Real? Really?

I don't know how real this is consistently managing to be, but I'll consider this post to be my reality check. Here's just a little nugget of reality:

I have gone a few days without spending meaningful time in the Word of God. I've read the next chapters in Job a couple of times, but I have just not had the motivation to really dwell on the meaning therein. Maybe it's Satan trying to stop me. Maybe it's just me being me. Honestly, I've come to the conclusion I don't really care what the cause is. I just know what the effect has been . . . and that's a lesser me than what I should, could, and would have been had I given God anything close to His due attention. So . . . this is my attempt.

Job, chapters 29 and 30. This is a really sad pair of chapters, because chapter 29 is a reminiscence about the way life used to be for Job. The long and short of it is, Job was a stud. Job was the man. Job was everything Sinatra said he wanted to find himself to be when he woke up in that city that never sleeps. The higher ups all loved him. The down-and-outs loved him, too. He was the Ferris Bueller of his time, and they all thought he was a righteous dude. And he was. His only mistake was thinking it would always be that way.

Because chapter 30 is Job's lament of his current state: he was the fermented dung buried beneath the muck, lying below the dirt in which was rooted the grass that was flattened under the very bottom of the totem pole. Reading the two chapters in succession just leaves me very, very sad.

But I guess if there is a light shining through the gloom of Job's dichotomous experience, maybe it's the simple fact that in God's eyes, His relationship with Job didn't change when everything else in Job's life did. Even when Job wasn't feeling a single warm fuzzy toward God, God loved him eternally. 

I've never really seen my life turned upside down before. It's usually swelling and ebbing tidal shifts of emotion and varying levels of satisfaction. But I do know that I need God at every moment. I wish I would act like it more often. It heartens me to know that He is a constant despite my inconsistencies. It also makes me feel ashamed at the same time.

Oh, how I need Him.

The Real Job

This is a lot closer to what the real Job sounded like. In chapters 27 and 28, Job continues his most lengthy proclamation by far. It's really something, and I'd recommend reading it through in its entirety . . . but it's just too much to dwell on deeply in one sitting (at least for someone with the attention span of a . . . ha, I love parentheses).

But in these two chapters, I really felt Job returning to the man he was before he lost everything. He was by no means the same, but the despair seems to have diminished from a raging inferno of pain to a quiet acceptance. Job came through believing not only that he was righteous but also that his allegiance to God was worth it.

This segment of Job's message builds in a steady crescendo from his version of the penalty awaiting the wicked to his appraisal of the value of wisdom. He paints a masterpiece of word pictures to describe the elaborate extravagance of wisdom, but he sums it up with this simple description of its nature:

"The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding."

It really makes all the commentary I could provide seem like rambling. So I'll just ponder it for a moment and go to bed.

Whispers and Thunder

Job chapter 26 begins in similar fashion to the beginning of Job's other rebuttals: he sarcastically tells his friends they give rotten counsel.

But then Job goes into describe how unfathomable the power of God is, and it's one of the more beautiful passages of Scripture (although it does contain some references to near-Eastern mythology involving the slaughter of Rahab the serpent worthy of Jethro-Tullian rhapsodies . . . but I digress).

I included the above picture because of its title: "The Last Sunset of August 2007 - with lightning," which seemed to suit Job's description of God. He shows His power in nature in a way that should leave our jaws unhinged. But we so often talk about Him as if He's law or math or a Mr. Wizard experiment.

God is God. And in case you haven't noticed, His power is beyond our comprehension.

One thing I love (in a sarcastic kind of way) about science is how people throw around the term scientific fact. The great scientific minds (the real ones, not the ones I refer to as great in pitiful irony) will tell you that certainty is the stuff of fools. Too often scientists set their powers of observation above the grandeur of the wonders they observe. When they do that, their pride allows them to accept as fact things that are far beyond their comprehension or their limited scope of observation. They see very small fragments of the picture and proclaim, "Eureka!" when the full story would make them pee their pants and scream, "Eek."

