UNDERSTANDING THE BOOK OF JOB

The Book of Job is essentially about our ignorant self-righteous judgments. Job’s three friends were good friends. Remember, they had sat with Job for a week, mourning with their friend, without saying a word. However, in ignorance, they judged him guilty of having committed terrible sins, wrongly convinced that his sins had brought Job’s great misfortunes upon him.

The friends understood far less than they thought they did. Their understanding of God had been too limited, and their understanding of Job was both degrading and totally off-base.

Instead, Job had been the most righteous of men, but he too had judged God wrongly:

•                Job 9:21-24 "Although I am blameless, I have no concern for myself; I despise my own life. It is all the same; that is why I say, 'He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.' When a scourge brings sudden death, he mocks the despair of the innocent. When a land falls into the hands of the wicked, he blindfolds its judges. If it is not he, then who is it?”

•                Job 10:2-3 “I will say to God, ‘Do not condemn me; let me know why you contend against me. Does it seem good to you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands and favor the designs of the wicked?’”

•                Job 27:2-6 "As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice, the Almighty, who has made me taste bitterness of soul.”

•                Job 16:12-17 All was well with me, but he shattered me; he seized me by the neck and crushed me. He has made me his target; his archers surround me. Without pity, he pierces my kidneys and spills my gall on the ground. Again and again he bursts upon me; he rushes at me like a warrior…yet my hands have been free of violence and my prayer is pure.

Had Job been judging himself correctly? Not according to the narrative:

•                Job 32:1-5 These three men ceased to answer Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes. Then Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram, burned with anger. He burned with anger at Job because he justified himself rather than God.

At this point, the prophetic Elihu began to speak, and he accused Job of self-righteousness:

•                Job 33:8-12 "But you have said in my hearing--I heard the very words-- 'I am pure and without sin; I am clean and free from guilt. Yet God has found fault with me; he considers me his enemy. He fastens my feet in shackles; he keeps close watch on all my paths.' But I tell you, in this you are not right, for God is greater than man.”

Preparing Job for his confrontation with the One whom Job had been accusing, Elihu charged that humankind does not have the wisdom to bring indictments against God:

•                Job 37:19-21 "Tell us what we should say to him; we cannot draw up our case because of our darkness. Should he [God] be told that I want to speak? Would any man ask to be swallowed up? Now no one can look at the sun, bright as it is in the skies after the wind has swept them clean.

If we are unable to look at the sun, how can we expect to look at God accusingly? Only someone who has an inflated estimation of his understanding would attempt to do so.

In many ways, God, who then came upon Job in a whirlwind, affirmed Elihu’s denunciation of Job:

•                Job 38:1-2 Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

In order to make His point clear, God asked Job a series of questions, which Job could not even begin to answer. The lesson was clear – Job lacked the understanding to bring indictments against God:

•                Job 40:8 "Would you indeed annul My judgment? Would you condemn Me that you may be justified?

This is exactly what Job had been doing, and this is what we do when we have to experience trials. Since we lack understanding, we blame God. However, even the most righteous need God’s correcting fires, as Elihu had explained to Job:

•                Job 33:13-18 Why do you complain to him that he answers none of man's words? For God does speak--now one way, now another--though man may not perceive it…. to turn man from wrongdoing and keep him from pride, to preserve his soul from the pit, his life from perishing by the sword.

Job had been prideful and self-righteous. In love, God had been correcting him so that Job would not perish. However, Job had only blame for God and asserted his own righteousness. However, God used these afflictions to bring Job to repentance twice:

•                Job 40:4-5 "I am unworthy (“vile” NKJV)--how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, but I have no answer--twice, but I will say no more."

•                Job 42:3-6 You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?' Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know…My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."

Meanwhile, The Jewish Study Bible comments that “Suffering is Incomprehensible!” Accordingly, Job had nothing to confess or repent of. They too are judging God wrongly, leaning to their own very limited understanding.

God also corrected the judgments of Job’s three friends:

•                Job 42:7-8  After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, "I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has."

