Reading the moral entrails
This week's study is on Job 21:7-16:
Job was a guy who lived towards the beginning of Bible times. Scholars think the book is one of the oldest ones included in the books of the Bible. He was a righteous guy who went through some hard times, and got tormented by the people around him. There are some hard truths to be found in the book of Job.
In this section, Job is replying to a guy named Zophar, who is telling him how good people get blessed and evil people get cursed, so therefore Job must have done something wrong to deserve the treatment he's getting. In Zophar's fairytale world, bad things only happen to bad people, so if bad things have happened to Job it must mean he's been bad.
Job is infuriated! As if it isn't bad enough that he's lost everything, now he has to deal with this idiot judging him based on his circumstances! Zophar launches into a tirade of victim-blaming, telling how evil people always get what's coming to them and that their prosperity never lasts. The cause is obvious to Zophar: Job is guilty.
So Job is like "Look, it's not that simple. Plenty of evil people do very well for themselves, and even die prosperous and happy, despite being complete godless scoundrels their whole lives." And Job is right. We can even think of plenty of examples ourselves: people who are evil to the core and yet have money, power, fame, kids with multiple partners, health, peace, and the admiration of those around them. Right up with the age old question of "why do bad things happen to good people" is "why do good things come to bad people?"
We've all run into people like Zophar. You're devastated from some loss or disappointment and they're like "Looks like you need to get right with God," or "Maybe you should have asked God what his plan was before you got your hopes up." There's a maddening smugness to people like that. They have everything figured out, and whatever doesn't fit their simplistic worldview is twisted around in their heads until it does.
But the beauty of the book of Job is that it's chock full of things that we can't figure out. Our God isn't a comic book character, or a disney story. He's a real being who lives in a reality that is too big for us to ever comprehend. We can't just look at the world around us and assume we know where someone stands with him, or what his position is on things. And yet we do, because we're simple creatures.
In a way, I am thankful for having lived through the televangelist scandals of the 1980s and 1990s. There were a lot of famous Christian figures who fell quite publicly when the evil they'd been hiding in their lives came out. Up until the fall, you would have looked at these guys and thought "Look at how righteous that guy is. God must approve of his ministry because he's got money and vacation houses and everything, and people worship him, so he must be a great guy." And then you come to find out he was rich because he was embezzling money from the housewives and little old ladies who watched his show. And that he was sleeping with half of his ministry staff. You find out that this preacher of grace used to beat his kids and threaten colleagues with a gun he kept in his desk drawer. But why did they prosper for so long?
A lot of people try to justify what happened. "Oh, well he was righteous at first, but then the fame got to him and he got swept up by it." "Oh, well God doesn't care about the things you and I do, so he was totally cool with the embezzling, and cheating, and beating. It was the people who abandoned him, not God." "It was all a bunch of lies by people being used by the devil. He never did those things." But really we have no idea why it took so long for them to fall. Nobody knows the mind of God on this stuff. When we make stuff up to try to explain it, we're like Zophar.
Continuing on the theme of televangelists, these guys were evildoers, but at the same time lots of people got saved through their ministries. Does their evil invalidate people getting saved? Nope. Does all of the people getting saved, and the signs and wonders and so on, serve as evidence that God endorsed their other activities? Nope. Did the good deeds pay for their bad mistakes? Nope. People are people. If God can use a donkey to speak his word, he can use a sociopath. The jackass doesn't cease to be a jackass by virtue of God being manifest.
Job's point is that you can't tell whether someone is righteous or evil based on the circumstances of their life. God is not a traffic cop who turns on the lights and sirens at the first sign of a rolling stop. Sometimes it takes generations for him to step in and make his position known to the rest of us. Look at the evil that went unchecked in the Bible. There's murder, incest, rape, drunkenness, violence, embezzling, inhospitality, idolatry, etc. If you'd stopped into Sodom and Gomorrah the week before the fire and brimstone, you'd have assumed God was totally cool with all that was going on. If you'd hung out in Noah's neighborhood before the rains started falling, you'd have assumed the same thing. Does that mean that God was endorsing the lifestyles of the people in those places? No! Just the opposite!
And look at the bad things that happened to righteous people: Jesus was crucified as a criminal. Job lost everything he had. Paul was beaten, tortured, and killed. In modern times we have whole Christian villages being raped and plundered by Islam in its truest form. Does that somehow mean that God doesn't endorse those people, or that they screwed up and missed their calling? Absolutely not! Nobody knows why some of that stuff happens, except for God.
Job goes off on a tirade about evildoers getting away with stuff and living happily ever after. He doesn't know any more than we do why that stuff happens. He doesn't pretend, like Zophar, that he's got everything figured out. He just knows his place in the whole thing. His last line here, "their prosperity is not in their own hands, so I stand aloof from the plans of the wicked," is probably the best thing we can take away from the whole thing: Prosperity doesn't come from being evil or from being good. So, all things being equal, let's do our best to be good, not evil.
Rich or poor, beloved or despised, healthy or afflicted, success or failure, the plan is the same for us all: Do the right thing. We have to look at more than our net worth, our living conditions and our popularity to gage how well we're doing in life. We're ultimately graded on God's scale, not our own. He pays for sin, not our savings.
Why do the wicked live on,
growing old and increasing in power?
They see their children established around them,
their offspring before their eyes.
Their homes are safe and free from fear;
the rod of God is not on them.
Their bulls never fail to breed;
their cows calve and do not miscarry.
They send forth their children as a flock;
their little ones dance about.
