Chris Brauns posts a helpful quote that is wise in light of the previous post.Os Guinness:
But again, the one thing is clear: if we do not know the answers, it is better not to say...(Unspeakable, 204, 205).
It is Job’s friends with whom God is angry. Speaking piously when they were ignorant, they became self-righteous and cruel as well as quite wrong. False accounting for evil always ends in falsely accusing someone, whether someone else, ourselves, or God. When we are with anyone who is suffering, we should never give words without love, and we should never give answers without knowledge.
Silence itself is eloquent sympathy.
1 comment:
Great quote. One question I have is: How do you balance that conviction with Jesus' response to the Tower of Siloam falling? Obviously, Jesus' response (which Piper recently modeled for us well) was a correct one in the circumstances. But we have also all heard Christian leaders make pronouncements in times of disaster that failed to communicate love to sufferers...
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