Job II

If I had it handy, I’d slip on my hyper-spiritual mask and insist that such suffering would be a breeze to go through, but I burnt my mask along with my pride, goals, ambitions, and personal aspirations long ago. Like you, I am daily working out my own salvation with fear and trembling. What I struggle with isn’t the loss of material things. I don’t have many to begin with; it’s never been an issue for me, nor do I place much value in them. I grew up poor - seven people in a two-bedroom apartment dumpster diving for aluminum cans - kind of poor, and although I am less poor, meaning I no longer dumpster dive, private jets and luxury getaways are not in my immediate future. Although there’s an entire conversation that should be had about supposed servants of Christ living like rock stars off the backs of their congregants, this is neither the time nor the place.

It’s not even the idea of my own personal suffering. It’s the loss of family that wrings my heart over and over like a wet dish towel. Every individual has a breaking point. There’s a reason the straw that broke the camel’s back is an expression that’s been around for centuries. It’s not one thing; it’s the accumulation of many things over time until that last and final straw that finally does it, and your bowed back can’t endure another ounce of pressure. Either Job was the strongest, most stoic man ever to live, or his unshakeable faith in God and His sovereignty carried him beyond his breaking point. You can’t get any lower than where Job ended up, and this is from such a position of affluence as to make him the greatest of all the people of the East as far as possessions were concerned.

It’s one thing to never know what it’s like to be wealthy beyond any of your contemporaries, to have everything your heart could desire and more besides, and never want for anything that you couldn’t get with the wave of a hand and the exchange of some legal tender. It’s quite another to be at the pinnacle of success, envied among your peers, then suddenly and without warning, get the rug pulled out from under you and have nothing left.

Imagine Warren Buffet or Elon Musk suddenly losing everything and ending up under a bridge trying to skewer a rat for their evening meal. Job's fall is comparable, given his status before his testing. All this while, God deemed him a blameless and upright man. Imagine the sort of faith one must possess in the providence and sovereignty of God not to be swayed by such circumstances. It cannot be a fleeting or situational faith but rather one that is cemented, ingrained, all-encompassing, and unshakeable. Job believed in God for everything, in everything, about everything, through everything, all the time, without fail. The life of Job teaches us that such faith is attainable, but the only way to attain it is to wholly surrender to the will, plan, and purpose of God in the best of times as well as the worst of times.

Job also dispels the myth that one cannot fear God and shun evil if one is wealthy. Money, in and of itself, isn’t evil; it’s the love of money that is the root of all kinds of evil. Job was rich but did not love his riches. He loved God, and the desire of his heart was to pleasing to the Lord. I’ve known poor people who love money they don’t have and rich people who are indifferent to the money they do have. It’s about the attitude of the heart and who sits on the throne thereof.

The reason Jesus said it is easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle than a rich man into the kingdom of God is that unless a man is blameless and upright, his identity will always be wrapped up in his riches, his desire will always be to increase them, and his purpose will continually be focused on earthly things. When God looked upon Job, he did not see a rich man; he saw an upright man who was blameless and feared the Lord. Being rich does not exclude someone from entering the kingdom of God; worshipping their riches, believing it is they and not God that can save them, and surrendering their hearts to trinkets and baubles does. We will see how much stock Job put in his possessions and how much he valued them shortly, and this is why, although he was rich, God singled him out as blameless and upright.

It’s easy to pontificate and wax poetic. Some people take to it like a duck to water, and they have no qualms about magnifying their spirituality to absurd and cartoonish levels in the hopes of having others look to them as though they were modern versions of Abraham, Job, and Paul all wrapped up in one. Not only is it self-serving and hypocritical, but it is also dangerous to beat one’s chest and say you would likewise endure what they did without allowing either bitterness or resentment to worm its way into your heart.

Serving God is easy when serving God is easy. When all you see are blue skies and gentle breezes, even though the work might be labor intensive, and what you are called to do may require exertion on your part, at the end of the day, you have a family to go back to, a home, a hot meal and a pillow to rest your head on.

Then the storm comes, and everything we take for granted, all those little things we barely even notice day to day, disappear in an instant, yet your duty to God remains the same. The calling doesn’t change, and the amount of work God has set before you doesn’t lessen, but our attitude will if we allow it to or if we’ve fallen into the snare of believing that being in ministry is a guarantee to living an easy-going life, with a nice pension at sixty-five, and a sweet condo on a golf course somewhere warm and sunny. 

Anyone who thinks they can weather such storms on their own without God's aid, comfort, and presence has already failed and will likely fold like an origami crane at the first salvo. Some things men can’t get through on their own, no matter how stiff-spined, resolute, and determined they are. They require uttermost trust in the God they serve and an unshakeable faith in His providence and sovereignty, no matter how bleak and hopeless things may seem. Such virtues do not materialize overnight. They must be grown, nurtured, and built up daily, with the tacit understanding that one day they will be put to the test. Your tepid, on-again, off-again, situational faith must transform into an enduring faith that it might abide.

Pride should be the last thing the life of Job should fan the flames of in men’s hearts. Rather, it should illicit deep and profound humility, bringing us face to face with our own shortcomings and to the realization that in those seasons of trial, hardship, and suffering, it is full and unwavering dependence upon God that will carry us through.

Had I known that a deep dive into this book would be akin to having a melon baller take chunks out of my heart every morning, perhaps I would have put this study off for a few more years, but alas, here we are.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.