Job CCCIX

 Job 34:10-15, “Therefore listen to me, you men of understanding: Far be it from God to do wickedness, and from the Almighty to commit iniquity. For He repays man according to his work, and makes man to find a reward according to his way. Surely God will never do wickedly, nor will the Almighty pervert justice. Who gave Him charge over the earth? Or who appointed Him over the whole world? If He should set His heart on it, if He should gather to Himself His Spirit and His breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust.”

There’s nothing like a man’s own words demonstrating his ignorance that clarifies the situation beyond any doubt, or the ever-present, “that’s just your opinion, I think he’s really smart”. Granted, some people have a blind spot for certain individuals, and no matter the inane word salad that spills from their lips, no matter how incoherent, banal, illogical, or counterintuitive, they’ll still swoon and heap praise upon them as though wisdom itself had at last found a permanent home.

If ever Elihu’s wisdom was in question, uncertain as to whether he had the wherewithal to follow through with his claims, we now have a definitive answer and definitive proof. After endlessly puffing himself up and extoling his own wisdom, Elihu’s argument boils down to karma.

If you do good, good will come to you; if you do evil, evil will be visited upon you. Perhaps when all is said and done, the flesh is no more, and we stand before God, there was truth in Elihu’s words, that God repays man according to his work, and makes man find a reward according to his way, but what happens between now and then, between the moment a man is born and a man goes the way of all things has nothing to do with karmic justice, or karmic reward. Bad things happen to good people, the wicked prosper, and the righteous hang on by the skin of their teeth, and that has nothing to do with whether God is showing one favor over the other, or blesses one above the other, unless you boil everything down to how much is in a person’s bank account and equate that number with their level of righteousness.

If prosperity were the plumb line by which holiness were measured, then Elon Musk is the holiest man walking the earth today. If Elihu’s banal conclusion of karmic justice and reciprocity held any truth, then there is no man walking the earth that has done more good than the world’s first trillionaire.

It’s always tempting to wax poetic on things and topics we have no clue about, but it is a temptation we must resist lest we do as Elihu did, and go on a protracted rant regarding the nature, character, purpose, and sovereignty of God without having a clue as to what they entail.

Elihu might have known certain aspects about God, but he did not know God, at least nowhere near the level Job did. There is a different level of understanding between knowing about someone from what others have told you and knowing them personally, having had fellowship, broken bread, and spent countless hours together. Job knew God personally. Elihu, it seems, had heard about God, learned about Him, but as far as having a relationship with Him goes, knowing Him personally and intimately, it seems unlikely.

That didn’t stop Elihu from demanding that everyone listen to him, because although ignorance may not be a virtue, it is a warm blanket that shields against self-awareness, or objective introspection. We’ve seen it often enough in our day and age wherein everyone is an instant expert on the most niche of topics, and once they’ve made up their mind, once they’ve decided that they’re right, no amount of evidence to the contrary will sway them.

To add to the growing list of things we shouldn’t do, Elihu goes on to presume the mind of God, and establish what God can and cannot do based on his underlying belief that karmic justice is the only true and viable explanation for Job’s suffering. This type of hubris is becoming commonplace in the contemporary church, with men declaring, in full authority, that there are limits to what God can do, or that, because they’ve decided it is so, there are things He no longer does.

They come to their conclusions not based on what the Bible says, not based on Scripture, but based on their individual, intellectual reasoning, and the most relevant thing of all, it isn’t happening to them, or they’re not personally experiencing it. It is flawed logic at best. It presupposes that if they never learned to swim, then everyone else is incapable of swimming by the sheer fact that they can’t.

Have you tried, though? Why would I bother? It’s impossible! But other people have experienced it, so it can’t be impossible. They’re just lying, that’s all, because if it were a possibility, then I would be doing it!

When we presume to declare what God can and cannot do, we are, in essence, limiting His omnipotence, appropriating His authority, and speaking on His behalf when He said nothing of the sort.

Although Elihu had the right of it when he declared that God would never do wickedly nor pervert justice, what he failed to acknowledge was the reality of the enemy of all that is upright, blameless, and pure, as well as God’s ability to test one’s faith by allowing the enemy to buffet and harass the righteous.

Yes, Job was a unique case, but if the enemy were given free rein to do as he wills, we would all be as Job, lying in an ash pile and scratching at our boils. There are no limits to the enemy’s hatred of God’s children. It is a hatred so overarching and all-consuming that only by God’s mercy and protection and the limitations he places on the devil as to what he can and cannot do to come against us can we still be about the work of the Kingdom.    

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.