Job LXXIX

 Job 4:1-7, “Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said: “If one attempts a word with you, will you become weary? But who can withhold himself from speaking? Surely you have instructed many, and you have strengthened weak hands. Your words have upheld him who was stumbling, and you have strengthened the feeble knees; But now it comes upon you, and you are weary; It touches you, and you are troubled. Is not your reverence your confidence? And the integrity of your ways your hope? Remember now, who ever perished being innocent? Or where were the upright ever cut off?”

Not every problem has a simple solution, and not every question has a simple answer. Life is messy. You can’t just wrap it up in a nice little bow, throw some mantra or daily affirmation stickers on it, and walk around with a glazed look in your eyes and a goofy smile on your face. We’ve gotten used to expecting resolutions to the most complex of problems in sixty minutes flat because if the TV show I’ve been watching can manage to track the killer to Alaska from a nose hair he left at the scene after unthinkingly flicking a booger, why can’t all of life’s problems be as easy to solve?

We’re taken aback when the good guy doesn’t show up to save the damsel in distress because that’s what happens in the movies. It may be that, in some cases, life imitates art, but in others, it couldn’t be further from the truth. We’ve seen enough to know that you can’t always bank on human compassion, decency, empathy, or selflessness. The more time passes, the worse it gets, and there have been instances when, rather than helping someone floundering out of a lake or getting them out of the road once they’ve been hit by a car, the bystanders do nothing more than pull out their phones and film it. We’ve gotten so used to people documenting tragedy, whether for posterity or their ghoulish desire to replay it for friends and strangers alike, that their absence of humanity in those situations no longer registers.

We keep beating our chests, insisting that we are the most caring, compassionate generation to ever grace the face of the earth, but facts prove otherwise. Our humanity is stripped away daily, replaced by callousness, selfishness, and entitlement, to the point that as long as I get mine, it doesn’t matter how many people it hurts as a consequence.

The only segment of the population to have retained their empathy throughout our decline of humanity has been the household of faith, not because we were inherently different people than those of the world but because we’ve been transformed into the image of Christ, who is the prototype of what the pinnacle of the human experience ought to be. To be more like Jesus is to be less like the world.

While the world covets what they do not have, we are thankful for every grace that has been given to us, knowing from whose hand it comes. While the world is obsessed with acquiring ever more, whether it’s fame, fortune, accolades, or influence, we are content and satisfied with desiring only more of God. We are different because we can’t help but be different. We are a peculiar people to those of the world because what animates and energizes them is not so with us, and what drives us is different than what drives them.

If we have been set apart, plucked from the darkness of sin, and brought into His glorious light, then our actions, aspirations, and desires must be different than those of the world by the very nature of what we have become in Him.

When you see a self-professing vegan chowing down on a steak every time you run into them, you’re forced to conclude that they’re either lying about their veganism or they don’t know what it means to be a vegan. The same goes for self-professing Christians in whom there is no discernable difference from the godless they associate with except for the fish sticker on their car. They’re either lying to themselves, or they don’t know what it means to be redeemed, reborn, saved, and sanctified.

Verbal consent that you received Jesus without denying yourself, picking up your cross, and following after Him, allowing Him to mold you, sculpt you, and renew your mind and heart, only means that you spoke a lie.

There are no caveats or carveouts to committing your way unto the Lord and following where He leads you. You can’t say you will follow only so long as where He leads is where you intended to go in the first place. Your destination, desire, and will do not start out in harmony with His. It is as you consistently submit and obey Him that they begin to harmonize, and your will no longer has sway, but the desire of your heart is that His will be done in all things.

In all things, Jesus served as an example for us. He was not of the do as I say, not as I do school of thought, and so throughout His ministry, He made Himself an example for us and the ideal we should aim to emulate. Thrice He prayed in the garden of Gethsemane for the cup to pass from Him if it were possible, and each time, He ended with “not as I will but as You will, Father.”

If Jesus deferred and submitted to the will of the Father regarding something so soul-wrenching as death by crucifixion, why do we have such a difficult time submitting to His will regarding far less strenuous things in our lives? It’s not as though His desire is to needlessly hurt us or cause us harm but rather to purify us and sculpt us ever more into His likeness.

It’s never the spiritual man that bristles at God’s correction or despises His chastening. It’s always the flesh because it knows that with every iteration of God’s reproof, it will become that much weaker and less able to assert dominance or influence over the individual. The flesh isn’t being magnanimous or kind-hearted when it tries to circumvent the chastening of God; it’s trying to protect its power and influence. It’s whispering sweet nothings in your ear while planning your destruction. Do not give heed to your flesh, for it will always seek to draw you away from God.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.