One of the true joys of Christmas – at least for me – has always been spending time with family.
When my own children were little, we had a Christmas day routine that might sound horrible but actually worked out quite well. We’d get up Christmas morning, open presents at our house, then load up and drive to Memphis for Christmas with my wife’s family. While you might think kids would be unhappy at just opening presents then being told to pack up and leave, you’d have to understand that my wife is one of 10 children, and my kids knew that going to Christmas in Memphis meant tons of presents plus the absolute fun that was the chaos of Christmas with the McGowan clan. And, when we came back home, all their presents were there and it was like Christmas all over again!
I was thinking about this the other day, and how when I was a child we’d load up the car and make the drive from my home in East Point, Ga., and go to see my grandparents in Phillipsburg, N.J., directly across the Delaware River from Easton, Pa.
This was in the days before the Interstate system was finished, which meant we had to take Highway 29 most of the way. Highway 29 was also Main Street in East Point, but it was a highway that ran from Pensacola, Fla., to near Baltimore, Md.
My father was a beast. I never appreciated it when he was alive, but now I marvel at his stamina and the sacrifices he made for his family. After my mother passed away, he came to live with me. Our first house had an attic that we decided to finish into two bedrooms. This attic had no heating or air conditioning, and I was working full time for a newspaper which meant I didn't have much time to work on this project. So my dad, who loved building, would be up there in that attic almost every day, in a closed space where the temperatures may have reached 100 degrees for all I know (I don’t know; it was always too hot for me!), hammering and sawing and putting up studs.
I supposed it reveals how self-absorbed I am, but it never occurred to me until years later that my father was in his 70s up there doing all this. I can’t imagine how hot it was, and physically draining it must have been. Perhaps it was just that trademark of the “Greatest Generation” to face the task at hand, no matter what it was, and tackle it head-on.
The routine for these trips to Phillipsburg were further evidence of that. He’d work a full day, come home, load up the car, and then start driving. His theory was, I guess, that the rest of us would sleep while he drove, lessoning the distractions to him. My mother did not share in the driving (a trait that I have picked up in that I do all the driving in my immediate family). I would say I don’t know how my dad did it, but I have found myself doing the same thing.
The internet says it’s an almost 13-hour drive from East Point to Phillipsburg today, using the Interstate system. I have no idea how much longer it took back then, staying on highways and going through towns and stoplights and twists and turns. I know this: we didn’t stop for the night. My parents could not afford a motel room along the way. Maybe we stopped for my Dad to take a quick nap, but if we did I don’t remember it. It seemed like we got into the car in my driveway at night, and something the next afternoon we’d be pulling in front of my grandparents’ house in New Jersey.
It could not have been an easy trip. There are turns even staying on Highway 29, and at some point you had to get off Highway 29 to continue the journey. We didn’t have GPS to tell us turn by turn. We had maps, but I doubt my father used them.
Here’s the thing:
I was completely confident that my Dad would get us where we were going. I never asked, “Dad, do you know where you’re going?” because he’d have said, “Yes, son, I’m going home, to my father’s house.”
I never asked, “Are you sure you know the way? I mean, there’s a lot of twists and turns, and we’ve got to cover a lot of miles” and he’d have said, “Yes, son, I know the way by heart.”
I never rode along with him, questioning his turns or timing. If I had, I’m sure he’d have said something like, “It’s OK, son. Here’s what you should do – look for these signs along the way that will let us know we’re on the right road. Sometimes we’ll go a long way without a sign, but they will be there when we need them. About the time you’ll think we’ve gotten lost, we’ll see a highway sign or something that lets us know we’re on the right path and haven’t lost our way.”
My Dad was a very patient man. One time, after my grandparents had both passed away, he and I made the trip by ourselves, to close down the house. We didn’t talk a lot, because I tend, even now, to get lost inside my head sometimes. I was older by then, in high school, and like most teenagers I’d had doubts about my father. We didn't talk a lot, but when I did start a conversation (and it had to be me starting it, because when my father would ask a question I'd usually give that teenager one word reply that kills further attempts at talking), I could tell he was grateful and we'd talk for awhile. Later he even told me how much he appreciated just riding with me, being with me, even in silence.
Whatever doubts I had about my father, I never doubted his ability to find his way to the house he grew up in, to his father’s house.
It occurs to me how much this is like what Jesus said when he said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe in Me as well. In My Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and welcome you into My presence, so that you also may be where I am.…”
I started this journey with Jesus many years ago. I know where I am going – to Jesus’ Father’s house. The only part of the route that I know is to trust in Jesus, just as I trusted in that father knew how to get to his father’s house, just as my children know their way back to my house.
Sometimes along the way I feel lost, like I’ve made a wrong turn or this road can’t possibly be the right one. And sometimes I find I have taken a wrong turn. But inevitably, somewhere along the way and very often at just the right time, there will be a sign. Sometimes when I’m ready to give up and turn around or sit down, something happens to remind me of where I am going, and that I’m either on the right path or here’s the turn to get back on the right path.
I am thankful for the many lessons my father taught me – most of which I wasn’t aware of at the time.
Like this one. A son knows the way to the father. A son knows his way home.
Trust him, and he will get you there despite all the twists and turns and stoplights and slowdowns that occur along life’s road.
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
Monday, December 10, 2018
On just saying "No"
Maybe you’ve had this kind of conversation.
“What do you want?”
“Nothing.”
“You look like you want to ask me something.”
“I was going to, but you’re only going to say ‘no.’”
Maybe you’ve been on both sides of that dialogue. I know I have. Usually it’s between a parent and a child, with the child taking that tactic of “I was going to, but …” trying a kind of reverse psychology, putting you in a negative light in the hopes that to prove them wrong you’ll say “yes.”
We are a manipulative breed, aren’t we?
But that got me thinking about “no.”
It is only a selfish, unloving father who always says “yes” to his children. More than likely, he’s one of those fathers who is trying to be “friends” with his kids, so they’ll “like” him. Or maybe he’s trying to make up for some inadequacy he feels about himself.
Loving fathers don’t always say ‘yes’ to their children, because children’s desires are often immature and may ultimately be harmful.