The friends had misjudged both God and Job and needed correction. However, it seems that God contradicts Himself. Twice, He charged that the friends “have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” However, before this, He had charged Job with NOT speaking rightly about Him.

Contradiction? Not really! Why not? When we confess our sin, He forgives and cleanses us (1 John 1:9). Job had learned his lesson, and God had wiped his slate clean. “Mercy triumphs over judgment” (James 2:13).

DO OUR GOOD DEEDS SAVE US?

Why does God save us? Because we have been good, or because we have trusted in His mercy?

The late Catholic Priest, Henry Nouwen, believed, as many do, that we are saved because we have been good. In 1992, when writing to a friend on how to prepare AIDS victims for death, he writes:

·       I am deeply convinced that Jesus is completely unique in the world as the full revelation of God’s life, but I also believe that many people can come to Christ even when they have never formally known Christ or had the opportunity to accept him. The final judgment, as Jesus says, is not based on whether or not they have known Jesus but whether or not the people have cared for those who are hungry, naked, prisoners, all the people in need.

Jesus did provide us with a portrait of those who are saved (Matthew 25:30-46). It was a portrait of those who had served Him with compassion. However, nowhere did He ever dismiss the idea that faith was at the core of this service. Instead, He would teach:

·       Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. (John 5:24)

To the religious leadership, He proclaimed:

·       Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” (John 6:28-29)

·       I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.” (John 8:24)

If salvation is by faith, why then did Jesus also insist on performing good deeds? Well, if we truly trust in Him, we will do what He tells us to do. In the same way, if I trust in my doctor, I will do what he tells me to do. If I do not trust in him at all, I will not follow his instructions. Therefore, Jesus also taught:

·       Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me. (John 14:23-24)

The fruit of faith is therefore obedience. If we love Him, we will obey Him. Therefore, those who are obedient are those who trust Him. Therefore, Jesus taught that the ones who obey Him are the ones who trust Him and are saved.

This has been the message of the entire Bible. Faith in God had to be the foundation of a life in God. To not believe in God is to despise Him:

·       And the LORD said to Moses, “How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? (Numbers 14:11)

Through the Prophet Jeremiah, God cries out to His people:

·       Go, and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, “‘Return, faithless Israel, declares the LORD. I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful, declares the LORD; I will not be angry forever. Only acknowledge your guilt, that you rebelled against the LORD your God and scattered your favors among foreigners under every green tree, and that you have not obeyed my voice, declares the LORD. (Jeremiah 3:12-13)

Restoration required confession of sins. If we have faith, we also confess our sins to God and find mercy and salvation (Luke 18:9-14).

Without faith, which includes the confession of sin and the renunciation of it, God will not be pleased with our good deeds:

·       And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)

Why is it impossible to please God without faith? Without a changed disposition towards God, our good deeds are built on a foundation of self-righteousness and self-pride. Jesus taught that our lives had to be built upon a foundation of believing His teachings and then acting upon them:

·       “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.  And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” (Matthew 7:24-27)

A faithful disposition towards God has to be at the foundation of our lives. Without this, our deeds might look good, but they are not good. Just think of a friend who does many good things for you. However, the foundation of his house is corrupt. He is just setting you up to use you.

If we are using the abilities that God has given us while rejecting the One who has given us everything that we have, we are evil and our motives are evil, however much we convince ourselves that we are worthy.

I know, because this had been me. I did good to prove my goodness. Meanwhile, my foundation had been built on the sand of self-absorption and arrogance. Jesus gave us a portrait of such a person:

·       He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt. (Luke 18:9)

Self-righteousness and contempt for others are inseparable. Where we find one, we find the other. Self-righteousness also represents a refusal to see ourselves as we really are.

By the mercy of God alone, He revealed to me what was really at the foundation of my life. Once He humbled me, He began to build me up and to release me from my self-imposed prison.

Without faith, our “good deeds” inevitably poison. This is why far more carnage has been caused by do-gooders – those convinced of the goodness of their cause – than by common criminals.

“I’M SPIRITUAL; I’M NOT RELIGIOUS”

These words serve as the mantra of today’s seekers. It is their “declaration of independence” from organized or established religions. It also represents the expectation of finding spirituality within oneself and not through the preaching or teaching based on an ancient book or tradition.

