“The greatest dignity the church can give people who suffer is to tell them that their cries of anguish are worthy of God’s ear.
The most shameful thing the church can do is tell people who suffer that there is something wrong with them for suffering.”
—Matthew Richard Schlimm.
Some things that I learned from reading the entire Old Testament (rather than selected readings) was that:
First, It is important to realize that tragedy and loss strikes everyone.
Second, A core lesson of the prayers preserved in the Old Testament is that honest prayer includes sharing with God your pain and anger and sorrow and that honest prayer is needed to communicate with God.
Third, The result of honesty is a communion with God and a faith that can survive tragedy and loss.
In reading the Old Testament you will find many, many prayers that express suffering and loss. Consider the Book of Lamentations. Or realize that sorrow and loss constitutes almost a third of Psalms. It is a major theme of Habakkuk and Jeremiah. If we miss that, we are missing a significant lesson that the Old Testament has to teach us.
Consider the Book of Job, when Job complains and God validates him as speaking what is right (Job 42:6-8).
After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.
That is significant, because the last thing Job has to say to God (before his friends start justifying God–the dialog that God is condemning) is:
I cry out to you, God, but you do not answer;
I stand up, but you merely look at me.
21 You turn on me ruthlessly;
with the might of your hand you attack me.
22 You snatch me up and drive me before the wind;
you toss me about in the storm.
23 I know you will bring me down to death,
to the place appointed for all the living.
God validates the honest pain of Job’s heart.
In looking at scripture and modern religion (especially the prosperity gospel) it seems that there are two approaches.
One is to deny tragedy and loss. It is to say that pain and loss are always deserved punishment which means there is no tragedy and pain and loss are not things that the Church needs to worry about. In my experience, including dealing with a chaplain with a doctorate who was in a chaplaincy residency, that approach leads to a religion and faith that is inadequate to adversity, inadequate for real life, inadequate for the tragedy and pain and loss that come to all. It fails to describe reality and fails to allow honest prayers to God about honest conditions. It is the advice and approach of Job’s friends that God rejects.
The other approach I have found is to read and remember the scriptures as giving honest voice to the pain and grief that people truly feel when there is undeserved tragedy. It is to see in the scriptures an honoring and an expression of that pain and grief in prayer to God. It includes an acknowledgement of the scope of adversity and randomness in this world.
Consider Eclesiastes:
1 The words of the Teacher,[a] son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
3 What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
8 All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
Eclesiastes gets grimmer: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+4&version=NIV;CEB;KJV;NVI And grimmer after the link.
That other approach I have seen, what I call the second approach, includes acknowledging that “time and chance happen to them all” and that into each life tragedy, loss and sorry enter, allows us to be honest. The second approach includes acknowledging the honest life includes a journey which includes finding honest communication with God which includes the truth of our hearts, our sorrows and pains, our joys and our triumphs, but always, the truth of us.
That honesty is what makes possible an honest hope.
For that is also a lesson of the Old Testament. An honest hope can sustain faith in tragedy and loss when a shallow hope that does not reach honest reality cannot.
Or so I believe, that each of us needs to have an honest life, honest prayer and an honest hope. The alternative is a Church that tells people that there is something wrong with them for suffering, which is the most shameful thing the Church can do.
What do you think?
How does the Old Testament with its honest prayers of grief, anger towards God, pain and loss affect your feelings about what is proper in prayer?
Have you ever felt as did the author of Psalm 22:
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
2 O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.
3 But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
4 Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
5 They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.
6 But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.
7 All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
8 He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.
9 But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breasts.
10 I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother’s belly.
11 Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.
12 Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.
13 They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion.
14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.
Wheat & Tares 
I like the 3 things you bring out at the start. That is a very positive and uplifting way to look at the stories in the OT.
I do agree that I find that religions that promote a general feeling of the worth of individuals is much better than one that worships people needing to feel as bad as possible about themselves. I find that Mormonism has both, but I realize the amount each individual feels of each of these 2 differs per person – even in the same ward and family.
As I have moved through 6+ decades of life, I find that I can relate more to the prayers & psalms that deal with grief and sorrow than I did when I was younger. It is difficult to relate to things you have not experienced. I believe you are correct that the honest prayers of grief & pain in the Old Testament are a major lesson from that book of scripture. I try to find the silver linings in trying circumstances, but it is important not to discount the learning curve from pain. Although that learning is hard, the Old Testament reminds us that we are not alone in our suffering. God hears us, & other people around us who have gone thru hard times are also there to succor us in our times of need.
Simply the clearest articulation of this truth that I have ever read, you write what you are Stephen.
Your post validates my experience and that of my family who continue to wade through an ordinarily wretched life where nothing worked out to plan.
These OT scriptures reflect the eternal human experience of suffering into truth, and bring me closer to those who have lived and engaged in the quest of puzzling out the eternal in reaching out to Deity. That’s the truth I’m interested in, not that which is historically provable, interesting and stimulating as that search may be.
They tell me that it is valid to be puzzled, not certain, and that God likes to be questioned, and likes those who question Him. They are deep poetry. They teach us to be authentic, present, intimate.
Thank you, Stephen, for noting that Job said: “I cry out to you, God, but you do not answer;” And God’s comment was that Job had spoken the truth about God. It wasn’t the only truth, and is not a universal truth, but it happens. And I am tired of those of my acquaintance who, like some of Job’s friends, rush to judge negatively an unanswered pray-er.
I have found that I derive far more meaning, and hidden treasures, from reading entire books than from reading a verse here and a verse there. Thanks for your thoughts.
I love the OT for the laments it features. It captures the human condition in a poetic way.
And I agree with ji that there is so much to glean by taking the entire book in rather than just a few nibbles here and there.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
That illustration is so Georgia O’Keeffe I can’t stop seeing a vaginal.
Was that subtext?
Nope. Just the wiki commons image for hope.
I actually see an eye or a tunnel.
So that would be an opening into something…
On the PC (with screen set to text) I’m seeing a candle, but on my ipod there’s a candle and a tunnel, same as if I set the PC screen to picture…
I do see what you mean though alice!
Enjoyed the OP btw., in a way in which I am currently not enjoying GD class.. We don’t actually have a teacher at the moment, but what with the hymnbook being lauded as the LDS equivalent of the book of Psalms a few weeks ago, and a highly manipulative lesson demonstrating the worst excesses of CES seminary curricula materials presented by a different person last week I’m not sure I can bear to attend this week. So thank you, thank you…
Oh…. I thought perhaps it was a statement about women in the church always having to suck it up first and then go on with whatever activity. …provided a man has approved of it.
Alice, somehow that seems to derail the discussion about how burying children, crippling injuries, genocides and sweeping tragedies overwhelm people.
Then I’ll slink quietly away.
Feel free to delete whatever you care to.