Very often, the most loving thing a father can do is say, “No;” be willing to be the kill joy, the bad guy, take the tears and screams and scorn from that child that they love when it’s for that child’s protection or own good. A loving father is willing to take the pout or the anger or the tantrum in order for that child to be safe, learn, grow into a mature and wise adult.
If you’re over the age of 25, you probably know that. You know that if you had gotten everything you ever wanted, your life would be a disaster right now. And guess what? It doesn’t change as you get older – there are still times when I’m thankful I didn’t get what I thought I wanted (and times when I’m sorry that I got what I thought I really did).
Recently I spent a lot of time reading and praying what we call “the Lord’s Prayer’’ – you know, the “Our Father, who art in Heaven …” In this, Jesus tells us to pray for our “daily bread.” Our daily bread is not asking for God to give us everything we want, but to give us what we actually need.
And no matter how smart, how successful, how admired and respected you are, you are not smarter than God; particularly when it comes to what is best for you. You may think you know, and you may be able to see all kinds of ways that this thing you desire could work out for God’s glory as well as yours; how it may provide for your family or “just make sense.” To God, those kinds of arguments must be like a five-year-old trying to talk their father into getting them a pony. It’s cute. But it’s dumb.
Unless, maybe, you live on a farm or a ranch.
King Solomon, considered the wisest man to ever live, wrote this in Proverbs (30): “Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: remove far from me falsehood and lying.” Good request, right? But then Solomon goes on to say, “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.”
Or, as Jesus said it so succinctly in the New Testament, “Give us this day our daily bread.”
As a kid, I wanted everything. My Christmas list would have been endless if I had actually made Christmas lists. I’d go through the Sears catalogue (pity that children today don’t know the joy of the Sears Christmas catalogue) and could pick out at least one thing on every page. In fact, that was a game I used to play: I’d tell myself I “had” to choose one thing on every page, now what would it be?
I’m long past the Sears catalogue, but I’m not beyond wanting at least one thing from every page.
But learning to not want everything is actually good for us.
The Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 10:23, “I have the right to do anything’ - but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’– but not everything is constructive.”
Truth be told, we’re not easily satisfied. We say, “Of, if I get this car I’ll never want another one” or “If I get this house, I’ll stay in it forever.” And then the new model car comes out with this feature or that feature; or you see a house with a better kitchen or yard or with a pool.
Years ago, I decided I would really simplify my life and would not need any clothes other than a pair of khaki pants and a blue oxford button-down collar shirt. It’s a combination I could wear to work, to play, to church. Then I realized I probably needed a tie and a navy-blue blazer to make it a bit more formal. And a white shirt would be good as well. And then tennis shoes for casual wear because I couldn’t wear dress shoes or loafers everywhere.
You get the picture.
There is nothing wrong with having a nice car, a house, multiple options for clothes. What I’m saying is that we’re never satisfied. It’s human nature. If I have the ability to get something more, chances are really good that I’ll take it.
So when I was reading the “Our Father who art in Heaven’’ and got to “Give us our daily bread,” which is another way of saying “Just give me what I need for today,” it reminded me that I have far more than I need, and the things that I don’t have that I really need (if there are such things) teach me to be thankful when I get through that day despite not having it, whatever “it” is.
Once, when I was in college, I decided to put God to the test. I had five dollars. I didn’t get paid until Friday (because I worked through college). So I decided to “test” God and say, “I know you’ll give me just enough money to get me through this week.” And on Monday I drove to class. I went to lunch. Someone didn’t want to finish their lunch and offered it to me, so I didn’t have to spend anything there. I drove home. There were leftovers in the fridge. The next day someone asked me to ride with them to class, because they were running late and needed to be dropped off because they didn’t have time to park, so we took their car. And I didn’t have time for anything at lunch except vending machine food, which back then was 50 cents for a Coke and 25 cents for a pack of peanut butter crackers.
Every day I prayed for that miracle, that check that showed up unexpectedly in the mail box or that debt that I’d forgotten about being repaid or whatever other miracle that I knew was coming because God was going to provide for me, take care of me, give me what I needed.
The next thing I knew it was Friday. I'd never gotten that unexpected windfall "blessing." But on Friday, I got my regular paycheck.
And it hit me – I had gone through the entire week and not even spent all of my five dollars. I had not missed a meal; I had not failed to get to class. Something unexpected always happened to get me exactly what I needed for that day. And I realized I was telling God what I thought He needed to do to take care of me, when in reality He was taking care of me in His way – and teaching me a lesson in the process.
These are good lessons, the lessons of “no.” We learn disappointment. We also learn we survive without the things or activities that we thought we couldn’t live without. In time, we discover that six months or a year or 10 years later we don’t even remember what it was we wanted so bad.
So never be afraid to be the “bad” guy, to say “no,” and put up with your kids saying you don’t love them or don’t care for them or you’re not as good a father as so-and-so. A loving Father is not afraid to be the ‘bad’ guy, because he knows sometimes ‘no’ is the most loving thing you can say.
Now, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about having the ability to say “no,’’ and that comes across as negative.
Here is the positive: remember what Jesus says in John 10:10? “The thief comes to kill, to steal, and to destroy, but I have come that you might have life and have it to the full."
Hear that? "To the full." That is not a “no.” That sounds incredible, doesn’t it? Jesus comes to give us life to the full – who doesn’t want that? Who is going to say, “Oh, I’ll just take three-quarters. I don’t want to be selfish, just give me half a share.” No, as I said before, we’re never satisfied and its human nature to always want more.
So if there's more joy to be had in my marriage because of Jesus, I want it. If there's more joy to be had as a parent, then I want it. If there is more joy to be had in my job, then I want it. If there is more joy to be had in continuing to learn about who Jesus is, I want it.
I want all the life there is to have. But not in some immature, ridiculous, "just give me the new car and house and supermodel Stepford wife” kind of joy. No, I want all the life there is to have. And Jesus said, “You want full life? I've come to give you full life. I’ve got it, and I’m offering it to you. Come to me for that full life."
