DEAR CHARITY

Part 2

Dear Charity,

As always, it was great to hear from you!  And I have to tell you, I laughed out loud at your comment about how Job so elegantly laid the smack down to his friends.  Aptly put, my friend!  If there’s one thing Job was not, it was shy about speaking his mind.  Many are the times when I wish I had a little more of his eloquence and guts.

Every time I read through Job I find myself even more deeply appalled at his friends and their “if you are blameless and upright, God will protect you and allow no calamity to befall you; if not, you get the axe” brand of religion.  I mean, dude, what about that totally insensitive comment from Bildad — “If your children have sinned against Him, He has delivered them into the hand of their disobedience.”  The JPS makes it even more poisonous by translating it, “...He dispatched them for their transgressions.”  That is some sweet, sweet compassion right there.  [NOTE:  I’m glad that even though you can’t hear my tone of voice, you know me well enough to recognize when my sarcasm elf momentarily takes over the computer!]

The crazy thing is that just like the other two friends, his words sound correct and pious.  God does, indeed deliver sinners into the hands of their own disobedience, and the Bible makes that explicitly clear.  A whole lot of what Bildad says in chapter 8 even has echoes of the Psalms, just like what the other two say, which makes me think that it can’t be just what they say that’s wrong because if they’re wrong, the rest of the Bible is wrong, too.  And we know that isn’t the case.

It definitely makes me ask some questions.  What makes the statements okay in the Psalms but not okay when Job’s friends say them?  Or are we supposed to look at some of the Psalms differently in light of Job?  Is it that the Psalms are prayers addressed to the One who can make these things come true, prayed by hearts that knew God whereas the words of Job’s friends were spoken by guys who thought they knew God but in reality they just knew some things about Him?  Because there is a galaxy of difference between the two.  I don’t know for sure.  Maybe part of it has to do with what I mentioned in my last email about saying something that might be true in some cases but saying it at exactly the wrong time.  Telling a man right after he lost his kids that they got taken out because of their own sin?  Yeah, definitely the wrong time.

Okay, so I took a short break from writing back to you and read chapter 11 again, and man, oh man, oh man, I keep marveling at how “right” most of what Job’s friends say is, and I continue to be absolutely staggered at how stunning is their jerk-facedness.  They totally mock what Job says, words that are being ripped from the throat of a guy who has suffered more than most of us can rightly imagine, and then they have the steaming gall to proceed to tell him “the truth” about God, that if he would simply get rid of whatever iniquity caused all this in the first place, God would love on him again.

And HO.LY. WOW.  Eliphaz just keeps the sensitivity train rolling with his comment, “Does a wise man answer with windy opinions, and fill his belly with the east wind?” (JPS)  I just...wow, I just can’t find the appropriately strong words to say what I think of them and their heinously false flag of friendship.  Oh, but wait, there’s so much more!  “Are God’s consolations not enough for you, and His gentle words to you?” (JPS)  How many, many times have I heard variations on THAT theme in my life???  “If you were a real Christian, you’d be satisfied with just hearing the gentle whisper from God telling you that one day, everything will be okay.”  Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.  To this day, people continue to shame those in unrelenting anguish, and they continue to claim that they are oh, so wise because they’ve experienced this, that, and the other, and therefore, all must experience things in exactly the same way or they are to be numbered with the unbelievers.

The thing that really gets me about Job’s friends is that they JUST.  DON’T.  STOP.  They continue to savagely pound on a guy who is in an agony they appear to refuse to comprehend.  It totally seems like they’re simply in it now for the glory of their own rightness.  Job even BEGS them to stop adding to his pain by telling him it’s his own evil and wicked heart that has brought this down upon his head.  AND THEY KEEP GOING!

I do love Job’s responses, though, which essentially boil down to, “Yeah, you guys think you’re all that and a bag of chips but I’m not an idiot. Thanks.  Tell me something I don’t know about God and how He operates.”  Like you pointed out, it’s sorta intriguing to me, too, when Job laments over the fact that as much as he was seen by everyone as being favored by God, now people laughed at him and considered him a joke.  “Ha!  See, he’s just like the rest of us.  Sure, God answers him!  Sure, he’s blameless!”  In response to your question about it, I guess I don’t really see that as him whining about losing his reputation, more like it pains him to think that maybe everyone was absolutely right and he’s no different than anyone else, God sees him as just a lowly scum-sucking sinner who doesn’t deserve to live.

You know, I’ve heard so many sermons and teachings about Job that I’ve totally lost count.  And pretty much every single one of them is some variation on the theme of “human beings need to learn that God is God and we are not, so get over yourself.”  But I think you made an excellent point that the beginning of chapter 9 (and a whole lot of the rest of the book) kinda refutes that idea.  That just can’t be the entire point of God’s words at the end.  Clearly, Job recognized that truth already, and he recognized that God had every right to treat him and the rest of His creation however He pleases.  You’re absolutely right — neither of those things were really the issue for Job when it comes right down to it.