What then is spirituality? Whatever you want to call it! And nobody can judge you for it as long as you are willing to forgo judgment of others’ spirituality, as long as it is not organized. However, this form of spirituality is also coming out of the seminary.

In his most recent book, The Future of Faith, liberal professor emeritus of the Harvard Divinity School, Harvey Cox, celebrates the shift in Christianity away from fundamentalism and its emphasis on doctrine to “spirituality” and social activism. He favors a doctrine-less faith – a faith we experience and perform, not something we believe. (You might ask, “What beliefs enable us to understand our experience and direct our social activism? This vacuum will be inescapably filled by the beliefs of society.)

Cox suggests that the Biblical revelation is entirely unnecessary. He asserts that one can be a “practicing Christian, but not necessarily a believing one.” This makes the teachings of the Bible irrelevant, and Christianity merely becomes a matter of good deeds, and “salvation” becomes a matter of personal attainment. In describing his liberation from his Baptist roots, he explains:

·       We have been misled for many centuries by the theologians who taught that “faith” consisted in dutifully believing the articles listed in one of the countless creeds they have spun out. (18)

However, Cox’ prime targets are the Biblical teachings themselves, which, according to Cox, are irrelevant:

·       I also became friends with several students who seemed to me to exemplify the Christian life better than some of the taut fundamentalists, although they were not particularly concerned with being doctrinally correct. (16)

For Cox, this constitutes a slam-dunk. But what does it mean to “exemplify the Christian life?” For Jesus, we first have to be set free (John 8:31-32) from the lie before we could step into the light of God:

·       “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3:19-21)

Evil can come in many forms. Perhaps its most dangerous form is self-righteousness, which poses as virtue, even godliness. Therefore, Jesus had warned that the most vicious forms of persecution would come from those who were convinced that they were spiritual:

·       “They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me.” (John 16:2-3)

How can this be? Don’t think for a moment that this was because they were following religion instead of spirituality and God instead of their own inner promptings. About them, Jesus warned that their religion was just a show and that they didn’t even believe the Law of Moses (John 5:44-47). Instead, their religion, spirituality, and social activism were all about themselves so that they could look good in the eyes of the world.

Spiritual pride is a life-controlling, self-righteous, and blinding force. It tells us that we are right even in the face of all the evidence to the contrary:

·       Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the heart. (Proverbs 21:2; 16:2)

Can finding spirituality within ourselves heal us of such blindness? Instead, our normal tendency is to see the things that we want to see. We believe those things that will make us feel good about ourselves.

The evidence for this is overwhelming. We want to be flattered and surround ourselves with “yes” men, people who will make us feel good about ourselves and not those who will tell us what we need to hear.

Consequently, when the psychotherapist advertises her services, she doesn’t say, “Come to me and learn the truth about yourself.” Instead, she says, “Come to me to reduce your unwanted symptomology.”

Of course, many will object to this characterization, but why? We want to believe that we are really seeking after truth, even though this postmodern culture has rejected the existence of objective spiritual truth. It is offensive to us to think that we are motivated to think pleasant, “spiritual” thoughts about ourselves at the expense of truth thoughts.

Is my assessment valid? Yes! It is even largely affirmed by the psychotherapeutic community.

In Positive Illusions, Psychologist Shelley E. Taylor argues that “normalcy” involves layer upon layer of self-delusion. Nevertheless, she argues that these delusions are necessary and positive:

·       People are positively biased in their assessments of themselves and of their ability to control what goes on around them, as well as in their views of the future. The widespread existence of these biases and the ease with which they can be documented suggests that they are normal.

