Suffering has a way of changing how we speak, how we think, and how we pray, especially when it comes to hard topics like death. Helping you sort out suffering in your life coming up today. You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Ryan Hill.
I'm John Galantis. Welcome to the Clearview Today studio. We are so glad you're joining us today for our conversation. We're especially glad that you've been sticking with us through the week and through the month and through the years that we've been on the air. We just want to say thank you.
We're glad you're listening, and you're going to be glad you listened today because today's conversation is going to help a lot of people, especially ones who are going through suffering. But let's not get too ahead of ourselves. I want to introduce our host for the day, Dr. Abadan Shah, who's a PhD in New Testament textual criticism, professor at Carolina University, author, full-time pastor, and the host of today's show. Dr.
Shah, welcome. Welcome. We are back to you guys. I got to say, we're a good-looking crew today. I'm loving that green jacket.
Very dapper. Yes. The green jacket is new, right? Yes, this is new. Yeah, yeah.
I went to my favorite dress store. When I say dress, I'm talking about men's dress. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Clothing store. As should be dressed.
So it's Tickner's, as many of y'all know. Tickner's is in Ohio. uh in several other places but also in North Carolina. In uh at Craftree Valley Mall in Raleigh and South Point Mall towards Durham Chapel Hill. And so I usually go to the Crafts store and I know them, I hang out with them, I talk to them, I ask questions, great guys, yes, great people, super nice.
And I went in there just to get, I think, a shirt, maybe, I don't know. Maybe pants. And I walked off with a jacket. Did you get the shirt and the pants too? I think I got a pair of jeans.
Yeah, yeah. That's nice. They're excellent salesmen. And I don't mean that in the sense that they're pushy or they're overbearing, but they're like. Explaining why you need this item in your good at what they do and they're good dudes.
Like, I went in there for the very first time for your youngest daughter's wedding. And the next time I went in there, like a year and a half later, they remembered you. They remembered, not only remembered me, remembered my name, remembered you asked how the wedding went. As they remembered why we were there in the first place. Yeah, seriously.
I walked in. They were like, hey, John. How was the wedding? I was like, yeah, my name is John. They were like, yeah, I remember you.
You worked for Doctors. How was the wedding? How was it? I was like, oh man, that was a year and a half ago. It was great.
Yeah. They're still married.
So everything's going well.
So, yeah, great, great dudes. And great clothes, too.
So that's where I got this corduroy jacket. And I think it looks good on me. It does. It does look really good. A lot of compliments.
It looks very good. Tigners is not a sponsor of the Clear Vee Today Show. But it could be pickers, write in and let us know. That's right. And speaking of sponsors.
Speaking of sponsors, we are looking for sponsors for the Clearview Today Show.
So if you would like to have your business featured on the air in a partnership with the Clearview Today Show, write in and let us know. We can talk to you about what that would look like. You can contact us by email at contact at clearviewtodayshow.com, or you can text in or call into the show at 252-582-5028. We are very grateful for our business sponsors and our partners in making the Clearview Today Show possible. That's right.
Dr. Sha, today's verse of the day is one that should be very familiar to our listeners by now. It is Job chapter 1 and verse 21. He says, Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord. And as much as we've been going through Job lately, we've been finding new meanings and new ways to look at verses like these. You know, we're kind of talking about the poetry of how Job speaks, right? The poetic nature of the majority of the book. But we also were talking a lot in your sermon that you did last week.
And then also, Also, just kind of off mic, we've been talking a lot about how Job looks at death. You know, Job is one of those books that, even though Job himself is not facing immediate death, He almost wishes he was. Yeah. And then we think, is like, okay, well, is that biblical? Is that good?
Is that a good way to? And so I love that sermon. And maybe we can talk about that today. Like, what do we do when we as Christians feel like maybe death is not such a bad option? Yeah.
You know. When you read Job chapter 1. He says, at the end of those four trials, those rapid fire catastrophes that come into his life because of this wager between God and the devil. Satan Satan came and said to God, well, he just came before God and God said, Have you considered Job my servant? Look at how good he is.
