Job 6:24-30, “Teach me, and I will hold my tongue; cause me to understand where I have erred. How forceful are right words! But what does your arguing prove? Do you intend to rebuke my words, and the speeches of a desperate one, which are as wind? Yes, you overwhelm the fatherless, and you undermine your friend. Now therefore, be pleased to look at me; for I would never lie to your face. Yield now, let there be no injustice! Yes, concede, my righteousness still stands! Is there injustice on my tongue? Cannot my taste discern the unsavory?”
Some people speak out of ignorance, regurgitating snippets of
conversations they overhear or contextually misplaced headlines they read
either because they want to seem more intelligent than they are or they’re
trying to impress somebody. It’s akin to the meme that’s been floating around
where two men are discussing space travel and lamenting the fact that we could
never land on the sun because it’s too hot when someone chimes in, “Why don’t
we try going when it’s dark?”
A handful of politicians come to mind who seem to be
suffering from diarrhea of the mouth, needing to have an opinion about
everything, wanting to seem like specialists in every field, only to deliver
such vapid word salads as to make them seem poetic. Still, this malady is by no
means exclusive to politicians. Many church folk seem to have gotten in on the
act, and some of the things their machinations produce are truly a wonder to
behold.
Then there are those who speak from a position of knowledge,
of having acquired and attained understanding but taking what they’ve acquired
and reallocating the original intent to bolster their own positions or
prejudices. When the Word tells us that to whom much is given much is required,
it runs the gamut to every area of life, including knowledge and understanding.
When Job spoke certain things out of ignorance, God did not
hold it against him. When his friends spoke certain things from a position of
knowledge, God rebuked and reprimanded them. I see this often with mature believers
looking down on baby Christians, expecting them to understand the deeper truths
of Scripture from the moment their head breaks the surface of the pool they got
baptized in.
If you’re expecting a newborn to run a marathon only to find
out they can’t, it’s not the baby’s problem; it’s your problem. Your level of
expectation exceeds the baby's ability in its current growth cycle, and try as
you might to encourage them, chastise them, and do the whole carrot and stick
thing, hoping to get them to start sprinting, it will not work. They are incapable
of doing what you expect them to do because they have yet to learn to crawl, never
mind run.
Even in his current state, having been accused of sin against
God by his closest friends, Job was humble enough to allow for the possibility
of a blind spot. He was still teachable and implored his friends to show him
the error of his ways if there was one. Teach me, and I will hold my tongue;
cause me to understand where I have erred. If you know something I don’t, now’s
the time to say it. If you have gleaned something I wasn’t privy to, now’s the
time to set me straight. Otherwise, the back and forth and arguing proves
nothing. It’s pointless.
Looking back on all my years of ministry, one of the few
regrets I have is that I didn’t learn the folly of pointless arguments earlier
on in life. If we cannot agree that the Word is the final authority, or if you
insist that your feelings supersede the Scriptures, I will kindly bow out of
the back and forth and continue on my merry way. I could have banked an extra
few months of watching sunsets and sunrises had I been wise enough to learn to
disengage from fruitless arguments earlier on in life.
Even though Job’s friends had conceded that his righteousness
still stood, their inclination was still to assume he had sinned or done
something against the will of God so well hidden that they had not seen it.
Rather than pursue the course of Occam's razor theory, wherein, in explaining a
thing, no more assumptions need be made than are necessary, Job’s friends had
concluded that there was something more to it.
The simplest course of action for Job’s friends would have
been to conclude that something they had not yet been confronted with and did
not fully understand was happening to their friend. Instead, they layered
assumption upon assumption, whereby there needed to be something more than what
was evident in his life in order to be brought so low. Rather than take things
at face value and acknowledge the potentiality that they didn’t know
everything, that this may be the exception that proves the rule, Job’s friends
went out of their way to explain his situation through the direst prism afforded
them, which is that he had sinned.
Far too often, our self-righteousness and overriding need to
be right blinds us to the words Jesus spoke in His sermon on the mount, where
He said blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
You may not be in Job’s position currently, and for this, you
should be thankful, but you may well be in the position of one of his three friends,
being called upon to show compassion and grace to someone who is suffering. Do
not withhold these things, because it just may be your kind words and your
compassionate heart that will see them through the valley of trial. The lessons
the book of Job teaches us are layered, and depending on who we’re focused on,
we can learn what to do and how to react to adversity in our lives, but also
how to react toward those who are currently going through adversity.
No comments:
Post a Comment