·       Normal people exaggerate how competent and well liked they are. Depressed people do not. Normal people remember their past behavior with a rosy glow. Depressed people are more even-handed…On virtually every point on which normal people show enhanced self-regard, illusions of control, and unrealistic visions of the future, depressed people fail to show the same biases. (214)

If the “normal” are more self-deluded than the “abnormal,” what should be the therapeutic goal? What represents a therapeutic success story? Learning to see ourselves as we truly are? Not according to Martin L. Gross:

·       “The ideal patient must be suggestible. He should be able to easily absorb dogma and ideas of the most abstract, even outlandish dimension. He should be philosophically adaptable and able to ape the therapist’s value system and biases. The more he agrees with the therapist, the better his chances of being helped. This conditioning process is at the core of all faith healing, magic and religion. Psychologist David Rosenberg checked out the connection between improvement and value-conditioning in psychotherapy. He found that those rated as ‘improved’ had changed their moral values in sex, aggression and authority in the direction of the therapist’s own prejudices. Those who had been rated ‘unimproved’ had tended to hold out.” (The Psychological Society, 48)

We do not gravitate towards truth but to comfort. What does this suggest about finding one’s own spirituality? These findings do not bode well for this pursuit.

Instead, the Bible insists that we must first be changed from Above. But how? By the Spirit working through the Word of God – the very object that many have claimed to be irrelevant!

Jesus repeatedly pointed to the relevance of the Word of God in His final pre-cross teaching and prayer (John 14-17):

It is through Scripture that we love God and enjoy His presence:

·       Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me. (John 14:23-24; 15:6-14)

How are we transformed? Again, by the Spirit applying Scripture to our hearts and minds:

·       Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. (John 15:3)

When Jesus was praying to the Father, He expressed the same truth:

·       Sanctify [cleanse] them in the truth; your word is truth. (John 17:17)

Jesus understood that the truth of Scripture transforms. We cannot perform spiritual surgery on ourselves. This surgery must be performed by God Himself through the truth. Nor can we lift ourselves off the ground. Someone else must do this for us.

This sounds strange to modern/postmodern ears, which tend to regard experiences as transformative, not truths. However, right before this, Jesus had prayed:

·       “But now I am coming to you [Father], and these things I speak [Scripture] in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word…”(John 17:13-14)

How can truths or teachings produce joy? As a Zen Buddhist, late psychiatrist and writer, M. Scott Peck, wrote the esteemed best-seller The Road Less Traveled. Fifteen years later, he wrote Further Along the Road Less Traveled to bring us up to date with his spiritual pilgrimage. During these years, Peck observed that his Christian patients were improving. Peck concluded:

·       The quickest way for you to change your attitude toward pain is to accept the fact that everything that happens to us has been designed for our spiritual growth.

·       Now what better news can there be than we cannot lose, we are bound to win? We are guaranteed winners once we realize that everything that happens to us has been designed to teach us what we need to know on our journey.

Peck found that believing these truths proved transformational. Consequently, Peck gave up meditation on his changing inner states in favor of meditation on Scripture.

How do we grow in love? According to Jesus, the Word plays a central role:

·       I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them." (John 17:26; NIV)

How can Jesus’ teachings produce love? When we come to know how beloved and protected we are, we too will love. We will be largely freed from the tyranny of having to seek the approval of others. Freed from their opinions and confident of God’s opinion of us, we no longer have to resent those who do not give us what we want and need. We are freed up enough to begin to look to the needs of others.

However, this is a process:

·       So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you WILL KNOW the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32)

However, this is a painful and humbling process of stripping away the layers of self-righteousness and self-deception, and few are willing to bare it.

Real self-examination (spirituality) is so painful that few can tolerate it. I couldn’t, even after the counsel of five highly-recommended psychologists. Instead, we blanket ourselves with “positive illusions” in favor of true but negative and depressing self-knowledge. We run from the light and anyone who will focus the light upon us and into the comfort of darkness and delusion. However, we run to people who will stroke our self-esteem.

What “positive illusions” do we feed to ourselves? Well, I convinced myself that I was better than others in all regards. Although, deep down, I knew better, I nevertheless believed that I could handle anything. However, this was a drug that required increasingly greater doses to get the high. Meanwhile, my delusions were removing me from reality and from meaningful relationships. When we refuse to see ourselves, we also have blinded ourselves to reality and to others.

How did the truth set me free? It taught me that there was something better than my false spirituality – a Savior who loves, forgives, and gave His life for me. Only with the assurance of His love could I endure His penetrating light.