Job CVII

 Job 8:1-7, “Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said: ‘How long will you speak these things, and the words of your mouth be like a strong wind? Does God subvert judgment? Or does the Almighty pervert justice? If your sons have sinned against Him, He has cast them away for their transgression. If you would earnestly seek God and make your supplication to the Almighty, if you were pure and upright, surely now He would awake for you, and prosper your rightful dwelling place. Though your beginning was small, yet your latter end would increase abundantly.’”

If you thought Eliphaz’s remarks to Job were cutting, Bildad’s words were downright cruel. Being the traditionalist that he was, his take on the matter was that everything that had happened to Job thus far was deserved. He even went so far as to insinuate that Job’s sons had met their demise because they had sinned against God; therefore, He had cast them away for their transgression. Keep in mind that these were Job’s closest friends, men he’d likely known for decades, but as is evident, although they were keen on passing judgment, they lacked compassion of any sort.

Perhaps it was sitting in the dirt for seven days in silence that got to them, but while they sat in perfect health, Job had painful oozing boils to contend with on top of mourning the loss of his ten children and trying to process the loss of everything he owned. Job’s friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, had come to comfort him in his time of distress, but their words and actions often added to his suffering rather than alleviating it.

We cannot dismiss the possibility that the words Job’s friends spoke were influenced by some nefarious force, perhaps Satan himself, in an attempt to demoralize him even further. We got the sense that there was a duality of thought as Eliphaz spoke, where he caught himself speaking words intended to wound rather than comfort. Then Bildad comes along, and he holds nothing back, with the opening lines of his discourse being so caustic and acidic as to make one wonder if he considered Job his friend.

It seems as though Bildad was already tiring of Job’s words, even though, given the situation he was in, he had every right to voice his pain and the injustice of it all, whether real or perceived. Had he done something he’d known to have been a sin, then, at least, he would understand the reason this was happening to him, but having had months to go through the entirety of his life, he had yet to find one thing he deemed an offense to God.

That’s a high bar. To go back over all the years of your life and be unable to find a misstep, a mistake, or a situation wherein you fell short of the standard. There’s a reason God deemed Job unique among his contemporaries. It wasn’t something He did offhandedly or rashly. Job was a blameless and upright man who feared God and shunned evil. That couldn’t be said of anyone else living in his generation.

There is a time and place for simple, straightforward explanations. When your kids keep nagging you about why they should be eating broccoli when Sour Patch Kids taste so much better, it’s perfectly fine to tell them that broccoli is good for you and Sour Patch Kids will make your poo glow in the dark. I didn’t think that one through because now they really want to see if they can get their poo to glow in the dark, but the analogy holds nonetheless.

When it comes to life, spiritual battles, trials, hardships, and testing, a simple explanation just isn’t viable. Bildad thought there was, and he even reasoned out that there could be no other explanation save that Job had sinned. Does God subvert judgment? Or does the Almighty pervert justice? Obviously not; therefore, you must have done something, just as your sons must have; otherwise, you wouldn’t be in this pickle.

Psalm 11:3-7, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? The Lord is in His holy temple, the Lord’s throne is in heaven; His eyes behold, His eyelids test the sons of men. The Lord tests the righteous, but the wicked and the one who loves violence His soul hates. Upon the wicked He will rain coals; Fire and brimstone and a burning wind shall be the portion of their cup. For the Lord is righteous, He loves righteousness; His countenance beholds the upright.”

And with one Psalm, David blew Bildad’s entire theory, along with the cottage industry of the prosperity gospel, out of the water. The Lord tests the righteous. It is a truth we cannot overlook or circumvent because it’s inconvenient. If we cannot differentiate between testing and judgment, then rather than voice our opinion on a given situation, silence is our best course of action.

God does as He wills, and there is a purpose in all that He does. This truth must be the foundation stone of our faith, and if it is, nothing we encounter in this life; no hardship, trial, or testing we go through will shake us or cause us to crumble into the dust.

Once again, we come full circle as to why doctrine matters. If my expectations of a sovereign God only go so far as having a wish granter here on earth and eternity in paradise for the low, low price of raising a hand in a church setting, then whenever hardship or testing comes, my natural instinct will be to bristle, grow angry, bitter and disillusioned. I was promised this life of glorious prosperity, perfect health, no adversity or trial, and what I’m getting is being steamrolled by life, and even what seemed like easy wins manage to fall apart somehow.

But why can’t God just take my word for it when I promise I’ll be faithful? Why can’t He just bless and prosper me until I die peacefully in my sleep, well over one hundred years old, in my mansion on the hill? It sounds like God has trust issues if He can’t take my word at face value. God also knows that the hearts of men are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. He knows that fair weather fealty is easy to pull off, but when called upon to stand and fight, to go to war or defend the kingdom, the pledge of fealty gets a bit wobbly, and the excuses as to why it’s not the best time to be called upon to sacrifice pour forth like a breached dam.

God tests the righteous and chastens those He loves. If you are being left to your own devices, knowing yourself to be wandering from the light with no correction in sight, rather than a reason for rejoicing or concluding that God doesn’t mind the duplicity after all, it ought to be a reason for deep concern, if not outright fear.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.