Job CXIII

Job 8:18-22, “Behold, this is the joy of His way, and out of the earth others will grow. Behold, God will not cast away the blameless, nor will He uphold the evildoers. He will yet fill your mouth with laughing, and your lips with rejoicing. Those who hate you will be clothed with shame, and the dwelling place of the wicked will come to nothing.”

If we were to follow Bildad’s train of thought to its rightful conclusion, one unanswered question remains: why was Job still alive, given that Job’s sons perished because they had transgressed? It’s a question to which Bildad had no answer, although he likely could have concluded that Job’s sin had not been as pronounced as his children. If Job had not prayed for death, considering it a relief over his current lot, then perhaps there would have been some weight to this supposition.

We’ve all had occasion to run across a Bildad or two in our lives, the kind of person that has no qualms about appropriating the judgment seat and handing out judgments as though someone had appointed them to the office. Usually, one of the less appealing characteristics of those with a Bildad mindset is the utter callousness with which they approach any given situation, wherein there is not an ounce of empathy or compassion to be wrung out of them.

Your sons are dead, spilled milk and all that, but hey, you’re still alive, and if you repent, you may yet live. I know you insist you haven’t done anything, but we both know that’s not the way things work, so just fess up to it already.

If the torture is intense enough, men will often confess to things they’ve never done just to end the pain. If, in his state, Job could have thought of anything he’d done, surely he would have confessed it before God and his friends because, as far as human suffering was concerned, he’d exceeded the recommended dose months prior.

There are segments of Bildad’s oratory that are undeniably true, such as God not casting away the blameless or upholding evildoers, but it wasn’t meant as an encouragement for Job, but rather an inference that because by all accounts he was being cast away, he must be in the camp of the former rather than the latter.

Sometimes, we can draw the right conclusions but go about it the wrong way. It occurs most often when we only possess partial information about a certain situation, just as Bildad did. Job’s three friends were just as in the dark about what had gone on between God and Satan as Job was. They all operated with partial understanding yet felt it within their right to draw conclusions from the limited knowledge they possessed.

Bad things don’t happen to good people, so if something bad happens to you, you must not be a good person. That was the extent of Bildad’s judgment, and the absence of any nuance is staggering and deflating. I’ve been guilty of generalizing more than most, but not when it comes to individual situations or individual struggles. Generally speaking, the modern-day church is lukewarm, self-centered, overflowing with cowardice, and duplicitous to a fault. That’s not to say solid believers no longer exist or that those committed to Christ in word and deed are no more, but as far as percentages go, it’s indisputable.

You can’t broad brush and generalize an individual’s situation because each one has their own struggles, setbacks, hardships, and travails. We are the body of Christ, yet we are still individual members. We are not monolithic in our situations, emotions, or circumstances. We have varying thresholds for pain, some dealing with physical pain far better than emotional, and as such, what works for me might not work for you insofar as trying to find answers to pressing questions. You treat a hangnail differently than you would a head wound. If you attempt to apply the same treatment to both, you’re likely to do more harm than good, even though your intentions might be noble.

What no one yet understood, including Job himself, was that his suffering was for the glory of God and that His name be glorified. Yes, it flies in the face of modern doctrine. Yes, it makes the flesh feel uneasy merely to consider that one would suffer such as Job, not because he had sinned but because by his suffering well, glory would be brought to God’s name.

One of the many reasons the Book of Job is so difficult to parse through is because it challenges many long-held beliefs much of the modern-day church shares and throws everything into a limbo of sorts where everything isn’t cut and dry as Bildad supposed. Unknown and unseen forces were at work, and a greater purpose was in play beyond what even learned men could glean.

When the glory of God is revealed in and through our suffering, the purpose thereof is likewise revealed. Without absolute trust in the goodness and sovereignty of God, our faith is likely to be shaken given testing the size and scope of Job, and for many, far less than what he had to endure.

There are also occasions when pain within the body is used as a corrective measure. There’s nothing like being bedridden or suffering some sort of malady to focus you and compel you to prioritize your life in accordance with Scripture.

When Jesus ran across the man at the pool of Bethesda, he had been ill for thirty-eight years. After Jesus healed him, and he took up his bed and walked, He sought him in the temple and said to him, “see, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.”

This encounter was different than the time Jesus saw the man who’d been blind from birth when, upon being asked who had sinned, the man or his parents that he had been born blind, Christ’s answer was, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.”

Different people, different approaches, different causes, different conclusions. Both were infirm in their own way; both were healed, but while one was told to go and sin no more lest a worst thing come upon him, the other had no sin, nor did his parents.

The man at the pool did not deny his sin, nor did he insist upon his innocence as Job had repeatedly. Why? Because he knew himself to have sinned, understood that the grace and mercy of God had restored him, and was warned by Jesus Himself that if he returned to the sin which had brought his condition upon him, a worse thing would come upon him.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.