It’s counterintuitive, but the truth is, we’re happier when we know the boundaries, when we know the limits. Psychologists have said that children are more creative when they have boundaries and can explore the area inside those boundaries more completely, when they are forced to use their brains to devise entertainment and excitement within the limits put around them. It’s when there are no boundaries that they become unfocused. They get easily bored and go on to the next thing, and the next thing, and nothing is ever enough.
Sometimes “no” is the best answer of all.
“What do you want?”
“Nothing.”
“You look like you want to ask me something.”
“I was going to, but you’re only going to say ‘no.’”
Maybe you’ve been on both sides of that dialogue. I know I have. Usually it’s between a parent and a child, with the child taking that tactic of “I was going to, but …” trying a kind of reverse psychology, putting you in a negative light in the hopes that to prove them wrong you’ll say “yes.”
We are a manipulative breed, aren’t we?
But that got me thinking about “no.”
It is only a selfish, unloving father who always says “yes” to his children. More than likely, he’s one of those fathers who is trying to be “friends” with his kids, so they’ll “like” him. Or maybe he’s trying to make up for some inadequacy he feels about himself.
Loving fathers don’t always say ‘yes’ to their children, because children’s desires are often immature and may ultimately be harmful.
Very often, the most loving thing a father can do is say, “No;” be willing to be the kill joy, the bad guy, take the tears and screams and scorn from that child that they love when it’s for that child’s protection or own good. A loving father is willing to take the pout or the anger or the tantrum in order for that child to be safe, learn, grow into a mature and wise adult.
If you’re over the age of 25, you probably know that. You know that if you had gotten everything you ever wanted, your life would be a disaster right now. And guess what? It doesn’t change as you get older – there are still times when I’m thankful I didn’t get what I thought I wanted (and times when I’m sorry that I got what I thought I really did).
Recently I spent a lot of time reading and praying what we call “the Lord’s Prayer’’ – you know, the “Our Father, who art in Heaven …” In this, Jesus tells us to pray for our “daily bread.” Our daily bread is not asking for God to give us everything we want, but to give us what we actually need.
And no matter how smart, how successful, how admired and respected you are, you are not smarter than God; particularly when it comes to what is best for you. You may think you know, and you may be able to see all kinds of ways that this thing you desire could work out for God’s glory as well as yours; how it may provide for your family or “just make sense.” To God, those kinds of arguments must be like a five-year-old trying to talk their father into getting them a pony. It’s cute. But it’s dumb.
Unless, maybe, you live on a farm or a ranch.
King Solomon, considered the wisest man to ever live, wrote this in Proverbs (30): “Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: remove far from me falsehood and lying.” Good request, right? But then Solomon goes on to say, “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.”
Or, as Jesus said it so succinctly in the New Testament, “Give us this day our daily bread.”
As a kid, I wanted everything. My Christmas list would have been endless if I had actually made Christmas lists. I’d go through the Sears catalogue (pity that children today don’t know the joy of the Sears Christmas catalogue) and could pick out at least one thing on every page. In fact, that was a game I used to play: I’d tell myself I “had” to choose one thing on every page, now what would it be?
I’m long past the Sears catalogue, but I’m not beyond wanting at least one thing from every page.
But learning to not want everything is actually good for us.
The Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 10:23, “I have the right to do anything’ - but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’– but not everything is constructive.”
Truth be told, we’re not easily satisfied. We say, “Of, if I get this car I’ll never want another one” or “If I get this house, I’ll stay in it forever.” And then the new model car comes out with this feature or that feature; or you see a house with a better kitchen or yard or with a pool.
Years ago, I decided I would really simplify my life and would not need any clothes other than a pair of khaki pants and a blue oxford button-down collar shirt. It’s a combination I could wear to work, to play, to church. Then I realized I probably needed a tie and a navy-blue blazer to make it a bit more formal. And a white shirt would be good as well. And then tennis shoes for casual wear because I couldn’t wear dress shoes or loafers everywhere.
You get the picture.
There is nothing wrong with having a nice car, a house, multiple options for clothes. What I’m saying is that we’re never satisfied. It’s human nature. If I have the ability to get something more, chances are really good that I’ll take it.
So when I was reading the “Our Father who art in Heaven’’ and got to “Give us our daily bread,” which is another way of saying “Just give me what I need for today,” it reminded me that I have far more than I need, and the things that I don’t have that I really need (if there are such things) teach me to be thankful when I get through that day despite not having it, whatever “it” is.
Once, when I was in college, I decided to put God to the test. I had five dollars. I didn’t get paid until Friday (because I worked through college). So I decided to “test” God and say, “I know you’ll give me just enough money to get me through this week.” And on Monday I drove to class. I went to lunch. Someone didn’t want to finish their lunch and offered it to me, so I didn’t have to spend anything there. I drove home. There were leftovers in the fridge. The next day someone asked me to ride with them to class, because they were running late and needed to be dropped off because they didn’t have time to park, so we took their car. And I didn’t have time for anything at lunch except vending machine food, which back then was 50 cents for a Coke and 25 cents for a pack of peanut butter crackers.
Every day I prayed for that miracle, that check that showed up unexpectedly in the mail box or that debt that I’d forgotten about being repaid or whatever other miracle that I knew was coming because God was going to provide for me, take care of me, give me what I needed.
The next thing I knew it was Friday. I'd never gotten that unexpected windfall "blessing." But on Friday, I got my regular paycheck.
And it hit me – I had gone through the entire week and not even spent all of my five dollars. I had not missed a meal; I had not failed to get to class. Something unexpected always happened to get me exactly what I needed for that day. And I realized I was telling God what I thought He needed to do to take care of me, when in reality He was taking care of me in His way – and teaching me a lesson in the process.
These are good lessons, the lessons of “no.” We learn disappointment. We also learn we survive without the things or activities that we thought we couldn’t live without. In time, we discover that six months or a year or 10 years later we don’t even remember what it was we wanted so bad.
So never be afraid to be the “bad” guy, to say “no,” and put up with your kids saying you don’t love them or don’t care for them or you’re not as good a father as so-and-so. A loving Father is not afraid to be the ‘bad’ guy, because he knows sometimes ‘no’ is the most loving thing you can say.
Now, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about having the ability to say “no,’’ and that comes across as negative.
Here is the positive: remember what Jesus says in John 10:10? “The thief comes to kill, to steal, and to destroy, but I have come that you might have life and have it to the full."
