The Pose of Platitude

The following is from Oswald Chambers' book Baffled to Fight Better:

"There is a great deal in both joy and sorrow that is similar in everyone’s case, but always one element entirely different; the platitudinarian [insincere one] evades this.

"On the human side the only thing to do for a man who is up against these deeper problems is to remain kindly agnostic.

"The biggest benediction one man can find in another is not in his words, but that he implies: 'I do not know the answer to your problem, all I can say is that God alone must know; let us go to Him.'

"It would have been much more to the point if the friends had begun to intercede for Job; if they had said, 'This is a matter for God, not for us; our creed cannot begin to touch it'; but all they did was to take to 'chattermagging' [jabbering; spouting off; rambling on] and telling Job that he was wrong.

"When God emerged, He put His imprint on what Job had said of Him, and His disapproval on what the friends had said.

"If Redemption is not the basis of human life, and prayer man’s only resource, then we have 'followed cunningly devised fables.'

"Over and over again during this war [World War I]  men have turned to prayer, not in the extreme of weakness, but of limitation; whenever a man gets beyond the limit he unconsciously turns to God.

 "Eliphaz claimed to know exactly where Job was, and Bildad claims the same thing. Job was hurt, and these men tried to heal him with platitudes. The place for the comforter is not that of one who preaches, but of the comrade who says nothing, but prays to God about the matter.

"The biggest thing you can do for those who are suffering is not to talk platitudes, not to ask questions, but to get into contact with God, and the 'greater works' will be done by prayer (John 14:12-13).

"Job’s friends never once prayed for him; all they did was to try and make coin [prove a point] for the enrichment of their own creed out of his sufferings.

"We are not intended to understand Life. Life makes us what we are, but Life belongs to God. If I can understand a thing and can define it, I am its master. I cannot understand or define Life; I cannot understand or define God; consequently I am master of neither.

"Logic and reason are always on the hunt for definition, and anything that cannot be defined is apt to be defied.  Rationalism usually defies God and defies life; it will not have anything that cannot be defined on a rational basis, forgetting that the things that make up elemental human life cannot be defined.

"There are teachers to-day who play the fool on these elemental lines; they declare that they can give guidance, but they only succeed in doing a fathomless amount of harm.

"A man is a criminal for knowing some things, when he has no right to know them. The primal curse of God was on Adam when he ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam was intended to know good and evil, but not by eating of the fruit of the tree; God wanted him to know good and evil in the way Jesus Christ knew it, viz., by simple obedience to His Father. None of us by nature knows good and evil in this way, and when we are born from above we have to take care that we deal with reverence with the elemental things underlying life."