Look at how righteous he is. And Job's Satan's response was response was, Well, He's all those things because you are Doing so much for him. You're blessing him. Take those blessings away, and he will curse you to your face. And then God gave him permission to go do that, take those blessings away.
And one by one, things began to happen with his possessions, with his servants. They died. And um they were killed. His livestock was taken away, and then fire from heaven destroyed. Uh some of the uh other possessions.
This wind came out of nowhere. And uh Brought the house down where his children were gathered, and they all died.
So. At the end of that, Job says in Job 121, Naked I came from my mother's womb, naked shall I return. There the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Man, what an encouragement uh an encouragement to us to to have that kind of mind.
The mindset where I didn't bring anything. I'm not going to take anything with me when I leave this life. Everything I have is a gift from God. Everything I have comes from God. Blessed be the name.
Means my identity is grounded not on the things I have. But on who God is. Right. Yeah. Great statement.
In Job chapter two, verse ten Now, the second set of trials have hit. And it's not trials as much as just this: Satan comes again before God, God's question. Have you considered my servant Job? You try to get him off track, but he still loves me, worships me. And Satan's response is, Ah, he does all those things because you Haven't touched his body.
Skin for skin. Skin for skin. Still has his health. And he will curse you to your face.
So now we have this new arc coming in. And I was actually just about to ask: you know, what causes this shift where Job is like, hey, listen, you know, it's not, it is what it is, but it's blessed be the name of the Lord.
So now things really start to heat up. And he's like, I wish I was never even born. Because in Job chapter 2, verse 10, when his wife says, just curse God and die, and she was doing that out of sympathy. But Job's response is in Job 2:10, shall we indeed accept good from the Lord, and shall we not accept? Adversity?
Yeah. In all this Job did not sin.
So How How do we go from that to Job chapter three and verse one? where Job says But After this, the book of Job says, after this, Job opened his mouth. and cursed the day of his Birth. Birth. What?
The whole day. Wow. Come on, man. What happened to blessed be the name of the Lord? Right.
Yeah. Yeah. Where's that energy? What happened? Shall we not accept adversity from God?
Or is life all about the good things? How do we go from there to Cursed today is my part. It almost feels like a complete departure from the trajectory that Job was on. Like he's going down this path of saying, Blessed be the name of the Lord. You know, we can accept adversity from God.
But now this is a sudden departure from it seems like from his line of reasoning. What's happening here? Hmm. And so And something else that happens here, which Scholars have wrestled with because Job chapter three is a very powerful, prominent chapter. for scholars.
Because Job chapters 1 and 2. are written In a prose Form. Very narrative. There was a man uh in the land of Oz And he was a good, righteous man, loved God. All those kind of things.
Job chapter forty two is again Prose narrative. That's the end, the very end. And here you have that Job saw his children and grandchildren for four generations.
So Job died. Old and full of days. Cut and dry, prosaic. Narrative. But in between Job chapter 3 through 41 It's Poetry I mean you see the image for those of us were watching on YouTube.
I mean, look at that. The majority of the book, yeah. Yeah, how do you make sense? There's so much happening: thunderstorms and dinosaurs and molten lava and despair. I did.
That's quite good. Thank you. That's very good. I saw it during the sermon. I didn't see it close up.
Now that I'm seeing it close up, it's very, very good. Thank you. Yeah. It looked good from afar, too. Dr.
Shaw sent some great ideas, some great suggestions, and putting that together. And it really captures the idea of poetry because how in the world do you put into words what you can't put into words? And that's the whole point of poetry. Yeah, and it is, it's one of those things where, just like poetry, like the more I'm looking at this image, the more I'm finding. You know what I'm saying?
Like I see something new the longer I look at it.
So most of the book of Job then, chapters 3 through 41, is this poetic. Uh discourse, outpouring, overflow of emotion. This poetry of life. Yeah, and people I'm talking about specifically scholars have come to this book and said, oh, yeah. Definitely Joe one too.