Hear that? "To the full." That is not a “no.” That sounds incredible, doesn’t it? Jesus comes to give us life to the full – who doesn’t want that? Who is going to say, “Oh, I’ll just take three-quarters. I don’t want to be selfish, just give me half a share.” No, as I said before, we’re never satisfied and its human nature to always want more.
So if there's more joy to be had in my marriage because of Jesus, I want it. If there's more joy to be had as a parent, then I want it. If there is more joy to be had in my job, then I want it. If there is more joy to be had in continuing to learn about who Jesus is, I want it.
I want all the life there is to have. But not in some immature, ridiculous, "just give me the new car and house and supermodel Stepford wife” kind of joy. No, I want all the life there is to have. And Jesus said, “You want full life? I've come to give you full life. I’ve got it, and I’m offering it to you. Come to me for that full life."
It’s counterintuitive, but the truth is, we’re happier when we know the boundaries, when we know the limits. Psychologists have said that children are more creative when they have boundaries and can explore the area inside those boundaries more completely, when they are forced to use their brains to devise entertainment and excitement within the limits put around them. It’s when there are no boundaries that they become unfocused. They get easily bored and go on to the next thing, and the next thing, and nothing is ever enough.
Sometimes “no” is the best answer of all.
Friday, December 7, 2018
"Joy" to the world
We all want to be happy.
It’s part of our DNA as Americans, right? Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? And boy, we have taken to that pursuit like dogs to a meat bone, like pigs to slop, like me to a chocolate chip cookie.
When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was play ball. I was happy playing football or basketball, and when those options weren’t available it was any other kind of competition we could find or create: basement basketball with tennis balls and trash cans on rainy days when we couldn’t go outside; whiffle ball with some of the most elaborate rules created to accommodate the back yard that a Yale lawyer might have trouble deciphering; choosing sides and going to war with a variety of weapons after discovering “bang bang, you’re dead” didn’t work (so we found berries that could leave a stain to prove you’d been hit; to golf-ball sized hickory nuts that increased the range of your firepower, to a misguided use of b-b guns – classic escalation theory that has put the world on edge many times over).
Then it became cars, music, movies, books, girls, concerts, clothes, tennis shoes, sporting events, houses, neighborhoods, bigger paychecks, vacations that went from off-season trips (mountains in the summer, the beach in the winter when rates were lower) to the Caribbean in winter.
Opening presents on Christmas morning. Recognition and increased demand for my work. Season tickets to sports and plays. Enough books for a small library.
But always, the games ended, the season passed, I returned home from the vacation, the curtain went down on the play, the book ended, the Christmas tree was taken down and thrown out along with the boxes and wrapping paper that, for weeks, had been so enticing.
My guess is, even if the details differ, this sounds like your life, too.
Not that I’m complaining. I’ve had a life far beyond anything I deserved. I’m happy, through the ups and downs. I’ve got great memories, and still have great expectations.
Has it been everything I dreamed? Not hardly. I had some pretty big dreams; some impossible dreams. I wanted to play in the NBA, to pitch in the major leagues, to quarterback the Atlanta Falcons to a Super Bowl title. I wanted to write books that generations would cherish. I wanted enough money to never have to worry. I wanted … more.
But even in those dreams, reality assures me that had I achieved any or all of those dreams, they’d have been fleeting, too. Eventually, athletes can no longer play the game. Having made a living as a writer, I know the pressure is always there to follow up one award-winning piece with another, to prove it wasn’t a fluke. And money – the old saying goes, “how much money is enough? One more dollar than I have.”
I also know I’m hardly alone. Wanting more is as old as Adam and Eve (“You shall be like gods”). Solomon summed it up in his work, Ecclesiastes, when he wrote, “All is vanity, a chasing after the wind.”
Philosopher after philosopher reminds us that all of us seek happiness, without exception. Some seek it through excess, some by self-denial; some seek it through danger, others by self-preservation. Even those who are so miserable they commit suicide are looking for a way out, a peace they can’t seem to find in this life.
Because down deep, we all carry the uncomfortable idea that somewhere out there, there is more.
In the end, what we’re all looking for is not happiness, but joy.
They are not the same thing. Happiness, as we know, never seems to last. But joy is a state of mind that carries you through all the anticipations and disappointments of the pursuit of happiness.
For me, that joy comes in my relationship with something outside myself. It comes from something I have never physically seen or touched or heard. It comes from something that many find so abstract as to be considered absurd.
It comes from a pursuit of God.
The Bible tells us in story after story how when we abandon ourselves, we find peace. When we die to ourselves and our wants and desires, we find satisfaction. When we turn our guilt over the wrongs we’ve done to someone else who can forgive us, we can forgive ourselves.
I may be theologically way off base, but I believe that the fall of Adam and Eve was not that they ate a fruit that gave them some supernatural knowledge of good and evil, but rather that the act of taking that fruit that God had commanded they not take gave them self-awareness, which led to self-centeredness, which led to the longing to make oneself happy.
The focus left God and centered on “self.”
Before what we call “the fall,” I imagine the first people (Adam and Eve) walked with God. They lived for those moments of his presence. They went about the responsibilities to care for the earth and the animals and each other the way God has prescribed, but it was totally with a sense of being God-focused. God loves me. God is coming to talk to me. I do this because it makes God happy. Isn’t it wonderful that God gave us nature, the animals, laughter, adventure, companionship …
And then one day, Eve and then Adam realized they could make their own choice. It was not about God anymore; it was about me and what I wanted and what I thought would make me happy.
If you remember the story in Genesis, no one told Adam and Eve they were naked. No one told them to be ashamed. But with one simple act of “self” they suddenly became aware of their own nakedness, their own faults and flaws, and became ashamed.
I always wonder, did they ask God for forgiveness? I don’t see it anywhere in the story. I doubt they even knew the concept of forgiveness because it had never been part of their consciousness before. They had never done anything to offend God. They may have never even realized forgiveness might have been possible.
But God did. And in doing so set in motion the act of ultimate forgiveness that millions of us depend on for our eternal destiny.
