Saturday, October 18, 2008

Grief

I just listened to a short podcast from NPR.  A man had lost his infant son and talked about the grief that followed.  He went on to say that grief is "showing honor to the one that you love".  I can't help but to agree.  If we would see someone who just lost someone and they weren't grieving we might ask or think, "don't they care?"  Grief seems to be viewed differently here.  I shouldn't say much on this as I don't fully understand the culture yet.  But I can tell the story of sitting in a local home and a woman came in.  She began to cry because her teenage brother had been killed the night before from a gun shot.  Nobody said anything, and I was waiting for the cultural clues to know what to do.  After a minute or two, the woman of the house said, "Enough!  This was Allah's plan!"  To grieve here seems to indicate a lack of trust in God.  So grief is discouraged, at least publicly.  

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. I guess that's the danger of "belief" without compassion. Seems like that's what people fear about believing that God is in control of everything, including the bad things. I'm glad the Bible says to "weep with those who weep."

I guess it would be hard for you to show compassion after that! What did you do?

Also, I'm reading the Desiring God blog about the life of Job...

Anonymous said...

I think we have some of that here- you have a month or so and then get that sentiment. Not with everyone but w/ lots of people.
Kellie

Matthew said...

It's not just a Muslim thing. I was seeing quite a bit of that at my father-in-law's funeral. Kinda annoying, really. It forces people to artificially push down their grief.