Is one section. Job 3 through 41, second section. Job 42. Job 42 is the third section. But they will give it certain names.
They will say, oh, this is a framework core framework. Or this is an exposition complication resolution. Or this is prologue, dialogue, epilogue. Or bread, peanut butter, and jelly, and then bread. Yes.
You're probably right. Is there any validity to those claims? Is that an accurate way to look at Job? You can look at it that way, but the more you study. this in the context of trauma.
There is a reason why there is this certain structure.
So, we did do a few episodes. A while back on the genre of Job. What genre is it? Yeah. Is there a shift in genre here, or is this a genre all its own where it starts as prose, like narrative, and then the shifts to a majority of it being poetry?
It's a shift in genre.
Okay. From prose to poetry to back to prose. But that doesn't necessarily complicate the reading of Job. No, I think it helps us understand what's really happening. Gotcha.
Because if you don't understand this breakdown, Prose, poetry, prose, then you will misunderstand what Job is trying to communicate. You'll misunderstand what God wants us to get out of this book.
So Um What is happening in this book? What's going on so far? In chapter 3.
Well, if you know the story... Um Job's friends hear about what was happening with Job. and they make their way to see him. They make an appointment to come to him. Eliphaz?
Bildad, Zofar. Ellie Hugh is going to come later on, this mysterious figure. We're going to talk about him later. But these three guys, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zohar, Zofar, if you remember last show, we talked about how these were real people. These are not mythological people from mythological places, these are real people.
I lived in real places in real time. And you find them in the book of Genesis. Mentioned elsewhere in scripture, in books that are not. Mythological or allegorical or things like that, books that are grounded, I mean, historical accounts verifiable by other sources outside of the Bible. If these men show up there, we have no reason to doubt that they are actually these men in Job.
Right. And because they are historical figures. we will give their words a little bit more. More weight, more gravity. Just like we, I think we gave the illustration last time.
Like, if I'm reading a quote by George Washington, I'm going to give it a little bit of gravity. No matter what the quote says, I'm like, okay, I should probably pay attention to these words because I know that's a historical figure who was very important. Right. But if it's some fictional character or something, it's like, I could take it or leave it. You know what I'm saying?
Yeah. So, what happens in the story? When the word travels. About Job, what had happened to him, these five catastrophical things happening to him, possessions. Uh servants.
Uh children and then his health, but in four in five parts. They come, they make an appointment to come see him. And pay attention to what they do when they see him from a distance. In Job chapter 2 and verse 12, and when they raise their eyes. Afar Off.
which is very important, they saw him from a distance. and did not recognize him. means his condition had become so Dilapidated in a sense that they did not even know that was Job. Wow. He did not look like a king.
He did not look like a ruler. He did not look like a man who had a whole big family. He looked like this disheveled man sitting on an ash heap, kind of emaciated, right? And just Just there, covered in boils. Wow.
They did not recognize him. They lifted their voices and wept. And each one tore his robe and sprinkled dust on his head towards heaven. That's a sign of grieving. And verse 13: So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great.
So, seven days, seven nights of complete silence. Imagine sitting for a week, just like loving your friends so much that you sit for a week and don't even feel the need to say anything. You know, a lot of times I feel like as Christians, we feel the need to talk. And I do that if I feel like I can make it right if I could just find the right thing to say. And you never once consider that silence Not only is an option, but is the better option.
And it's the power of being present, especially when your friend or your loved one is going through something that's unspeakable. I mean, unimaginable grief, unimaginable trauma. His friends recognized that and they were like, There's what can we say? There's nothing we can say. We're just going to be here.
Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes that's what's needed. It's a powerful truth. I think it's really important to know that they did that for their friend.
Yeah. You know, Nicole, when she was on our show.
some time back, she talked about how during trauma God has designed us in such a way that we feel numb. After a shocking incident. Because that's God's way of protecting us by giving us time to process the pain. Mm-hmm.
