Job CXCII

 Even after all three of Job’s friends had each had their turn, and Bildad takes up the charge anew, I still can’t wrap my mind around the heel turn they made in their collective purpose. While they set out to comfort him, each coming from afar and traveling to meet him where he was, they ended up putting salt on his wounds, and being miserable comforters if that was still their goal.

It’s like setting out for Florida and ending up in Wyoming. Instead of beach and palm trees, all you see is white capped mountains and rocky terrain. Yet, none of them had the wherewithal to take a pause and see how far they’d strayed from their intended purpose. If you show up with the intent to help and end up making the situation worse than how you found it, you’re not really helping.

You can insist that it’s still what you’re trying to do, you can excuse and justify the behavior and words that heaped pain, discomfort, and scorn upon the individual you set out to comfort and encourage, but as always, the proof is in the pudding. You can tell me you’re trying to help me see better until you grow hoarse, and I still won’t believe you if all you’re doing is poking me in the eye repeatedly and with ever-increasing pressure and precision.

If the individual you’re trying to help insists that you’re not helping but rather making the situation worse, then stop helping. But you don’t understand. It’s my duty to help them, and I am helping them; they just don’t see it. That’s not the way it works.

For the past forty years, we’ve been conducting outreach to the poor and destitute in Romania and neighboring countries. We’ve learned a lot over these four decades of ministry, but perhaps the most important lesson of all is that every individual and family has a different need, and we must be sensitive to the specifics of that need in order to be a blessing.

If a family needs a new roof, it’s pointless to offer to build them a well because they already have one. The immediate need is the roof, and that is where the help is most appreciated. If someone’s hungry and you offer them a box full of board games, unless they can boil the cardboard and plastic pieces and make a meal out of it, perhaps save the games for when they have a bit of flour and rice in their cupboard.

Giving someone an espresso machine when they don’t have electricity isn’t as nice or thoughtful a gift as one might have assumed. What’s the point? Meet people where they are, not where you want them to be. If someone is hurting, be a comfort. If someone is hungry, buy them a meal. If someone is cold, give them a coat. Be aware. Be practical. Be the kind of friend you would like the person in question to be if you were going through what they were going through.

In Job’s case, he was desperate for some relief and a bit of comfort, but it was nowhere to be found. All that he was faced with was a concerted effort to make him admit to something he hadn’t done, not because it would make him feel better or bring him peace, but because it would validate his friends’ conclusions.

Beware of the man who thinks he knows it all. Eventually, what they claim to know as absolute truth will be proven less so, and when challenged, being incapable of admitting that even the most learned of us know in part, and that includes themselves, they will lash out in anger and vehemence because their fragile egos can’t accept that they’re nowhere near the godlike understanding they claim to possess.

Correction is not exclusive to the young. While the wise man seeks understanding in the things he acknowledges are beyond him, the fool insists that there is nothing new they can learn, they have all wisdom safely tucked away in their fanny pack, and if what they’ve a concluded is challenged, they’re suddenly on the defensive trying to undermine the individual who corrected them rather than challenge the veracity of the claim that they were wrong.

There was nothing special about Bildad. He was a common man, though likely more learned than most of his contemporaries, but his reaction to having his conclusions challenged by Job proves that the vanity of his ego was still well intact and held sway over his empathy, or desire to comfort Job.

We don’t outgrow correction. It’s not as though we reach a certain age, and from that point onward, we never make mistakes, come to the wrong conclusion, or misread a situation. Although correction is still forthcoming, sometimes from the most unexpected of places, when we are wise in our own eyes, we simply reject it wholesale. It’s that men reject God’s correction as their hearts grow cold, it’s not that they’ve outgrown it, or have surpassed a level of maturity wherein correction is no longer warranted.

Fatherhood has taught me more about the heart of God than reading a library’s worth of books ever could. As my girls get older, every time I try to show them the proper way of doing something, whether it’s slicing an apple, peeling a banana, or folding a shirt, more often than not, I get the patented, “I know how to do it already” with a side of “it’s not that complicated.” If you know how to do it, then do it right. Currently, you’re not doing it right, and that’s why I had to step in, point it out, and show you the right way to do it.

Especially when it comes to using sharp knives, I’m not correcting them just to see an eye roll or hear the “I got this, I know what I’m doing” refrain, but because I don’t want them to cut off a finger while slicing an apple. When God corrects us, it’s not because He is nitpicking or trying to prove He’s smarter than we are, but because what we are doing will lead us to a place we never intended to go, and He loves us enough to say stop.   

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.