Job CLXXII

 Job 16:1-5, “Then Job answered and said: ‘I have heard many such things; Miserable comforters are you all! Shall words of wind have an end? Or what provokes you that you answer? I also could speak as you do, if your soul were in my soul’s place. I could heap up words against you, and shake my head at you; But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the comfort of my lips would relieve your grief.”’

If you weren’t heartbroken up until this point, Job’s answer to his friends should get you across the finish line handily. Yes, I know how the story ends; I’ve read Job at least two dozen times from start to finish, and have been meditating on it for the better part of two years as we go through this study, but even so, as I began to contemplate the first five verses of this chapter, my heart ached.

It was evident to Job’s friends that his health was deteriorating, his grief had not abated, and his will to live had drained to the point of nonexistence, yet they would not relent. Once Eliphaz was done trying to convince Job that he had sinned, that he must have sinned, otherwise he wouldn’t be in the situation he was in, it was Job’s turn to answer his friends anew, and given that they had been going back and forth for some time Job reminded them that he hadn’t heard anything new coming from their lips, but retreads of their initial arguments.

Just because you say the same thing in slightly different ways, it doesn’t mean your initial thesis has changed, or that you realized you’d been barking up the wrong tree. It’s something politicians are fond of doing nowadays, where they try to word salad you into changing your position, even though no new evidence as to the veracity of their statements has been brought forth.

Satan had thrown everything, including the kitchen sink, at Job, and he still held fast to his integrity. His grip might have been weakening, his energy long past spent, but no matter how many times he was encouraged to pack it in, to give up the ghost, to admit to fault, curse God and die, he held firm.

Such integrity does not appear out of the ether; it doesn’t materialize instantaneously, but is nurtured and matured over time. Job had walked with God all of his life, and with each passing day, his relationship with Him deepened, his trust of Him grew, and his faith in Him matured.

Everything you’ve said I’ve already heard. All the insinuations, outright accusations, are nothing new to me, and though initially your purpose was to comfort me, you’ve turned out to be miserable comforters indeed. It’s better to be no comforter at all than to be a miserable comforter. A miserable comforter does nothing to take away from the pain you’re feeling, but adds to it, intensifies it, and fans it. It may not be their stated intent, it may not be what they desired to do at the outset, but it’s what they end up doing nonetheless.

It’s the difference between bandaging a wound and poking at it to see if it bleeds. It’s the difference between putting salve on a burn and rubbing sandpaper on it. Miserable comforters do more harm than good, doubly so when they are egged on by an external force or their pride is in play. For Eliphaz, it had been both, and they combined into a perfect storm of accusation and degradation targeting a man he called his friend.

The ego is hard to kill. It takes a concerted effort and a willingness to do away with the pride of life, the ever-present unrealistically high appreciation of oneself, and the need to be seen by others in a certain light. The interplay between these three is ongoing, with each having its own moments of dominance, its own season in the sun depending on the situation. Whether the mindset that we are entitled to the blessings with which we are bestowed, many of which we don’t even acknowledge, the notion that some calling is beneath us because we’re wasting our potential and we can achieve so much more, or the desire to be admired by one’s contemporaries, the root of all these is the ego.

We often speak of crucifying the flesh and do it so flippantly, waving it off as if it were some small thing, that many have gotten it into their heads that it's easy. An inconvenience at most. Something you can get squared away between breakfast and lunch.

You are trying to mortify something that wants to live and does not want to die. Your stated purpose is to nail to a cross the habits, vices, thoughts, actions, and addictions you’ve been a slave to since you can remember, and the only life your flesh has ever known. There is bound to be resistance, there is bound to be opposition, and everything in you will do its utmost to keep the flesh from dying. Your intellect will betray you, your heart will betray you, your feelings will betray you, your self-control will betray you, all in service of keeping the flesh alive. This is why deliverance must come from outside of oneself. Jesus saves us. We don’t save ourselves. If anything, Jesus saves us from ourselves.

From a purely psychological vantage point, the dynamics of three against one likely came into play during the back and forth between Job and his friends, because if one of them broke ranks and did not pepper Job with slings and arrows, the other two may have felt slighted or betrayed.

I don’t believe Job was insinuating that he was a better man than all three combined when he told his friends that, were they in his place and he in theirs, he would not have been so callous as they. I do believe the man had enough time to reflect on his situation, their words, and imagine what it would be like to walk a mile in their shoes, and concluded that his principles, convictions, and affection he held for his friends would not allow him to be so brutal as they had been. It wasn’t pride influencing Job to say he would have been a better friend. By this point, there was not an ounce of pride in him if ever there had been any. It was an objective surety based on honest introspection: Job knew he would have chosen to be a better friend to them than they had been to him. 

You can choose to be a better friend. You can choose to be a better brother. You can choose to be a better sister, father, son, daughter, mother, or neighbor. Man is an amalgam of the choices he makes over time. Freedom of choice, however, does not mean freedom from the responsibility of the consequences of said choices. As such, choose wisely!

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.