Which is why I love (sans sarcasm) lightning. Scientists have a hard time studying lightning. They can't bottle it (hence the cliché). They can't recreate it. And when they try to study it up close, their equipment gets fried, or they die. Naturally, then, determining what goes on in a lightning bolt includes a fair amount of guesswork. I like lightning because it is a humbler, a truly awe-striking phenomenon. You can study it, but few people live to tell the stories of how they underestimated it during their lab work.

Job has a lot of respect for God, and it's very real. That gives me a lot of respect for Job. I'll end without any attempt at deep revelations, just a quote that really makes me think:

How faint the whisper we hear of [God]. Who then can understand the thunder of His power?—Job 26:14

Short and Salty

Job chapter 25 isn't long, but it has all the potential to start an incredibly long discussion. That's because B. S. (Bildad the Shuhite) offers up a tiny nugget of false humility that I've heard echoing off the vaulted ceilings of churches and chapels all my life (particularly in prayers, for some reason). It's also a very popular theme in Oswald Chambers's writing.

I'm not saying I don't believe in the depravity of man; I do. And I'm not saying I disapprove of Ozzie Chambers; I don't. But I do think people take depravity too far in a couple of directions.

The first mistake we make is ignoring the past—God created us in His image. Obviously that's been corrupted, but it hasn't been lost. So when people say mankind is nothing but a bunch of worthless, dried up, pieces of decaying flesh, I think they're missing the fact that God loves us.

The other mistake is to abandon the future. Bildad asked the rhetorical question, "How can a man be righteous before God?" It's a good question, yet it has had an answer to some extent ever since God accepted Abel's sacrifice (Jesus called Abel righteous) or at the very latest when He credited Abraham's belief as righteousness. Why? Because Abel sacrificed by faith. Abraham followed by faith. By faith, a man could be righteous before God. Praise Him for that.

But there's a third mistake as well, and that's the depravity shield. Sometimes, people like Bildad proclaim the utter worthlessness of all mankind in an attempt to establish their own righteousness, thereby shielding themselves from the "depraved" label. Doesn't work like that. The so-called humble are quite often guilty of the most dangerous kind of judgmental arrogance.

And I think I may have just committed a bit of that brand myself. 

Three Kinds of Justice

From what I can tell, Job classifies the wicked into three categories in chapter 24: the oppresive indifferent, the secretive evil, and the mighty pagan. I'll tackle them (figuratively of course, it's getting late) in reverse order.

The rulers of this world finally got their due, Job reasoned, in that they are finally brought low by the relentless gravity of death. Whatever power, whatever prestige they may have amassed throughout life, it vanished when they died.

The middle group of sinners is ostensibly the worst. They're the ones who know they're doing wrong and therefore do it beneath the safe cover of darkness. They're the murderers, theives, thugs, and adulterers, the Ten-Commandment breakers (or the breakers of the five commandments everybody knows). But these evildoers, Job claims, get what's coming to them. These are the people who inherit the judgments of plagues and pestilence and ruin all Job's friends love so much. 

But the first group is different. These people are identified most by the plight of their victims. Sure, there are those who falsify their property lines and run away with stolen goods, maybe shortchange the needy here and there. But the bulk of the passage describing them (vv. 2–12) focuses on the needy, the homeless, the hungry, the dying. Their oppressors aren't identified by name, and I think that's Job's point. The people most responsible for their suffering are never charged with any crime. When does God call them out? By Job's count, never.

So here I am, reading this. And I feel called out. I'm not so sure I'm doing anything to help these people, and I very well may be contributing to a system that prolongs their need. I'd say it's time for me to be convicted about that. It's time to do something, not to clear my name, but to help people in need.

Could Job Stay Gold?

The first thing I thought of when I read Job 23 was Robert Frost's poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay." Okay, honestly, my first thought was the clip from The Outsiders of Ralph Macchio quoting it. I wasn't sure why, but I thought the poem would apply here. After reading it, there's no doubt in my mind that it does.

Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

The reference to Eden caught my attention, as did the painful nods to the the immutable presence of death and imperfection in the natural world after innocent and glorious beginnings. The most obvious connection is the golden thread woven through both; Frost mourned the loss of all that was golden while Job believed God's holy fire was purifying him of everything but gold. And I think they're both talking about the same thing.

