Reading… and Thinking

[Zophar to Job] “God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves.”
[Eliphaz to Job] “Is not your evil abundant? There is no end to your iniquities.”
[Elihu to Job] “But you are full of the judgment on the wicked; judgment and justice seize you.”

— Job 11:6, 22:5, 36:17 (ESV)

Job suffered terribly. In a single day, all his wealth was destroyed or stolen, and all his children were killed. Shortly thereafter, he was afflicted with a horribly painful, lethal, lingering disease.

God Himself says of Job, “there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil.” (1:8) Job has some friends who come to “comfort” him in his abject misery – by accusing him of being a monumental sinner receiving just punishment for his sins! The quotes above are a small sample. They keep hammering at him that he must repent and stop sinning so that the Lord will stop punishing him. But God’s view of Job is nothing like what they assume.

In spite of the onslaught day after day, Job refuses to cave in and admit he must have done some terrible sin. At one point he says, “As God lives, who has taken away my right, and the Almighty, who has made my soul bitter, as long as my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils, my lips will not speak falsehood, and my tongue will not utter deceit. Far be it from me to say that you are right; till I die I will not put away my integrity from me. I hold fast my righteousness and will not let it go; my heart does not reproach me for any of my days.” (27:2-6) Later on he details how he has lived, and it’s clear that Job leaves me in the dust in terms of leading a righteous, generous, holy life.

Job’s friends are wrong. Job is not experiencing judgments because he is a great sinner.

Now, think back to some occasion in which you were suffering, and you wondered what you did to deserve this. Or sometime when someone else was suffering and you thought, “Mm-hmm, looks like something caught up with her.”

As Job himself says, “In the thought of one who is at ease there is contempt for misfortune.” (12:5)

We need to be really, really careful we don’t become judges, condemning someone because they have had bad things happen. We are likely to be terribly mistaken, as Job’s friends were. But we might have an even bigger problem with condemning ourselves. In spite of scriptures such as Job, which are provided to teach us to do better, we can jump to wrong conclusions, based on a superstition that every bad thing that happens must be the result of some sin.

We need very particularly to recall that Jesus suffered horribly, and he never did any sin. So we can never say that suffering is automatically a punishment for having done something wrong. On the other side of the coin, several writers in the Bible detail how the wicked often do just fine, getting rich and having painless lives. Prosperity and health are not indicators of righteousness, any more than suffering is an indicator of sin.

In the end, God vindicates Job and strongly rebukes the friends. So, why then did Job suffer so? That will be the topic for next week’s posting.

For this week, the personal lesson is that when trouble comes into our lives, it certainly may be that the Lord is disciplining us, trying to train us into a better way of life. There is ample scripture to teach us this is one way the Father works with us. But there is not support for the idea that we will have retribution in this life for each sin, that we are made to pay through suffering. This is a superstition, not Bible doctrine. It is always appropriate, when trouble comes, to look at our lives, and to see if the Lord is trying to guide us. But it is tragic to take on a burden of massive guilt, compounding the suffering. And it is totally unacceptable to assume guilt in another, when they have trials.

What kind of friends will we be? Like Job’s, doing nothing to comfort, instead adding to his misery with their unjust judgments? Or like the great Friend, Jesus, who had compassion for those suffering, and did what he could to help them?