I love the book of Job – but I love the message, not necessarily the long-windiness of everyone’s speeches. (Even God talks a lot when He does talk).
Frankly, I have a hard time understanding exactly what point everyone is making. I wonder why God didn’t have a better editor so we could just get to the main points and move on.
I’ve relied on preachers and commentaries to tell me that Job’s friends unjustly accuse him of being sinful in some way to the end that God meted out pain and punishment.
And I knew that after all that suffering and God’s direct intervention, Job repented.
But I still don’t get it all. Or even much.
In today’s reading, I think I understand that God uses His control over creation as the proof of His vast superiority over Job:
“Do you give the horse his might?
Do you clothe his neck with a mane?
Do you make him leap like the locust?
His majestic snorting is terrifying.”
(Job 39:19-20 ESV)
Based on His exalted position, God questions Job’s right to argue with God, to question God’s ways:
And the LORD said to Job:
“Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty?
He who argues with God, let him answer it.”(Job 40:1-2 ESV)
Not surprisingly, Job is speechless:
Then Job answered the LORD and said:
“Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you?
I lay my hand on my mouth….”
(Job 40:3-4 ESV)
Here’s the part I don’t get. I would have to read back over Job and really dig to understand exactly what it was that Job argued with God about.
I sense in some way that Job mildly called into question God’s activity in his life. Since Job was righteous (comparatively speaking), he felt that God was unjust to deliver such pain (which if you think about it, is another way of saying exactly what his friends said: “Good guys don’t suffer; bad guys do.”)
But here’s the bigger point I get as I think about it.
There are folks like Job who have a closer walk with God, a deeper understanding of the Divine Way than the rest of us. Job was in a different club than his friends. He knew things about God that they just didn’t understand.
Really, it was a waste of his time even to defend himself. They didn’t get it that the innocent could suffer. They just weren’t where he was spiritually – and had no way to understand what God had not yet revealed to them about His character. They thought they were wise, but Job knew better.
We’ve all been there with other people who have less spiritual insight than we have.
And, yet, despite Job’s greater intimacy with God and insight into the things of God, Job had a long way to go. He realized it as God called him on the carpet. And he shut up.
Sure, he was closer than the others. Yet he was very far off. Off the mark in comprehending God’s ways.
A good lesson.
No matter how spiritually mature we sense we are when standing next to others, we know nothing. We are light years from God. There’s never room for thinking “I’ve arrived.” There’s ALWAYS room for humility.
Gotta remember that…
Today’s Readings: Job 39:1-40:24, Psalm 101:1-4, Proverbs 23:29-30, 1 Corinthians 6:1-20. See About for what I’m up to with these daily posts. Your daily blogger, Holiday Longing (Reproduce with permission only).
I would rather argue with God and have him straighten me out like he did Job, instead of making noises with my lips that in my heart of hearts I don’t really believe. I think God would much rather have a feisty friend like Job than some the milk and toast wimp. that’s just my take on life and suffering.
Agreed. And the sense I had with the other dudes is that they were arrogantly representing God whereas Job had greater humility. He didn’t get what was up with God…
Good insight. I read pretty much all of Lewis in my 20s. Time to go back and re-read! I wish I had time to study Job more, to research what he’s really saying. It’s like reading Shakespeare. You have to work at it. But – obviously – it’s been a bit crazy lately. My favorite part is in today’s reading, so I’ll comment more.
Ever notice the bit where God says Job has spoken what is right? I think part of it is what I call subjective truth — the truth of how things look to us from our perspective, the truth of our current feelings. Job knows a lot about God — he is good, righteous — AND Job feels really awful about what’s happened to him — he is asking God to vindicate himself — to show the goodness and righteousness that Job knows God has.
Have you ever read Till We Have Faces, by C. S. Lewis? Even though it’s a retelling of a myth, to me it feels a lot like what Job is about — speaking our subjective truth while retaining our faith and hope in what we know God is really like, and waiting and seeking for God to show himself truly what he is, in a way we can see — and finding that when he adjusts our perspective, it IS humbling and convicting, AND it includes the showing himself that we were asking for.