Pat Answers

Have you ever been the recipient of a pat answer?  Or, perhaps far more convicting is the question, Have you ever given a pat answer?  What exactly is one, anyway?  How do we know if we’re giving one?  This past week something got me thinking about pat answers and why we all hate them but why we all give them. 

A dear friend of mine has confided in me about the dumb things people do when others are grieving.  For example, hopefully by now we know that the proper response to someone who’s had a miscarriage is NOT, Well, you’ll have another baby!  When someone loses a loved one, please don’t pat them on the shoulder and say, They’re in a better place.  Duh!  Both of those things are obviously true (probably), but the problem is not the validity of the statement, it’s the lack of concern.  When we were little and would stub our toe or bump our head, my PE teacher dad would say, “It’ll feel better when the pain goes away.”  That’s fine with the stubbed toe, but some of us unfortunately find ourselves in essence seeing a hurting person and saying, “It’ll feel better when the pain goes away.” 

What’s always been tough for me is that so often Scripture can be used as a pat answer.  “All things work for good!” is the classic example.  “God’s ways are not our ways!”  we might offer with a smile.  So what do we do?  Scripture is the best counsel, the very best thing to share with someone who is hurting, but the key is how we share it.  Basically, Scripture becomes a pat answer when it is shared before the recipient has been heard, loved, empathized with, and prepared to receive the verse.  If we’ve not loved, listened, empathized, and been sensitive to where the hurting person is, we’ll likely find ourselves giving pat answers.

So, when someone is struggling with forgiveness, with bitterness, with a gnawing pain that’s been growing for years, we err if we say, You just need more of Jesus!  Yes, of course that is true, but our job is to listen, our job is to love, our job is to care.  The greatest way to communicate love and care is to listen.  Listen long, listen well. Listen without countering, without offering advice.  That’s how we become catalysts for God’s supernatural work of grace to take place in another’s life. But first we must care.  If we do not care, we would do well to step back and ask God to change our hearts.  A lack of love should be pretty serious warning sign to us that we need a dose of God’s grace! 

I wish I could go around to every person who I’ve ever given a pat answer to, and ask for forgiveness.  I know we’ve all done it, and will all do it again at some point, but I pray that God would make us people who love enough to listen, to care enough to waste time with someone’s pain, to let the blood splash over onto our own garments, to let the wounds begin to ache as our own.  I think maybe that’s the first step in the cure for the pat answer.