So we feel numb, it's it's silence, and that's okay. Michelle Keener, in her book on Job and Trauma, the book is called Comfort in the Ashes. Listen to what she says about this whole silence thing with regard to trauma, pain, suffering. She says. Remember.
One of the hallmarks of trauma is that it cannot be immediately categorized by our minds. Because you're entering into a place that you've never been before. Right. So one of the things about trauma is that it cannot be immediately categorized by our minds. We don't have a label for something so far outside of our worldview and schemas.
We literally don't have any words to describe trauma because we don't really know what it is yet.
So Imagine if I were to take you from 2025 and transport you to 2125. Right. Hundred years from now. It'll be hard. You may be able to, you know, form some sentences and maybe try to Find a way to describe Where you are, but it'll be hard.
Are used in that day and age to describe those things don't exist. Right. I know what you're saying. I mean, ask somebody from 100 years ago to explain artificial intelligence. Yeah, true.
Wow. Imagine that. How would they be able to do that? A cell phone. That's again.
How? What? That doesn't make any sense. Great point. It's not possible.
It's not. You know, I think that's one of the things is like, You you come into something like that where you have this thing happen to you. And The people around you want you to talk about it. You got to talk about your feelings. You got to describe.
Tell me what's wrong. Tell me what's going on. Tell me how I can help you. I can't help you if you don't talk to me. And you know, it's one of the things is like you, that's the last thing you want to do.
Yes. Is talk. You know what I'm saying? Well, and especially if this is fresh. I mean, if they've just gone through this traumatic event, they may not be able to talk.
They just can't verbalize what's happening because their brain is still trying to, like you said, Dr. Shah, from that quote, parse out what has happened in this traumatic event. I can't categorize this. I don't have words. Yeah, and you get to feeling guilty because it's like, okay, now the only thing holding up this healing process is me because I'm not ready to talk about this.
But everyone else needs me to talk about it.
Well, Keener goes on to say that we literally don't have any words to describe trauma because. We don't really know what it is yet.
So, silence should not be a surprise. Silence is a description because silence is all we have. Silence follows trauma because of the overwhelming nature of the traumatic experience and an accompanying inability to explain the experience. I can see that. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.
Yeah. So, if you apply it. to the person who just got A cancer diagnosis. to a person Whose spouse committed an affair to a person whose parents have unfairly, who have been unfairly judged by their children. Um To the person who has been through an accident or lost a job or just lost a loved one, silence is not wrong.
Yeah, that's true. Because it is the way God has designed us to process. You know, to process the pain that we're going through.
So so even for us, if we're helping someone through trauma, you know, don't I I think what you're saying is don't be afraid to just be there, to just be quiet. Yeah. Right. And not have to have this burden of saying the right thing. Yeah.
Yeah. It's tough. When our kids were born, our first two, our twins, they were born early. They were born 33 and a half weeks, so a month and a half early. And it was a crazy time because we, I mean, they it was like a medical emergency thing.
Elizabeth was having some medical issues, so they went ahead and did an emergency C-section. And then she had some complications after the after the C-section.
So the twins were. Fine. I mean, they were healthy. They were small. And so they were sent off to the NICU.
And then Elizabeth was recovering in ICU. And there was a time where I couldn't see any of them.
So I was sitting in the waiting room by myself. We had just moved to North Carolina a year earlier, so I didn't, I didn't know anybody. Right. And, you know. My kids, my newborn kids are somewhere being worked on by other people.
My wife is somewhere. I can't see her yet. And I just remember just being almost shell-shocked in that moment. Like, I wasn't tearful. I wasn't elated.
I was just kind of like numb. And two of our friends from the apartment complex we lived in, we went to seminary together. They. Uh, found out what was happening, called and said, Hey, what do you need? And they had a spare key to our apartment.
We would like to get each other's mail when one of us was out of town. And so they grabbed, like, we had nothing packed. We weren't, that morning, we didn't know we were gonna have kids. Yeah. So they went into our apartment, grabbed, grabbed a bag of stuff, packed it for us, and then came and literally just sat in the waiting room with me.
