Job CXCIII

 Job 18:17-21, “The memory of him perishes from the earth, and he has no name among the renowned. He is driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world. He has neither son nor posterity among his people nor any remaining in his dwellings. Those in the west are astonished at his day, and those in the east are frightened. Surely such are the dwellings of the wicked, and this is the place of him who does not know God.”

Save for the affront at concluding that Job perceived him and his other two friends as stupid, Bildad spent the rest of his monologue describing what the ultimate fate of the wicked is. There are a few things he said that stand out because they parallel our modern-day culture to the point that one must acknowledge that while he was wrong about Job being wicked, the general demise of a wicked man, or a wicked nation, for that matter, was on point.

What resonated more than anything is that what this present society sees as progress, liberation, freedom, progress, and choice is no less than the punishment of the wicked, as detailed by Bildad. Whether it's being uprooted from the shelter of his tent, having those who are not of his dwelling therein, or having neither son nor posterity among his people, all these things are God’s punishment on the wicked. You may have come a long way, baby, but it’s the wrong way, and it’s a way that leads to desolation, destruction, and death.

When a nation is overtaken, and those who are not of that place dwell in the tents of those they once belonged to, it’s not an accident or a fluke, but God’s punishment upon the wicked. When the citizenry of an entire nation seems to be under such grand delusion as to choose not to have sons or daughters, ensuring that there is no future generation, no continuity of their bloodline or heritage, having to bring in strangers from other places with differing cultures, oftentimes hostile to them just to keep the numbers stable, it’s a sure sign that God’s punishment is being manifest against the wickedness they embraced. Couple that with the needless, senseless, soulless, inhuman murder of innocents in the womb, and what you have is a recipe for a judgment that not only can’t be averted, but the magnitude of which will stun the world into silence.

We can call it shifting demographics or natural migratory flows, but that’s because we refuse to acknowledge what it really is due to the underlying implications. What is happening in many first-world Western cultures is nothing less than God’s punishment upon the wicked. If we were to acknowledge this reality, we would have to conclude that we are not the righteous nation we thought ourselves to be, nor a shining light upon a hill, but the embodiment of the Laodicean church Jesus spoke of through John the Revelator.

It’s a hard pill to swallow for many who’ve been fed a steady diet of being told how special, unique, blessed, and highly favored they are for the past few decades. We continue to see ourselves as rich, wealthy, and in need of nothing when in reality we are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.

We continue to beat our chests, insisting we are the pinnacle of human achievement, all the while spiraling further into darkness and hedonism, abandoning the things that lift up and elevate a people and embracing those that lead to their destruction. This is not accidental. It is a byproduct of rebellion. It is the ripple effect of a nation not heeding the warning to be zealous and repent, choosing instead to point at its wealth as a sure sign of God’s favor.

Hubris is a powerful drug. It causes men to ignore the obvious signs of decline, whether in their families, churches, or societies, clinging to a handful of things that serve as confirmation bias for what they see themselves as, rather than what God sees them as. I’m rich, therefore I am favored. I’m successful, therefore God’s hand is upon me. My church is growing, so I must be doing something right. I have a blue passport, so I won’t have to wait in line with all the peasants once I make it to the pearly gates. Red carpets and preferential treatment are in my future; God knows better than to spurn me. I’m a wizard at leaving Yelp reviews!

There is a standard. There is a plumb line, and it is not man who determines whether he is walking uprightly and in the will of God, but God. If God calls us to repentance and we reject the call because we insist that not being behind on bills is proof positive of our righteousness, all we’re doing is rationalizing disobedience and rebellion to ourselves. It will not convince God to see it our way, it will not trick Him into seeing us as obedient servants, and it will not hold back His judgment when it commences.

Bildad wasn’t wrong about the lot of the wicked; he was just wrong about Job. His misstep was insisting that the wicked and Job were interchangeable, one and the same, for surely no righteous man would suffer in the manner Job did.

If God gives grace to the humble, which the Word says He does, then whenever we are faced with situations that aren’t clear, cut and dry, and demonstrably verifiable, our best course of action is to possess enough humility to acknowledge that we haven’t arrived, we don’t know it all, and any judgment we pass may just be a faulty assumption on our part.

God knows all things fully, completely, with no missing pieces and no hidden secrets. Nothing is hid from His eyes, though much is hidden from ours, and as humble servants who understand He will judge all of creation with righteous judgment, may we have the wisdom to defer to Him whenever something is unclear.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.