One thing I have learned about the pursuit of happiness – I am happiest when I’m not thinking about it. It’s like the old saying about no longer being humble once you realize how humble you are; I’m not sure happiness doesn’t start to fade the moment you realize “I’m really happy.”
Happiness is a constant pursuit. Joy, on the other hand, is defined (in at least one primary definition) as “the emotion evoked by … the prospect of possessing what one desires.” Joy is “an emotion that’s acquired by the anticipation, acquisition or even the expectation of something great or wonderful.”
C.S. Lewis once wondered “whether all pleasures are a substitute for joy.” In his book, “Surprised by Joy,” he wrote “I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again... I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and Pleasure often is.”
James wrote (1:2) “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.” This helped Jesus endure the cross “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2).
Paul writes to the Philippians “complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” and considered this church his “joy and crown” even though he was not with them, not physically in their presence.
In the Old Testament, Nehemiah wrote (8:10) “the joy of the LORD is your strength.” The Psalms are full of joy-phrases, like “all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy” (Psalm 5:11), and that God “put more joy in my heart” (Psalm 4:7) and in God’s “presence there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11).
None of this “joy” has to do with present circumstances, but in the confidence that there is purpose, and that the end of the matter has been settled.
It’s not an easy concept. Jesus says as much in Luke (9:23) when he says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? …”
Denying yourself is not easy. Easy is going after all the stuff that we’re told will make us happy. But we also know there is no end to seeking happiness. On the other hand, knowing how it ends gives us the peace – and joy - to live with whatever condition we find ourselves in at any given moment.
My brother tells the story of when he was a student in seminary. He and some of his friends were playing basketball late one night, and the janitor came in to lock up but let them finish their game. While they played, he sat in the bleachers reading his Bible.
When the game was over, the seminary students came over to thank the old man for letting them finish, and asked, “What are you reading?’’
The old man said, “The book of Revelation.”
The seminary students said, “That’s a pretty involved book, what with all these signs and dragons and lamp stands and blood and imagery and allegory. Do you understand what you’re reading?”
The old man answered that he did, and of course the seminary students said (with, I’m sure, a bit of doubt in their voices), “tell us what it means” (as if this old janitor could explain a book like Revelation to these best and brightest seminary students).
“It means,’’ the old man said, “that in the end, Jesus wins.”
And that is where joy comes from, knowing that no matter what we endure today, what we’ve endured yesterday or may endure tomorrow, in the end, Jesus wins.
It’s part of our DNA as Americans, right? Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? And boy, we have taken to that pursuit like dogs to a meat bone, like pigs to slop, like me to a chocolate chip cookie.
When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was play ball. I was happy playing football or basketball, and when those options weren’t available it was any other kind of competition we could find or create: basement basketball with tennis balls and trash cans on rainy days when we couldn’t go outside; whiffle ball with some of the most elaborate rules created to accommodate the back yard that a Yale lawyer might have trouble deciphering; choosing sides and going to war with a variety of weapons after discovering “bang bang, you’re dead” didn’t work (so we found berries that could leave a stain to prove you’d been hit; to golf-ball sized hickory nuts that increased the range of your firepower, to a misguided use of b-b guns – classic escalation theory that has put the world on edge many times over).
Then it became cars, music, movies, books, girls, concerts, clothes, tennis shoes, sporting events, houses, neighborhoods, bigger paychecks, vacations that went from off-season trips (mountains in the summer, the beach in the winter when rates were lower) to the Caribbean in winter.
Opening presents on Christmas morning. Recognition and increased demand for my work. Season tickets to sports and plays. Enough books for a small library.
But always, the games ended, the season passed, I returned home from the vacation, the curtain went down on the play, the book ended, the Christmas tree was taken down and thrown out along with the boxes and wrapping paper that, for weeks, had been so enticing.
My guess is, even if the details differ, this sounds like your life, too.
Not that I’m complaining. I’ve had a life far beyond anything I deserved. I’m happy, through the ups and downs. I’ve got great memories, and still have great expectations.
Has it been everything I dreamed? Not hardly. I had some pretty big dreams; some impossible dreams. I wanted to play in the NBA, to pitch in the major leagues, to quarterback the Atlanta Falcons to a Super Bowl title. I wanted to write books that generations would cherish. I wanted enough money to never have to worry. I wanted … more.
But even in those dreams, reality assures me that had I achieved any or all of those dreams, they’d have been fleeting, too. Eventually, athletes can no longer play the game. Having made a living as a writer, I know the pressure is always there to follow up one award-winning piece with another, to prove it wasn’t a fluke. And money – the old saying goes, “how much money is enough? One more dollar than I have.”
I also know I’m hardly alone. Wanting more is as old as Adam and Eve (“You shall be like gods”). Solomon summed it up in his work, Ecclesiastes, when he wrote, “All is vanity, a chasing after the wind.”
Philosopher after philosopher reminds us that all of us seek happiness, without exception. Some seek it through excess, some by self-denial; some seek it through danger, others by self-preservation. Even those who are so miserable they commit suicide are looking for a way out, a peace they can’t seem to find in this life.
Because down deep, we all carry the uncomfortable idea that somewhere out there, there is more.
In the end, what we’re all looking for is not happiness, but joy.
They are not the same thing. Happiness, as we know, never seems to last. But joy is a state of mind that carries you through all the anticipations and disappointments of the pursuit of happiness.
For me, that joy comes in my relationship with something outside myself. It comes from something I have never physically seen or touched or heard. It comes from something that many find so abstract as to be considered absurd.
It comes from a pursuit of God.
The Bible tells us in story after story how when we abandon ourselves, we find peace. When we die to ourselves and our wants and desires, we find satisfaction. When we turn our guilt over the wrongs we’ve done to someone else who can forgive us, we can forgive ourselves.
I may be theologically way off base, but I believe that the fall of Adam and Eve was not that they ate a fruit that gave them some supernatural knowledge of good and evil, but rather that the act of taking that fruit that God had commanded they not take gave them self-awareness, which led to self-centeredness, which led to the longing to make oneself happy.
The focus left God and centered on “self.”
