Job CCXLII

Job 22:12-18, “Is not God in the height of heaven? And see the highest stars, how lofty they are! And you say, ‘What does God know? Can He judge through the deep darkness? Thick clouds cover Him, so that He cannot see, and He walks above the circle of heaven.’ Will you keep to the old way which wicked men have trod, who were cut down before their time, whose foundations were swept away by a flood? They said to God, ‘Depart from us! What can the Almighty do to them?’ Yet He filled their houses with good things; but the counsel of the wicked is far from me.”

Although who said it first remains a mystery, none of the individuals to whom the following quote is attributed are wholesome, noble, virtuous, or upright individuals. The quote in question is “accuse your enemy of what you are doing, as you are doing it, to create confusion.”

While I do not believe Eliphaz saw Job as his enemy, the projection is undeniable. Here was a man who refused to allow for the possibility that anything beyond his understanding was taking place, accusing Job of insinuating that he thought God to be ignorant, that He did not see, know, or understand.

You’re wicked because I say you are. I am innocent because God says I am. God would never say that, and your suffering is proof that He never would. God must see it my way, otherwise His omniscience will be in doubt as far as I’m concerned, for surely, an innocent man would not suffer the things you have.

Convoluted? Yes, most assuredly, but this sort of circular logic that eliminates the possibility of any other explanation than that which we’ve determined to be the truth is prevalent, especially within certain denominations and church circles. They choose a tertiary hill they’re willing to die on, and will not acknowledge the possibility that they can be wrong. Newsflash: I can be wrong. You can be wrong. Everyone on the face of the earth can be wrong. The only one that cannot be wrong is God.

This is why, at the first sign of uncertainty, when something isn’t clear, we must run to His Word and allow it to be the final arbiter. We don’t poll to see what the majority thinks; we don’t ask for the opinions of friends or family; we go to the Word and allow it to shed light, elucidate, and clarify, allowing for a change of heart, a change of mind if the Word deems it warranted.

The worst thing we can do to our spiritual man is to go to the Word and reject what it says because it contradicts our own biases. Then what was the point of going to the Word in the first place? You weren’t planning on letting it change your mind; you just wanted confirmation of your conclusions, and when that didn’t happen, you rejected the Word.

We’ve gone from this is the way, walk in it, to questioning every bend in the road, every hill, every valley, and every uneven patch, thinking ourselves wise in our own eyes from doing so. Because the Bible says so should be all the answer a believer needs.

Another tactic of the enemy that Eliphaz attempted to employ was to lump Job in with his contemporaries and conclude that the prototype was identical from generation to generation. The old way that the wicked men who came before you have trodden is clear enough. Will you likewise continue to follow in their footsteps? They rejected God yet seemed to have it all, their houses being filled with good things, but I know better. I’m not going to fall for that old bait and switch, no, sir.

The one thing Eliphaz failed to acknowledge is that, while the wicked said to God, “Depart from us,” Job continued to cry out to God throughout his testing. Job didn’t run away from God; he ran toward Him during his time of hardship. He did not shake his fist at God, but encouraged those of his household to receive the good things at the hands of God just as readily as those deemed less than optimal.

Job had not done these things in secret, yet in his quest to be proven right, Eliphaz failed to acknowledge any of them. Sometimes people only see what they want to see from the angle and through the prism they choose to see it. If they’ve made up their minds about the situation ahead of time, then anything that contradicts their preconception is summarily dismissed, ignored, or downplayed, and anything that hints at supporting their thesis is magnified and blown up. That’s when you end up with a world where a sequoia looks like scrub brush and a blade of grass looks like a mighty oak. An ant looks like an elephant, and a mountain looks like a molehill, not because it’s reality but because it’s been reshaped to form a narrative.

This gives way to selective outrage so pronounced as to be stripped of any reason or logic. We’ve all seen it a time or five where people fly off the handle and start acting in a manner more akin to an animal than to a human being. They say things that are so far removed from anything logical as to make one wonder if they were having an episode, all the while thinking themselves entitled, justified, and within their right to beat the snot out of the pimply-faced kid at the drive-through because they asked for three dipping sauces for their nuggets and they only got two.

The surefire way to avoid a warped reality is to filter everything through the prism of God’s Word. Be intellectually honest, and neither discard the evidence that contradicts your stated position, nor make up scenarios as Eliphaz did and pass them off as the truth. If the evidence is there, then it’s there, plain for all to see. If it’s not, then you wanting the preacher that hurt your feelings to be the villain is not enough to accuse him of wickedness deserving of death and eternal darkness.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.