Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered:
‘If one ventures a word with you, will you be offended?
But who can keep from speaking?”
NL Daily Devotion for Wednesday, June 10, 2020
by Dr. Kimberly Leetch, Clergy Stuff
Oh, the foolish wisdom of the well-meaning friends! In the time of Job, people believed those who suffered must have done something to deserve it. Intellectually we don’t believe that is true in our enlightened day. But in our hearts are we really so different?
I believe there is something buried deep inside each of us that needs to believe there is a reason for suffering. To blame the victim is just one way of making sense of the senseless. If the victim is to blame, and I am not like that victim, then perhaps I might be spared a similar fate.
But we don’t live in a world where the victim is to blame. Or do we? (Click here to read more about how lightly a recent sexual assault offender was sentenced for the crime and the way the light sentence victimized the victim again.) Even today we still want to believe the victim must have had some part to play because we don’t want to believe suffering is random. If we accept the randomness and senselessness of suffering, then we may be the next to suffer randomly or senselessly.
Job’s closest friend was the first to turn on him, suggesting he was to blame for his own circumstances. After all, “who that was innocent ever perished?” Think now, are there any victims that you have fully or partially blamed for their own suffering? What about the sexual assaults that have involved alcohol or drug use? What about the young black men killed by police?
How might our own fears about the randomness and chaos of suffering play a role in where we place blame?
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