Existence in this world can be excruciating. But it is corrupted with death and imperfection—so even though God created it and has ultimate influence and sovereignty over it, He remains entirely distinct from it to the point that His existence is empirically undetectable. And so, like a brain deprived of oxygen, all life separated from God is doomed to certain death.

God's holiness is both Job's lament and his praise. He knows that, although he can't see God, God can see him and will ultimately vindicate him. And God's separation from all living (aka dying) things provokes Frost's mournful song, but it also assures us of the hope we have in Christ.

For when God entered the world, He endured death, conquered it, forged an unbreakable bond between those who believe and the Holy God who loves them . . . and by the power of that connection we are assured a place with Him where there is no death and no imperfection. We will come forth as gold not, as Job had suggested in his case, because we have never strayed, but because the one in whom we place our trust has imputed His perfect righteousness to us.

Frost is right. The traces of perfection and glory we see with our eyes are but the last remnants of fragile, fading innocence. Nothing gold can stay.

But Job is right as well . . . by the Word of God, that which is worthy and holy and beautiful and powerful that has been implanted within us by our Holy Creator, that will endure forever. We will come forth as gold.

I really, truly love this chapter.

Bailout

It's almost too easy to come up with parallels between any Bible passage about money and today's economy, hence the title of this entry on Job 22. Maybe today's passage is of particular relevance because we're living in a time when people are especially keen to make judgments about all things fiscal—the markets, the stimulus packages, government spending, crooked CEO bonuses . . . every dollar spent by every person in America is suddenly under scrutiny. You can't buy a pack of juicy fruit these days without a cashier or fellow shopper raising an eyebrow as if to say, "Really? In this economy? Shouldn't you be sticking with something more conservative, like spearmint?"

People love holding other people to certain standards to which they themselves only pretend to adhere. Or sometimes, we simply consider ourselves and other common people to be exempt. It's this Common Exemption that allows a woman to think her best friend is beautiful while calling Julia Roberts ugly. The Common Exemption empowers us to praise our children for their soccer skills one day and to yell, "Hey, Jeter, you suck!" the next. It's this Common Exception that lets someone who cheats on their taxes still get angry about executives getting bailout money.

And with that attitude, we can certainly empathize with Eliphaz. He made a strong argument about man's inability to assist God as if God were in need of our assistance. He then resumed the chorus bemoaning Job's sinfulness, although Eliphaz was the first to single out a particular sin that may have caused his downfall. Eliphaz called Job greedy and indifferent to the needs of others. That was why God punished him, and if he renounced his greed and pride and all-around wickedness, God would forgive Job.

We know from reading the text, however, that Eliphaz was dead wrong. That, to me, makes this particular batch of counsel the steamiest pile of horse crap I've sniffed so far in this book.

There are three things, in my book, about which you should very rarely confront another person (or even subtly refer to in casual conversation with any tone of negativity or judgment), and even then the matter should be approached with the utmost caution and sensitivity:

Their kids
Their marriage
Their money

Never make negative comments about someone else's child. If you have kids, such criticism serves as an official invitation for your own kids to be insulted. If you think your kids are perfect, ask around and be disabused of that delusion at once. If you don't have kids, you better be trained pretty darned well (and be willing to help) before you even begin to dole out the advice—and it had better be delivered with convincing humility as well.

Same goes for the marriage commentary. Do it with discretion and in humility or prepare to have your own relationship (or lack of one) verbally and imaginatively skewered.

But money . . . oh, money is the trickiest of all, because we're so very artful at disguising our judgment, hiding it neatly behind a smile and an all-too-polite, "Ooh, nice shoes!" The truth is, we can all find something to critique about anyone if we try. They're too rich. They're too poor. They flaunt it. They're cheap. They make rotten investment decisions. They brag too much about their donations. They don't give at all . . . at least I've never heard them talk about it. They're so very pleased with themselves. They'll never be satisfied.

Best bet? Talk about the weather, and move on to the next chapter.