Before what we call “the fall,” I imagine the first people (Adam and Eve) walked with God. They lived for those moments of his presence. They went about the responsibilities to care for the earth and the animals and each other the way God has prescribed, but it was totally with a sense of being God-focused. God loves me. God is coming to talk to me. I do this because it makes God happy. Isn’t it wonderful that God gave us nature, the animals, laughter, adventure, companionship …
And then one day, Eve and then Adam realized they could make their own choice. It was not about God anymore; it was about me and what I wanted and what I thought would make me happy.
If you remember the story in Genesis, no one told Adam and Eve they were naked. No one told them to be ashamed. But with one simple act of “self” they suddenly became aware of their own nakedness, their own faults and flaws, and became ashamed.
I always wonder, did they ask God for forgiveness? I don’t see it anywhere in the story. I doubt they even knew the concept of forgiveness because it had never been part of their consciousness before. They had never done anything to offend God. They may have never even realized forgiveness might have been possible.
But God did. And in doing so set in motion the act of ultimate forgiveness that millions of us depend on for our eternal destiny.
One thing I have learned about the pursuit of happiness – I am happiest when I’m not thinking about it. It’s like the old saying about no longer being humble once you realize how humble you are; I’m not sure happiness doesn’t start to fade the moment you realize “I’m really happy.”
Happiness is a constant pursuit. Joy, on the other hand, is defined (in at least one primary definition) as “the emotion evoked by … the prospect of possessing what one desires.” Joy is “an emotion that’s acquired by the anticipation, acquisition or even the expectation of something great or wonderful.”
C.S. Lewis once wondered “whether all pleasures are a substitute for joy.” In his book, “Surprised by Joy,” he wrote “I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again... I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and Pleasure often is.”
James wrote (1:2) “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.” This helped Jesus endure the cross “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2).
Paul writes to the Philippians “complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” and considered this church his “joy and crown” even though he was not with them, not physically in their presence.
In the Old Testament, Nehemiah wrote (8:10) “the joy of the LORD is your strength.” The Psalms are full of joy-phrases, like “all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy” (Psalm 5:11), and that God “put more joy in my heart” (Psalm 4:7) and in God’s “presence there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11).
None of this “joy” has to do with present circumstances, but in the confidence that there is purpose, and that the end of the matter has been settled.
It’s not an easy concept. Jesus says as much in Luke (9:23) when he says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? …”
Denying yourself is not easy. Easy is going after all the stuff that we’re told will make us happy. But we also know there is no end to seeking happiness. On the other hand, knowing how it ends gives us the peace – and joy - to live with whatever condition we find ourselves in at any given moment.
My brother tells the story of when he was a student in seminary. He and some of his friends were playing basketball late one night, and the janitor came in to lock up but let them finish their game. While they played, he sat in the bleachers reading his Bible.
When the game was over, the seminary students came over to thank the old man for letting them finish, and asked, “What are you reading?’’
The old man said, “The book of Revelation.”
The seminary students said, “That’s a pretty involved book, what with all these signs and dragons and lamp stands and blood and imagery and allegory. Do you understand what you’re reading?”
The old man answered that he did, and of course the seminary students said (with, I’m sure, a bit of doubt in their voices), “tell us what it means” (as if this old janitor could explain a book like Revelation to these best and brightest seminary students).
“It means,’’ the old man said, “that in the end, Jesus wins.”
And that is where joy comes from, knowing that no matter what we endure today, what we’ve endured yesterday or may endure tomorrow, in the end, Jesus wins.
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
God promises it will be worth it (Job 42)
It seems like all of my life, I’ve been surrounded by strong women.
My mother was the dominant personality in my house, growing up. She was a World War II veteran, a WAVE (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, part of the US Navy). That is quite a story in itself, since her father, a farmer from rural Georgia, disowned her when she told him she was running off to join the Navy. When I started school, she started working for the Federal Government, and eventually retired from the original Department of Energy. She taught Sunday School, led Bible studies, and even after being diagnosed with cancer went to Liberia with my father for a year as a missionary. She was a Southern feminist – what was later referred to as a Steel Magnolia, defined as “a woman who possesses the strength of steel, yet the gentleness of a magnolia.”
My wife has a pretty strong personality. She has faced a lot of tough times before I met her (and certainly afterward!). She developed a business for a local business owner before branching out on her own and running that until we started having kids and decided she should be at home with them. But even then, she became one of the top volunteers in the area for Meals on Wheels, and later went to volunteer for a local ministry but within a week was hired on full time. Despite that fact that she isn’t Southern born, she too has developed into something close to a Steel Magnolia. She’s very much a feminist, which surprises a lot of people.
I have worked for a number of women whom I greatly admire, particularly in my time at BP and later at Georgia Pacific. And I have always tried to treat the women in my various jobs as equals, and been told that I was, in particular, supportive of women in sports media when many of my peers in that male-dominated field were not. I didn’t do it intentionally; it’s just how I was raised.
So maybe I’m not surprised that my hero, Job, is something of a feminist, a man well before his time.
This is another part of the story of reconciliation. Maybe calling Job a “feminist” is too strong of a term, but consider this at the end of chapter 42: “… (Job) also had seven sons and three daughters. The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.”
True feminists might be offended at the reference to Job’s daughters’ beauty, but if you get hung up on that, you miss the truly surprising part of the story.
In what was definitely a patriarchal society, where sons were valued and became heirs while daughters were often treated as property, to be sold off in marriage, in the list of Job’s children only his daughters are named; not his sons.
More than that, Job’s daughters are granted the same inheritance as their brothers, which might have been scandalous for that time. Certainly, in later times it was.
And I wonder how this was perceived by the community, to have Job’s daughters treated as equal heirs to their brothers. What kind of empowerment did this give his daughters that women of that time didn’t typically have? How did that affect the other women of the community, and the daughters of his children to come?
And isn’t Job’s action here just like God, to love equally?
The story of Job is truly amazing. From Satan and God making a bet on the integrity of Job, to God showing up to speak to Job.
How did Job change? Did he change? On the one hand, I think I’d be pretty proud – “Well, you know, the other day when I was talking with God …” But I get the impression this encounter didn’t leave Job proud. I think he was left humbled, a changed man.
