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On Sanity in Suffering:

 As I read through the book of Job, I have been thinking a lot about sanity.  Does suffering make us mad?  Does suffering cause us to be insensible and wrong about everything?  Does the erratic way our emotions are expressed equate with making us unhinged?  

After Job has lost everything, we find him sitting in the dirt, scraping off his boils.  His dignity is gone, as if it had never even existed.  He is unrecognizable.  He cries out against God in the deepest dismay.  He's cursing the day of his birth.  He's blaming God for all of his tragedy.  But he's confident that he didn't do anything to deserve this.  

This seems like insanity!  His friends hear Job, and they must think he's lost all of his marbles.  He's lost the plot.  Given the state Job is in, there can't be any possible way Job has an accurate view of anything anymore!  

However, when we get to the end of the Book of Job...we find out that while Job was indeed wrong about some things, his friends were actually more wrong!  Job's friends had less grip on reality than Job did!  

My conclusion? We need to be careful with suffering people.  We need to listen well, and not make the assumption that we have the truth and they do not.  We need to hear the bits of truer sanity that they may actually have, even though they are in chaos.  They might have a better grip on sanity than we do.  They might be seeing realities that we are blind to.  We see throughout the Scriptures that God loves to flip things on their head.  

"But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong." ~1 Corinthians 1:27

There might be things that seem foolish in a sufferer's lament, but there might be elements in that lament that are meant to shame the wise.  

May God grant us more grace and patience with those who suffer.  

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