In The Company of Job
I attended the funeral today of the daughter of a friend. Sloan Claery was 19 years old; killed in a car wreck over the weekend. I don’t know the details of the accident and they are mostly unimportant to me. What is important is that my friend lost his oldest daughter.
What do you say at a time like that? Nothing. There are no words that will assuage the grief. Grief is a process that will only be accomplished through time… not through words. He does need supportive friends. Friends who, like Job’s three friends, would be willing to sit for days and nights on end without saying a word. But, unlike Job’s friends, would not resort to bland apologetics and empty explanations of God’s sovereign plans for his creatures. He does not need to hear that.
Mark and his family have joined the company of Job. No, I don’t mean the production company for our opera. I mean that he is, like so many others, enveloped in the company of suffering humanity and will probably never know or understand why he finds himself there.
My thoughts and prayers and tears are with you, Mark.
Quizzes, Trick Questions, and Answers that Aren’t
I read some posts recently related to a quiz that was given (just for fun) on a songwriting board I visit occasionally ( www.christiansongwriters.org ). Most of the posts were in the vein of “my answer was counted wrong, but it’s correct because…” .
Having worked for quite a few years in technical training, I can tell you that writing questions that cannot be miscontrued is one of the hardest things you can do. If you’re successful at it, you are a very good test writer.How you define something makes all the difference in how a question will be interpreted. Most of the time, instead of “what’s the answer?”, it comes down to ‘what answer are they looking for?’. That’s why many times I found my students wanting to know the ‘answers’ instead of trying to understand the concepts. I used to tell my students ‘if you cannot explain it, you don’t understand it’. They didn’t like that. They just wanted to know what answer to write down so they could make a good grade on the test.
(To be fair, I have to admit that when they asked me “Why do we have to know this?”, my answer was “Because it’s on the test!”)
Seeking understanding instead of answers requires a greater commitment. Understanding goes beyond simply finding the answer… way beyond. When a person can explain to you how their answer is correct according to their interpretation of the question, it reveals a higher understanding of the subject matter and reveals the fact that their definition may differ from yours. This is the dilemma Job faced with his three friends, Bildad, Eliphaz, and Zophar. They were all learned men; wise men. They had all the answers, having gleaned them from their tradition, their training, and their experience. Job was cut in the same cloth they were. He believed the same things they believed, which is what caused his dilemma. Somehow, though, their ‘answers’ did not line up with what Job was experiencing. Job wanted to understand. Job needed new answers, but all they had to offer were the same old answers that no longer rang true.
It reminds me of how many times Jesus’ teaching consisted of “You have heard it said… but I tell you…”.
It also reminds me how many times I have heard that being ‘christian’ means believing certain facts about God and Jesus, as if belief in those facts is what makes the difference, rather than having a real, vital relationship with the God who calls us to seek HIM and know HIM… not facts about him.
The complexity of a relationship cannot be boiled down to a set of facts.
R.I.P. J.B.
James Brown, the undisputed Godfather of Soul, the self-proclaimed “hardest working man in show business”, has taken his final rest at age 73, after battling a bout of pneumonia. James Brown named as his home town Augusta, Georgia, a town with more than its share of people who have always been reticent to acknowledge the musical contributions made by Mr. Brown, preferring to point out his many personal problems, as if the bad in some way negates the good. R.I.P., J.B.
National News Hits Close to Home
Just this morning I found out that Kelly James, the climber found on Mt. Hood in Oregon, was the brother-in-law of one of our customers at PowerServe. Had I known earlier, I think I would have taken more interest in the details. I feel like I need to apologize to Caroyln Custis James, our customer and one of my online friends, for neither realizing nor taking the time to find out. I know it’s probably a factor of how we’re wired that we lack interest in events that we don’t think affect us personally, whether it’s climbers lost on some distant snowy mountain or reports of genocide in Darfur or mass starvation in North Korea. And yet, as John Donne wrote so many years ago in what is probably the only quotation anyone remembers by him, “…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind…”.
Carolyn, our prayers are with you and your family. Hold your husband closely.
So long, Joe: 1911-2006
Joseph Barbera, one-half of the genius creative team Hannah-Barbera, died today at age 95. Surely no one alive has escaped his influence, having created more than 300 series during his six-decade partnership with William Hannah, including Tom & Jerry, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, and Jonny Quest.