Job CXLIII

 When an attempt at comforting becomes an accusation of wrongdoing, when those you count on to be a healing balm turn out to be the ones pouring salt into your open wounds, you can’t help but feel some kind of way about it. If Job’s friends had been strangers, it would be one thing. Because he considered them friends, however, his expectation was that they would be a source of comfort in his grief and a means by which his pain could be lessened, if only minimally.

The negative impact of having one’s expectations not only dashed to pieces but experiencing the opposite of what you hoped you would cannot be overstated. Imagine being told you’ve won the top prize in a raffle you entered, and it's for a new car. You’re over the moon excited, jump into your rusted Kia, and head to pick up your prize, only to discover that there's no new car. Not only that, but three men jump out of the bushes, demand the keys to your old car, and give you a good beating to add injury to insult.

Had you never been told of the prize you’d won, your expectations would never have blossomed, and your imagination would not have soared with thoughts of what make, model, color, or style of new car you’d be driving in a few short minutes. You would have never imagined what that new car smell was really like or wondered if it lived up to the hype. You would have been content with your Kia, replete with the pile of trash in the passenger seat and that funny smell that’s a cross between wet dog and spoiled shellfish.

Even the letdown of there being no new car would have been manageable. The most that would have happened is that you would have scolded yourself for being too gullible, and that would have been that. The black eye and having to walk home, however, those you could have done without, and the crash from the heights of expectation to having less than what you started out with will be the roiling resentment in your gut that you will have to contend with.

Job had expected his friends to be a source of comfort, and rightly so. Instead, they added to his pain and discomfort, proving themselves to be a detriment to his well-being rather than an added benefit. In light of this, it’s understandable that once it was Job’s turn to respond, he held nothing back and seemed utterly disinterested in trying to be conciliatory toward his friends.

Job 13:1-5, “Behold, my eye has seen all this, my ear has heard and understood it. What you know, I also know; I am not inferior to you. But I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God. But you forgers of lies, you are all worthless physicians. Oh, that you should be silent, and it would be your wisdom!”

There had been no earth-shattering revelation in anything Job’s friends had said. What they knew, he also knew, and although, given God’s declaration that there was none like him on the face of the earth, Job could have rightly proffered that he was superior in his understanding of God, he settled for reminding them that he was not inferior to them.

Just because someone is loud, obnoxious, or belligerent doesn’t make them wise or right. We’ve fallen into a vicious cycle of trying to shout over everyone else until someone with a healthier set of lungs comes along and does likewise, never reaching a consensus or a deeper understanding but wasting our lives away yelling at strangers until we’re hoarse.

It’s often the case that, as the 90s pop song says, it doesn’t matter what you say as long as you speak with inflection and commit to your declared position. You hear some men speak so passionately about a topic that, in hindsight, you realize they know nothing about because everything they had to say was window dressing, filler, and fortune cookie one-liners that do nothing to open people’s eyes to the beauty, majesty, glory, and wonder of the God of the Bible.

Job was done trying to convince his friends of his innocence. It’s not that he hadn’t tried or done his best to explain to them that they were misjudging him, and if there had been anything untoward in his life, he would have confessed and repented of it already. He had, but all of his pleas had fallen on deaf ears. They’d made up their minds and would not be swayed no matter what he said, so the only recourse left to him was to speak to the Almighty and desire to reason with God.

When men will not hear you, when those close to you fail to understand you, there is always God. Run to Him, speak to Him, pour your heart out to Him, knowing that He hears, He sees, and He understands. Whether purposefully or in ignorance, you are bound to be misunderstood. Whether by friends, family, acquaintances, or colleagues, there’s bound to be someone who sees what isn’t there, who insists upon something that is a figment of their imagination, and will not be swayed, no matter how cogent your defense.

By this point, there was intentionality behind Job’s friends and their insistence that he had sinned. They refused to take their friend at his word and give him the benefit of the doubt because the prism through which they saw his suffering precluded the possibility of innocence.

Acknowledging his innocence would have turned their entire philosophical world on its ear, along with their belief structure and how they viewed the world on a very practical and binary level.

It says a lot about their heart that, given the choice to believe their friend to the detriment of their long-held beliefs, they chose their beliefs at the expense of sowing uncertainty and doubt in Job’s heart. You cannot be innocent because if you are, that means the world isn’t as we imagined it to be.

To that, Job calls them worthless physicians and forgers of lies. It takes effort to forge something. Typically, it involves a piece of metal that requires heating in a furnace, followed by shaping it into the desired form through the process of beating and hammering. Essentially, what Job was accusing his friends of was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, even though they saw it wouldn’t fit. Given their words, declarations, and insistence that he had sinned, Job was not wrong.

With love in Chris,

Michael Boldea, Jr.