Wow. They didn't say anything. We didn't talk about anything. They just sat there with me. And that meant so much.
Yeah. Just to know that they were sitting next to me in that moment when I just felt like. I was alone. And their presence there meant everything. That's awesome.
What they did was exactly what needs to be done when people are. And I know yours was a temporary trauma because soon you would have a. Child or children, and life would be very different. Excitement, you know, great. But at the moment, it's like there's fear, there's trepidation, not sure if this will all go well.
And so, What is needed are people who can come and be with you and Not ask questions and not expect you to be conversant, just relax. One of the things that I've learned watching you, Dr. Shah, is when funerals happen, typically at Clearview, what happens is you'll go and meet with the family, find out what they'd like to do, and then you come and relay that information back to the team, and we'll go ahead and plan the funeral. But one time I was able to go with you. And I remember pulling up in front of the family's house.
I remember you turned to me and said, Hey, look, when we get in here. Say the less you say the better. And that's not, and I remember you clarifying that's I don't say that as a rude thing, but you'll just in when people are grieving, you feel the urge to make it better, but you will never regret something you didn't say, right? And I remember, I remember sitting in that driveway, and that hit me really hard. Yeah, because I know that's me.
It's like I want to make this situation so that no one's uncomfortable, right? But. I've never, and I think to this day, I've always kept that. I will never regret. not saying something.
I'll never regret keeping silent. Yeah. And that's helped. Yeah, going back here. You know, the person who's been through these things, God has designed us to process the trauma that we have faced by being silent.
But those of us who are helping such people just. Because they were talking earlier does not mean that they will talk even now. Yes. Maybe finally it's hitting them and they are.
sort of numb. They're sort of Just shell shock. And it's okay to be that way.
So, how does this map onto the discussion about poetry in Job? Where does the poetry come from?
So I mean, think about it. You're entering a Realm that you've never been before. It is very difficult to describe that realm. How do you still describe it? That's where poetry comes in.
Right. So um Again, quoting from Michelle Keener from Out of the Ashes, she says, trauma represents an interruption in the flow of the survivor story. You know, we have a story, trauma comes in and T-bones our story. Right. Yeah.
Okay. It cannot be experienced in a linear logical way and it cannot be forgotten. Linear logical is a. General Story of every person. But because of trauma, it cannot be experienced in a linear, logical way.
Yeah, because in a story, like in a just a Western three-act story, everything matters. Everything is caused by something else. This happens, therefore, this, therefore, this, therefore, this. Right. And we're used to consuming the story that way.
But the story of our life is not that way. What did I do to cause that car that just plowed into my car? Nothing. You know, things just in real life, things just happen. And so I know what you're saying.
You can't just be like this, therefore this, therefore this. Trauma is not logical or linear. She goes on to say the missed encounter of the traumatic event becomes a lingering wound. dragging the past in parentheses where the trauma occurred into the present, dragging the past past into the present, interrupting the chronology of the survivor's life, which we know that, a T boned life, and creating a crisis of temporality. Past and present blur.
This rupture is a survivor's story. Life story gives this rupture in the survivor's life story gives a traumatic event, and outside of time. Out of reach quality that is noticeably out of place. Outside of time, out of reach quality that is noticeably out of place. Yeah, I've definitely felt that before.
Like when something really extreme happens, almost feels like detached from your actual life. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like this, it has to be a dream. This can't be real.
It doesn't feel like it's real. Yeah. I remember, I mean, I wasn't in a very serious accident, I was in a pretty bad car accident, but it wasn't like. I mean, it wasn't like life-threatening or anything, but I definitely, when I think back to it, it feels like something I saw in a movie. Does that make sense?
Yeah. It feels like not a memory as much as like I saw that happen, even though it happened to me. Right. So I definitely know what she's talking about when it's like outside of time. It's kind of detached.
Past and present blur. She goes on to say, and this rupture in a survivor's life story gives the traumatic event an outside of time, out of reach quality that is noticeably out of place, which we call cognitive dissonance. Mm-hmm.
