The Scrapheap Job -- #5

[For the first few months after moving to New Orleans (January 1995), my family and I participated as guests with a Disciples of Christ congregation. That fall the pastor – with whom I met often for coffee and conversation – asked me to facilitate a discussion group re the story of Job. I entitled the discussions ‘Out of the Silence’. These next five ‘scrapheap Job’ postings – each prepared for the discussion series -- illustrate how my understanding of the ‘scrapheap Job’ had matured by 1995. This first posting opens with a sentence from a letter my doctoral supervisor and close friend – Glenn Hinson, PhD/DPhil -- sent me shortly after the discussion group began to meet.]

“I am proud to claim you as one of my students and a dear
friend.”

This sentence in a letter I received recently forced me to pause, to remember. Nearly twenty years ago, the person who sent the letter began to guide my doctoral study of the theological, philosophical, scientific, and political ideas that have shaped western civilization. Why did I seek to study with him? Yes, I had noticed the Oxford ‘DPhil’ beside his name. Yes, I had heard he knew well such notables as Thomas Merton and Douglas Steere. From my first conversation with this Quaker-leaning contemplative, I wanted to be his student. He walked humbly. He spoke with gratitude. He had reason not to take health for granted. He seemed genuine. I hoped he would find reason to be proud to claim me as one of his students. But ‘a dear friend’? I had not anticipated this gift, this responsibility.

Job had three dear friends. They had prayed together, planned together, laughed together, worried together, taken public stands together. He was confident they would come -- to console, to encourage, to affirm, to show pity, to remember. And they did.

How many ‘dear friends’ do you have? How many count you ‘a dear friend’? No conditions. No small-print loopholes even if they or you are driven to curse the day of birth, to despair, to ‘forsake the fear of the Almighty’. They or you are ready to die -- physically, socially, spiritually -- together. The intensity and the vulnerability keep the number to a few. A single ‘dear friend’ makes you rich.

There are a few individuals in my life who would come to me or to whom I would go simply and solely because of intimate friendship. For instance, my doctoral mentor -- Glenn. And Shelly -- a Jewish neonatologist from New York City who has given his professional life to critically-ill inner-city newborns. And Tom -- a Schweitzer-like obstetrician-gynecologist from Texas. And Erin, Kimberly, Morgan – my three daughters. And Barbara -- my most intimate friend. And then there are others with whom shared experiences may in time take us to the rare treasure of being ‘dear friends’.

‘You see something dreadful and are afraid . . . ‘You treat the words of a despairing man as wind’ . . . ‘Relent, do not be unjust’ . . . ‘You smear me with lies; you are worthless physicians’ . . . ‘Your maxims are proverbs of ashes’ . . . ‘Miserable comforters are you all’ . . . ‘Surely mockers surround me; my eyes must dwell on their hostility’ . . . ‘How long will you torment me and crush me with words?’ . . . ‘Shamelessly you attack me’ . . . ‘All my intimate friends detest me’ . . . ‘You say -- Where now is the great man’s house, the tents where wicked men lived?’ . . . ‘So how can you console me with your nonsense?’ . . . ‘How you have helped the powerless! How you have saved the arm that is feeble!’

These are hard, pained words from Job to his three close friends. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar respond in kind. Their good intentions fail. The word ‘friend’ – in the special or ‘dear’ sense -- withers away.

And yet I trust my ‘dear friends’. I believe they would risk themselves for me and I for them. Why?