Jousting with Job

     Job was another one of those Old Testament saints to which I planned to apologize when I got to heaven because I didn't like his book. Something along the lines of, "Sorry I didn't study your book, but you have to admit it was kind of a downer." Ezekiel was another such shunned saint until I studied, and actually enjoyed, his book last summer. That left Job.  I am relying on my beloved homiletics to help me joust with Job's joyless journal and wrest principles and applications from it. Nine chapters in, I have found a couple overarching themes.  The first is, most of the book would not even be necessary if Job's fickle friends had not presumed to know the mind of God.
     The paradigm through which his discomforters interpreted life is summed up in Bildad's speech in Job 8:20, "Surely God does not reject a blameless man or strengthen the hands of evildoers."  Since that was their underlying assumption, they denied what they knew to be true about Job's righteousness in order to make the facts fit the conclusion. God was punishing Job, therefore he must be sinful. Secretly sinful.  Altering facts to fit the paradigm brings to mind my favorite gory story from Greek mythology--Procrustes bed.  This homicidal host would offer his bed to travelers, then lop off or stretch the sleepers' bodies to fit the bed.  We see this all the time in the scientific world, where the prevailing paradigm is evolution. Questionable findings which are viewed as supportive are stretched while contradictory facts are lopped off Darwin's bed.  Besides that, our human nature tends to believe ill of people, even when we know better.  We would rather believe they are secretly sinful.
     The problem is, Job's friends were partly right.  The general principle that the godly are blessed and the ungodly suffer is true.  Do not be deceived.  God cannot be mocked:  A man reaps what he sows.  (Gal. 6:7)  The secular version is also well known--What goes around comes around. A missionary friend told us that after Brazilians trusted Christ they generally had a higher standard of living, not because they got a better job, but because when they were no longer spending their money on drugs, alcohol and gambling, they had more to spend on their family. Job's friends were right about the principle but wrong about the application.  Job was not being punished, he was being tested, and not because of his sin, but because of his faith. 
     This distresses me because it means I have to think instead of assume.  Thinking is hard. Making assumptions and whacking people with biblical principles is easy.  At least Job's comforters went to the trouble of insulting him in poetic form.  My version might be:

     You're suffering bad

     sorry you're blue.

     You must be sinful.

     Glad I'm not you.

     My fear is that most of the remainder of Job will be rehashing the same theme.  If so, that means God wants me to learn it but, at this point, I am not making any assumptions. I'll just keep jousting.