This is where Our experiences are crashing into our beliefs. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, one's experience is crashing against one's belief.
So the hardest thing to deal with in trauma, other than maybe Being silent, It is to know how to communicate what has happened. That's a good, that's a good point, that cognitive dissonance. Because I remember, I don't know how to really say this, but like I had never been in a car wreck before. And even though I didn't, I don't think it was a conscious belief, I think there was a belief like that's not, that can't happen to me. That happens to other people, but it can't happen to me.
That won't happen to me. And yeah, boy, talk about cognitive dissonance. I was shocked very quickly. Like, oh, yep, I can certainly be involved in a, in a wreck or something like that. Yeah.
And we really don't have any words to describe the new development, the new normal.
So. Since we haven't been there before, this is where prose fails and only poetry can help. Yeah. Prose fails. Poetry can help.
Poetry is the best way to speak when we don't know how to explain what is happening.
So that kind of explains Job, the majority of Job being poetry. And poetry, and maybe we're running out of time. We'll have to talk about this tomorrow. But when we say that we speak in poetry to get through trauma, we're not talking about like. Robert Frost, like actual to be or not to be Shakespearean poetry.
Yeah, yeah. We can kind of get more into that on tomorrow's episode. Yeah, that makes sense. When you look at the book of Job and how it maps onto our life, you know, there are certainly times where it feels like life is out of place, out of time. And that's where, you know, in a poetic sense, pun intended, you know, the word of God comes to bear and it helps us sort out those difficult moments.
Yeah. And for people who are listening to an episode like this, just know that everything that we're talking about, it may sound lofty and like it's a fun conversation for us, but just we understand that it's real. What you're going through is very real. And there may be someone listening to this right now who's like, listen, I'm really feeling it and I need some good practical advice. I would say keep listening because we're going to keep diving into the book of Job.
We're going to make this as real and as tangible as possible for you because every single word we speak on the show, we know it comes directly from the Bible, which means it does have the power to change your life. That's right. Make sure you join us tomorrow as we continue this conversation. We'd love to see you listening in on the Cleavery Today Show. Thanks again to our sponsors for sponsoring today's.
Episode LeBlue Ultra Pure Water and Heidi Muscadine. We are very grateful for that partnership. And if you are looking for a business sponsorship, write in and let us know what that would look like for you and for your business. We'd love to have that conversation with you. Contact at clearviewtodayshow.com or 252-582-5028.
Don't forget that you can support us by subscribing to the show on iTunes, Spotify, Prey.com, anywhere you can get your podcasting information from. And you can always support us financially at Abadanshah.com forward slash give. That's right. A couple of big things we want to talk to you about. Number one, Clearview Today is going to be on TBN Plus very, very soon.
We are launching on December 18th. That's the launch date. That's today. That's today. Right.
We're on TBN Plus. I didn't even notice that. That's today. Today. That means we're on TBN Plus right now.
Go on ahead, get you your account. I think it's $5 a month, or it might be $15 a year. It's something like that. It's a very, very low cost.
So make sure you go on ahead and get your TBN Plus account. The Clearview Today show is one of the top new shows. You're going to see us all over there, Leader Carousel. Very, very good. Very grateful to TBN Plus as well as Prey.com.
We're still doing very well on Prey. NRB, Nashville 2026, we are coming. We are coming in hot. Dr. Shah is going to be here in Nashville.
What are the dates on that again? February the 17th through the 20th. February 17th through the 20th, we're going to be in Nashville, Tennessee as part of NRB. We're going to be with Truth Network. We're also going to be there as one of Prey's featured leaders.
So make sure you come by both booths. Say hello to Dr. Shah and to the rest of the team. We'd love to meet you. Last thing, we're going to have a big, big conference, an apologetics conference here at Clearview, March the 28th.
You can get your tickets on sale now, but I'm telling you, the early bird pricing is going to run out by 2026.
So after January, y'all are paying full price. Don't be in that camp. Go ahead and get your early bird pricing today. That's right. We love you guys.
We'll see you tomorrow in Clearview today.