They sing to the music of timbrel and lyre;
they make merry to the sound of the pipe.
They spend their years in prosperity
and go down to the grave in peace.
Yet they say to God, ‘Leave us alone!
We have no desire to know your ways.
Who is the Almighty, that we should serve him?
What would we gain by praying to him?’
But their prosperity is not in their own hands,
so I stand aloof from the plans of the wicked.
Job was a guy who lived towards the beginning of Bible times. Scholars think the book is one of the oldest ones included in the books of the Bible. He was a righteous guy who went through some hard times, and got tormented by the people around him. There are some hard truths to be found in the book of Job.
In this section, Job is replying to a guy named Zophar, who is telling him how good people get blessed and evil people get cursed, so therefore Job must have done something wrong to deserve the treatment he's getting. In Zophar's fairytale world, bad things only happen to bad people, so if bad things have happened to Job it must mean he's been bad.
Job is infuriated! As if it isn't bad enough that he's lost everything, now he has to deal with this idiot judging him based on his circumstances! Zophar launches into a tirade of victim-blaming, telling how evil people always get what's coming to them and that their prosperity never lasts. The cause is obvious to Zophar: Job is guilty.
So Job is like "Look, it's not that simple. Plenty of evil people do very well for themselves, and even die prosperous and happy, despite being complete godless scoundrels their whole lives." And Job is right. We can even think of plenty of examples ourselves: people who are evil to the core and yet have money, power, fame, kids with multiple partners, health, peace, and the admiration of those around them. Right up with the age old question of "why do bad things happen to good people" is "why do good things come to bad people?"
We've all run into people like Zophar. You're devastated from some loss or disappointment and they're like "Looks like you need to get right with God," or "Maybe you should have asked God what his plan was before you got your hopes up." There's a maddening smugness to people like that. They have everything figured out, and whatever doesn't fit their simplistic worldview is twisted around in their heads until it does.
But the beauty of the book of Job is that it's chock full of things that we can't figure out. Our God isn't a comic book character, or a disney story. He's a real being who lives in a reality that is too big for us to ever comprehend. We can't just look at the world around us and assume we know where someone stands with him, or what his position is on things. And yet we do, because we're simple creatures.
In a way, I am thankful for having lived through the televangelist scandals of the 1980s and 1990s. There were a lot of famous Christian figures who fell quite publicly when the evil they'd been hiding in their lives came out. Up until the fall, you would have looked at these guys and thought "Look at how righteous that guy is. God must approve of his ministry because he's got money and vacation houses and everything, and people worship him, so he must be a great guy." And then you come to find out he was rich because he was embezzling money from the housewives and little old ladies who watched his show. And that he was sleeping with half of his ministry staff. You find out that this preacher of grace used to beat his kids and threaten colleagues with a gun he kept in his desk drawer. But why did they prosper for so long?
A lot of people try to justify what happened. "Oh, well he was righteous at first, but then the fame got to him and he got swept up by it." "Oh, well God doesn't care about the things you and I do, so he was totally cool with the embezzling, and cheating, and beating. It was the people who abandoned him, not God." "It was all a bunch of lies by people being used by the devil. He never did those things." But really we have no idea why it took so long for them to fall. Nobody knows the mind of God on this stuff. When we make stuff up to try to explain it, we're like Zophar.
Continuing on the theme of televangelists, these guys were evildoers, but at the same time lots of people got saved through their ministries. Does their evil invalidate people getting saved? Nope. Does all of the people getting saved, and the signs and wonders and so on, serve as evidence that God endorsed their other activities? Nope. Did the good deeds pay for their bad mistakes? Nope. People are people. If God can use a donkey to speak his word, he can use a sociopath. The jackass doesn't cease to be a jackass by virtue of God being manifest.
Job's point is that you can't tell whether someone is righteous or evil based on the circumstances of their life. God is not a traffic cop who turns on the lights and sirens at the first sign of a rolling stop. Sometimes it takes generations for him to step in and make his position known to the rest of us. Look at the evil that went unchecked in the Bible. There's murder, incest, rape, drunkenness, violence, embezzling, inhospitality, idolatry, etc. If you'd stopped into Sodom and Gomorrah the week before the fire and brimstone, you'd have assumed God was totally cool with all that was going on. If you'd hung out in Noah's neighborhood before the rains started falling, you'd have assumed the same thing. Does that mean that God was endorsing the lifestyles of the people in those places? No! Just the opposite!
And look at the bad things that happened to righteous people: Jesus was crucified as a criminal. Job lost everything he had. Paul was beaten, tortured, and killed. In modern times we have whole Christian villages being raped and plundered by Islam in its truest form. Does that somehow mean that God doesn't endorse those people, or that they screwed up and missed their calling? Absolutely not! Nobody knows why some of that stuff happens, except for God.
Job goes off on a tirade about evildoers getting away with stuff and living happily ever after. He doesn't know any more than we do why that stuff happens. He doesn't pretend, like Zophar, that he's got everything figured out. He just knows his place in the whole thing. His last line here, "their prosperity is not in their own hands, so I stand aloof from the plans of the wicked," is probably the best thing we can take away from the whole thing: Prosperity doesn't come from being evil or from being good. So, all things being equal, let's do our best to be good, not evil.
Rich or poor, beloved or despised, healthy or afflicted, success or failure, the plan is the same for us all: Do the right thing. We have to look at more than our net worth, our living conditions and our popularity to gage how well we're doing in life. We're ultimately graded on God's scale, not our own. He pays for sin, not our savings.
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