Job's grief in the Book of Job and Kubler-Ross's five stages of grief

Job and Kubler-Ross

Biblical and Buddhist Grief: A Comparison

Job's lamentations, according to Patricia Byrne (2002), represent the painful process of redefining his place in the world. Before Satan's challenge to God to test Job's faith, Job's life was the envy of his neighbors. With seven healthy and vibrant sons and three daughters, seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, one thousand oxen, five hundred donkeys, and an untold number of servants, Job was a profoundly wealthy man (Job 1:2-4, King James Version). Job's sons and daughters feasted every day, leaving the reader to imagine a life of happiness and fulfillment. To forestall vanity however, Job thanked God daily for all he had been given. When Satan challenges God to test Job's faith, all this is stripped away and his body and mind are tormented with disease.

Job begins his grieving process by cursing the day he was born and wishing he had died on that day before he took his first breath (Job 3:1-26). Job appears to be in a state of shock and anger, although it is hard to intuit the emotional content from some of the passages. For example, Job could be either angry or depressed when making the statement: "Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?" (Job 3:11). Hope appears to be lost and Job wishes that the life he has been given had never happened. The third chapter in the Book of Job probably fits best into the anger phase of Kubler-Ross's five stages of grief (Kellehear, 2013), although shock and depression also seem evident. The co-occurrence of different stages of grief is consistent with Kubler-Ross's model, which suggests that the five stages of grief tend to occur in sequence from denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, but that these stages are rarely mutually-exclusive.

Deborah Lyon (2000) interpreted earlier statements by Job as consistent with denial stage of grief. The statement: "… the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21), seems to indicate a lack of comprehension of how serious his situation is. At this point in the story, Job had lost all his livestock, servants, sons, and daughters, so Lyon's point is well taken. Lyon considers the seventh chapter as an example of the anger phase of grief, specifically 7:11-15. Within these passages Job has seemingly recovered from the deep despair evident in chapter three and has begun to vent his rage and frustration. As Job vents, argues, and discusses his fate with his friends, Job transitions back and forth between the first four stages of grief as defined in Kubler-Ross's model, but never fully reaches acceptance before God steps in and restores Job's former life.

Roshi Joan Halifax (2006), a practicing Zen priest in New Mexico, had to contend with grief on a personal level when her mother passed away. Although she recognized that a 'good' Buddhist would let go of any remaining attachments to her mother and accept the reality of death, she instead found herself immersed in her own sorrow. When she later took a trip to the Himalayas and Tibetan monks instructed her to "… let her [mother] be undisturbed by grief" (p. 261), she discovered that she was ready to do exactly that. From the Buddhist perspective, the grieving process seeks acceptance from the very beginning, whereas in Kubler-Ross's model acceptance comes after denial, anger, bargaining, and depression have run their course.

Personal Views on Grief

Based on the above analysis, finding a path through grief to acceptance will be different for different people. Since most of us cannot attain the perspective of Buddha and skip the denial, anger, bargaining, and depression phases of grief, the most we can hope for is enough space for this process to progress naturally. Job found space with his friends, who were willing to sit with him day after day while he suffered unimaginable torment. Roshi Halifax found the space by scouring her heart in the New Mexico desert and a later trip to the Himalayas. The most we can hope for is to have family and friends strong enough to remain by our sides as we transition from joy to grief and back to joy.

My views have not changed as a result of my research, except to be more tolerant of how variable the grieving process can be for different individuals. Job's grieving process was very messy, as was Roshi Halifax's. The five stages of grief are not very predictable, as Kubler-Ross mentions (Kellehear, 2013), and often comingle with other emotions, including joy.