Gotta say that it was like you had taken a peek into my journals when you said:

“I’m beginning to see that Job’s beef with God is exactly the same as mine. I have never questioned the truth that God is God nor have I debated that He has the right to do as He wishes.  My beef with Him as always been this — if those things are true, which I do not deny that they are, why in the name of all that’s good and holy does He rain down torment and suffering in such an inexorable, relentless manner?”

I am so totally with you, Charity.  There’s a couple of questions that rear their ugly heads from time to time, especially when I’m right in the middle of a crazy hard battle with my mentotional issues (sorry — typing out “mental” and “emotional” just takes too much effort sometimes, you know?).  If God knows we are nothing but dust and that we’re guilty as sin from the nanosecond we’re conceived, why bother letting any of us be born in the first place?  Is it really only so He can condemn us and take us out since that’s what we so justly deserve?  I think Job nailed it with these words:

Your hands shaped and fashioned me,

Then destroyed every part of me.

You bestowed on me life and care;

Your providence watched over my spirit.

Yet these things You hid in Your heart;

I know that You had this in mind:

To watch me when I sinned

And not clear me of my iniquity.

If I summoned Him and He responded,

I do not believe He would lend me His ear.

For He crushes me [with a storm];

He wounds me much for no cause.

He does not let me catch my breath,

But sates me with bitterness.

It kinda seems to me that the true complaint of Job is tied up in those words, don’t you think?  God gives life, but for what reason?  Just to hound us to our literal death for our sin.

I’m not sure I ever noticed it in quite this way before this read through, but it’s pretty much impossible to overlook the fact that Job really had no trouble recognizing that God was God and His creation was completely at His mercy.  Job’s complaint, and yeah, mine, too, a whole lot of the time, is that God is unjust, that He haunts human beings without mercy for all their iniquities.  Job feels like God is simply Big Brother or worse, the kind of parent who “loves” as long as the child toes the line, but the second you mess up, it’s hammer time.  Job is left feeling like he’s trusted God and remained blameless for absolutely no good reason.

His complaint gets even darker and more bitter:

He broke me in pieces

He...shattered me

He pierced my kidneys

He showed no mercy

He breached me

My spirit is crushed

My days are gone

My tendons are severed

He tears down every part of me; I perish

He uproots my hope like a tree

Those words.  I know you’ll get me when I say that those words are what my heart has cried out on way too many occasions.  God has done this to me.  He’s shattered my life and completely decimated any tatters of hope I may have had.

My take on Job’s complaint is, well, I wrote a short poem laying it out.  I have a feeling you’ll be able to relate.

Before I knew or understood the words

“right” and “wrong” —

You crushed my spirit,

extinguished light from my heart.

What had I done?

What was my transgression?

Where did I harbor iniquity?

Whatever I may have been yet to do,

You saw no way other than to obliterate

every shred of my personhood.

You looked and saw darkness,

nothing worth redeeming.

Charity, I know what you’re dealing with and in all truth, I feel your pain as if it was my own.  You are wrestling with some of the most wretched things known to humanity, and I am in no way surprised that you wanted to read through and study Job.  It happens way, way too much in our society, even in our church culture, but it seems that in our rush to get back to hope and positivity and “victory in Jesus,” we do the 100-meter dash through the valley of the shadow of death when a good deal of the time, it’s a whole lot more like a marathon.  And I get it.  I really do.  No one likes pain.  No one craves agony (unless there’s something seriously unbalanced about them, but that’s a whole other topic for another time!).  But it is a hollow victory indeed which is won at the expense of sitting with the pain for as long as it is necessary.  And I know this probably isn’t what you want to hear, but sometimes it is necessary for much longer than we wish.

I guess I’m saying all this to let you know that it’s okay to be in a dark place right now, and it’s okay to stay there until you know it’s right to come out the other side (and yes, you absolutely will know).  Triumphalism in the church is something we’ve gone back and forth about at length in other emails, so I don’t need to beat that horse anymore.  I just want to gently remind you that great faith does not mean living in sunshine and tulips all the time.  There are times when faith means clawing your way back to the light you can’t even see with every single fingernail and toenail because anything else would mean certain death.

You, my dear friend, are walking the path of lament, and it is most definitely not a jolly good time, it’s not pleasant pastures, and sometimes it seems never-ending.  But you may not have realized that you have excellent company on your journey in David, Jeremiah, our friend Job, and yes, even Jesus.  Never forget that.  You don’t have to push yourself or make a mad scramble to feel better because someone wrongly told you that only happiness and joy are the marks of a true disciple of Jesus.  Isaiah didn’t call Jesus a man of sorrows for nothing.

Keep breathing.  Keep moving.  Keep being.  Never stop asking.  Never stop seeking.  Never stop knocking.

With Compassion,

Beth