Job CXCV

 If we possess the heart of Christ, if we have been born and made a new creation in Him, then our response and reaction to the suffering of others must be rooted in compassion. Whether it was for a multitude or an individual, whenever Jesus acted, the Word always prefaces it by saying He was moved with compassion for them.

Cruelty is not a virtue. Dismissing someone’s pain or insisting that they deserve to drink the bitter cup down to the dregs because you’ve deemed it so is neither noble nor charitable. What’s worse, by far, is that it’s not Christlike. We say we want to be more like Jesus, but the way we react to another’s need, the way we interact with our fellow man, the compassion and empathy we fail to exemplify say otherwise. Or is it that we just want to open the eyes of the blind or walk on water? The secret is that you can’t have the authority of Christ without possessing the heart of Christ. You cannot journey through life absent love for the lost, affection for the downtrodden, and compassion for those in need, yet wield His power at will. Stunted spirituality is just that: stunted.

We are witnessing a generation become ever more callous, cruel, unfeeling, and retaliatory, and it’s happening with such speed and ferocity as to make one wonder what the end result of it all will be.

It’s understandable that the world rewards and gravitates toward the edgy, the controversial, and those who heap scorn upon anyone within earshot with all the glee of a toddler knocking down a wall of blocks because they are unregenerate, and in watching others wound their contemporaries they get to vicariously experience what it’s like to wield the power of the tongue in the most destructive manner possible.

Whether true or not, whether deserved or not, it seems that once one wound is inflicted, the mob can’t resist picking up stones and joining in. If there’s blood in the water, there will be a feeding frenzy. It’s nature taking its course. It’s both predictable and inevitable.

They convince themselves that whatever horrors the individual set upon will suffer are well deserved, and that they’re doing God’s work by kicking a man while he is down without ever taking the time to figure out whether he should be in the dust, gasping for breath to begin with.

What isn’t as understandable is when those who ought to have new minds and new hearts, those who ought to operate from a position of compassion and see those within the household of faith as members of the same body, take to imitating the world with the same glee and enthusiasm as the world.

When someone in a church body is hurting, grieving, or growing weary, to heap more pain upon their sagging shoulders is akin to taking a hammer to your own thumb, not accidentally, but on purpose. Again, we’re not talking about unrepentant sin or open rebellion, but the trials of life that buffet each of us sooner or later.

Neither Bildad nor Job’s two other friends could identify a sin or any wickedness in his life that warranted the level of hurt, pain, and loss he was enduring, but that didn’t stop them from concluding that he was deserving of worse still. Though they claimed to be his friends, they displayed no compassion when it came to Job’s suffering, and that is very telling as far as the condition of their hearts is concerned.

They wanted Job to be guilty of something because it would tie everything up in a nice little bow while simultaneously confirming their conclusions. There would be no need to ponder the notion of heretofore unseen mystery, nor acknowledge that they may have been wrong in their assertions that Job had done wickedness. There would be no need to humble themselves and admit that perhaps they didn’t know everything, after all.

Humble pie never goes down easy. For some, it’s downright unpalatable, and so they do everything they can to avoid it. They would rather falsely judge a situation or an individual than admit they were wrong and need to repent.

When compassion or love for the brethren is the driving force behind our actions, the hope is for comfort, encouragement, and restoration rather than insisting that it is within our right to be both judge, jury, and executioner. It strokes the ego to no end to pretend we were a version of Ceaser in Rome, where a man's life hung in the balance, determined by the flick of a wrist and the positioning of a thumb. An upward-pointed thumb and you are judged innocent. A downward-pointed thumb, and you are judged guilty, no matter what defense you mount or the insistence with which you decry the lack of evidence.

High horses and soap boxes are all well and good as long as you’re the individual astride them, passing judgment, but the day will come when another will sit astride the horse, or stand resolute upon the soapbox, and it should come as no surprise when you are judged with the judgment with which you judged.

Matthew 7:2-6, For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

One cannot be merciless and demand mercy. One cannot be callous and expect comfort. Jesus Himself said that with what judgment you judge, you will be judged, but few nowadays take that into account when their blood gets hot, and the need to be right overshadows everything else.

God was not deaf to what Bildad and his friends were saying to Job. He hadn’t tuned out, waiting on the sidelines to see how this would play out, and as we progress further into the book of Job, we see that God has much to say to both Bildad, Eliphaz, and Zophar.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.