – as long as you learn to let it go when the time comes.
bruce g charlton
September 9, 2023
Or, as Kingsley Amis wrote in Lucky Jim (meaning almost the opposite, and expressed in an opposite way) “There was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.”
Ivan Wolfe
September 10, 2023
I tire of hearing people say in Sunday School when the lesson is on Job: “Job was just so patient and stoic. He never complained and just trusted in God.”
But, actually, he complained all the time and while he never cursed God, he clearly lost trust in God, what with the demanding God answer his questions or else.
I figure most people don’t actually read Job and just rely on memories of some primary lesson.
G.
September 11, 2023
Dang, you guys are smart and wise.
>Part of the reason we came here was to learn to feel things – deeply.
Very good.
@BC,
I didn’t like the book much, but that line stuck with me, just like its stuck with everybody else who read it. Justly famous.
@IW,
people also act like all of Job’s friends were just stupid people saying stupid stuff, but they aren’t just that. It’s a much more complex book than people give it credit for.