Job is not the only person to meet God in the Bible. From Adam and Eve's rocky start, through Moses and the patriarchs, all the way to the disciples of Jesus, many people had the uncommon experience of meeting God. Consider their reactions:
-Adam and Eve cowered in the Garden.
-Moses could barely breathe in front of the burning bush.
-Isaiah said, "I'm a dead man."
-The disciples bowed in their still-rocking boat and worshipped the man who had just ordered a storm to disappear.
-John and Peter left the empty tomb trying to fathom what they'd just discovered.
-Peter, especially, wondered what would happen to him after his denial.
- Saul needed three days to recover from his Damascus Road experience, so shaken that he didn’t eat or drink.
A few closing thoughts on the book of Job.
You know what's obvious, from even a casual observation of these encounters? When people meet God in the Bible, no one is laughing. No one is taking it lightly. No one acts as though a meeting with God is part of a routine schedule. All of them seem to connect with an early proverb: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge . . ." (Proverbs 1:7)
When we grasp the power of God, we're just like Job. All of our questions, all of our complaints, all of our priorities melt into sheer awe. The book of Job is non-stop dialogue, until it's time for Job to react to God. At that moment, Job says little more than, "Oh."
No one is exempt from tragedy. Not even God. Jesus was not given immunity, no way out of the suffering – just a way through it to the other side.
Maybe you think it would better if God would tell us why this happens or that happens. Maybe then we’d be able to handle it with a certain “buck up” attitude. But Satan’s challenge was that Job would fail without outside help or explanation. And God accepted those terms.
Which means that the kind of faith God values seems to develop best when God stays silent, when the fog rolls in and we feel alone and abandoned.
Now perhaps this isn’t much comfort. I get that. But in Ezekiel 14, God puts Jobs on a plain with Noah and Daniel as men of righteousness, men he is proud of, men he holds up as an example of guys who were able to carry the ball across the goal line against all odds, without even knowing the play.
Hebrews 11 says “the world was not worthy of them … and God is not ashamed to be called their God.”
Now, maybe you look at the ending of Job’s life and say, that’s not how it works in the real world. We’ve seen too many people who go through difficult situations without any sense of God showing up, much less God restoring their health and wealth. We see some Christians who suffer, and we see others who prosper, and most of us are right in the middle wondering “Why him and not me?” to both of those situations.
In John 21, after the Resurrection, the Disciples are fishing and Jesus shows up on the beach. You know the story. Anyway, he reassures Peter that he still loves him and restores him to a place of leadership, and then tells Peter about his future.
Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!”
Then an interesting thing happens. Peter looks over at John – who really did have a special relationship with Jesus - and says “What about him?
The story goes on:
“Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?”
Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.”
It’s almost like Jesus is saying, “I’ll tell you the story of your life, but John’s story is none of your business.” In other words, if there is one thing I know from the book of Job, God’s plan is much bigger than I can understand. Why he blesses me and not you, or why he blesses you and not me – that’s not my concern. My concern is, what is my response when Satan stands before God and accusingly points the finger at my life?
Another book I really love is the book of James. And I think the summary James gives Job in 5:11 says it nicely:
“Behold, we call those happy who were steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.”
Job was indeed steadfast. To our way of thinking, he was unjustly attacked – unjust in the sense that the only thing he did to deserve it was to live a righteous life, which got the attention of Satan.
As I said before, I want the kind of faith that God is pleased with, but I am afraid of the kind of faith that Satan takes notice of, the way Satan did Job.
I can say this, though. When trouble comes – and it will – regardless of whether it is because of my righteousness (unlikely) or something I did (far more probable), I pray that I handle it in a way that pleases God.
One lesson I have shared with my children is this: whatever you are going through, however hard the times are right now, no matter how serious the situation, one day you will come out on the other side. And when you do, you will have to ask yourself, “Did I handle that in a way that honored God?”
That brings us back to where we almost started. What is the chief purpose of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
Nobody said it would be easy.
But God promises it will be worth it.
My mother was the dominant personality in my house, growing up. She was a World War II veteran, a WAVE (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, part of the US Navy). That is quite a story in itself, since her father, a farmer from rural Georgia, disowned her when she told him she was running off to join the Navy. When I started school, she started working for the Federal Government, and eventually retired from the original Department of Energy. She taught Sunday School, led Bible studies, and even after being diagnosed with cancer went to Liberia with my father for a year as a missionary. She was a Southern feminist – what was later referred to as a Steel Magnolia, defined as “a woman who possesses the strength of steel, yet the gentleness of a magnolia.”
My wife has a pretty strong personality. She has faced a lot of tough times before I met her (and certainly afterward!). She developed a business for a local business owner before branching out on her own and running that until we started having kids and decided she should be at home with them. But even then, she became one of the top volunteers in the area for Meals on Wheels, and later went to volunteer for a local ministry but within a week was hired on full time. Despite that fact that she isn’t Southern born, she too has developed into something close to a Steel Magnolia. She’s very much a feminist, which surprises a lot of people.
I have worked for a number of women whom I greatly admire, particularly in my time at BP and later at Georgia Pacific. And I have always tried to treat the women in my various jobs as equals, and been told that I was, in particular, supportive of women in sports media when many of my peers in that male-dominated field were not. I didn’t do it intentionally; it’s just how I was raised.
So maybe I’m not surprised that my hero, Job, is something of a feminist, a man well before his time.
This is another part of the story of reconciliation. Maybe calling Job a “feminist” is too strong of a term, but consider this at the end of chapter 42: “… (Job) also had seven sons and three daughters. The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.”
True feminists might be offended at the reference to Job’s daughters’ beauty, but if you get hung up on that, you miss the truly surprising part of the story.
In what was definitely a patriarchal society, where sons were valued and became heirs while daughters were often treated as property, to be sold off in marriage, in the list of Job’s children only his daughters are named; not his sons.
More than that, Job’s daughters are granted the same inheritance as their brothers, which might have been scandalous for that time. Certainly, in later times it was.
And I wonder how this was perceived by the community, to have Job’s daughters treated as equal heirs to their brothers. What kind of empowerment did this give his daughters that women of that time didn’t typically have? How did that affect the other women of the community, and the daughters of his children to come?
And isn’t Job’s action here just like God, to love equally?
The story of Job is truly amazing. From Satan and God making a bet on the integrity of Job, to God showing up to speak to Job.
How did Job change? Did he change? On the one hand, I think I’d be pretty proud – “Well, you know, the other day when I was talking with God …” But I get the impression this encounter didn’t leave Job proud. I think he was left humbled, a changed man.
Job is not the only person to meet God in the Bible. From Adam and Eve's rocky start, through Moses and the patriarchs, all the way to the disciples of Jesus, many people had the uncommon experience of meeting God. Consider their reactions:
-Adam and Eve cowered in the Garden.
-Moses could barely breathe in front of the burning bush.
-Isaiah said, "I'm a dead man."
-The disciples bowed in their still-rocking boat and worshipped the man who had just ordered a storm to disappear.
-John and Peter left the empty tomb trying to fathom what they'd just discovered.
-Peter, especially, wondered what would happen to him after his denial.
- Saul needed three days to recover from his Damascus Road experience, so shaken that he didn’t eat or drink.
A few closing thoughts on the book of Job.
You know what's obvious, from even a casual observation of these encounters? When people meet God in the Bible, no one is laughing. No one is taking it lightly. No one acts as though a meeting with God is part of a routine schedule. All of them seem to connect with an early proverb: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge . . ." (Proverbs 1:7)
When we grasp the power of God, we're just like Job. All of our questions, all of our complaints, all of our priorities melt into sheer awe. The book of Job is non-stop dialogue, until it's time for Job to react to God. At that moment, Job says little more than, "Oh."
No one is exempt from tragedy. Not even God. Jesus was not given immunity, no way out of the suffering – just a way through it to the other side.
Maybe you think it would better if God would tell us why this happens or that happens. Maybe then we’d be able to handle it with a certain “buck up” attitude. But Satan’s challenge was that Job would fail without outside help or explanation. And God accepted those terms.
Which means that the kind of faith God values seems to develop best when God stays silent, when the fog rolls in and we feel alone and abandoned.
Now perhaps this isn’t much comfort. I get that. But in Ezekiel 14, God puts Jobs on a plain with Noah and Daniel as men of righteousness, men he is proud of, men he holds up as an example of guys who were able to carry the ball across the goal line against all odds, without even knowing the play.
Hebrews 11 says “the world was not worthy of them … and God is not ashamed to be called their God.”
Now, maybe you look at the ending of Job’s life and say, that’s not how it works in the real world. We’ve seen too many people who go through difficult situations without any sense of God showing up, much less God restoring their health and wealth. We see some Christians who suffer, and we see others who prosper, and most of us are right in the middle wondering “Why him and not me?” to both of those situations.
In John 21, after the Resurrection, the Disciples are fishing and Jesus shows up on the beach. You know the story. Anyway, he reassures Peter that he still loves him and restores him to a place of leadership, and then tells Peter about his future.
Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!”
Then an interesting thing happens. Peter looks over at John – who really did have a special relationship with Jesus - and says “What about him?
The story goes on:
“Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?”
Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.”
It’s almost like Jesus is saying, “I’ll tell you the story of your life, but John’s story is none of your business.” In other words, if there is one thing I know from the book of Job, God’s plan is much bigger than I can understand. Why he blesses me and not you, or why he blesses you and not me – that’s not my concern. My concern is, what is my response when Satan stands before God and accusingly points the finger at my life?
Another book I really love is the book of James. And I think the summary James gives Job in 5:11 says it nicely:
“Behold, we call those happy who were steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.”
Job was indeed steadfast. To our way of thinking, he was unjustly attacked – unjust in the sense that the only thing he did to deserve it was to live a righteous life, which got the attention of Satan.
As I said before, I want the kind of faith that God is pleased with, but I am afraid of the kind of faith that Satan takes notice of, the way Satan did Job.
I can say this, though. When trouble comes – and it will – regardless of whether it is because of my righteousness (unlikely) or something I did (far more probable), I pray that I handle it in a way that pleases God.
One lesson I have shared with my children is this: whatever you are going through, however hard the times are right now, no matter how serious the situation, one day you will come out on the other side. And when you do, you will have to ask yourself, “Did I handle that in a way that honored God?”
That brings us back to where we almost started. What is the chief purpose of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
Nobody said it would be easy.
But God promises it will be worth it.
Friday, May 25, 2018
Loving what you can't control (Job 42, continued)
For a time in my life, my wife and I lived in different states. We didn’t choose to do that, but my job was in another state, and for various reasons she lived in our home while I had an apartment where I worked. I’d leave on Sunday evening and come home on Friday.
I have to admit I didn’t mind being alone. I spent a lot of time on the road in my career, and I loved driving by myself for long distances. Unfortunately for my family, when we’d go on family vacations I too often acted like no one else was in the car and retreated into that world where I live when I drive, where I can think and listen to music and just process whatever is going on.
My family will tell you I can get lost inside my head, and I become difficult to talk to. I can get lost in a good book and make it clear I don’t want to get interrupted. As much as I love my wife and family, sometimes I enjoyed being off by myself.
The other day my wife and daughter were talking about what would happen if my wife died before me (not sure what was going on there!). My daughter told my wife, “Mom, if you die first, Daddy will just sit in the house, read books, never leave, forget to eat, and be grumpy.”
I would have been offended except I can see where she thinks that. And, truth be told, she’s probably right.
But even with that, I can tell you I love being around people. I love relationships. I don’t have that many really good friendships(probably as a result of living so much in my head), but those I do have I value. I get recharged by meeting new people, seeing new places, going into new situations, and making new friends.
Because we are people meant for relationships – with God, with each other. God said it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone, even though Adam had God to walk and talk with, so God made Eve. That’s just how we're supposed to be.
We come to the end of Job’s story in Chapter 42, and see where Job’s position and wealth are restored.
But it’s how they are restored that is important: through relationships with other people.
It says in verse 10, “After Job had prayed for his friends” – remember how important that prayer was, that it was the final test for Job, and again Job proved his righteousness – “the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before. All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the Lord had brought on him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring.”
It says “All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before…” And I can’t help but wonder – where were all these people when Job was in misery? We never knew he had “brothers and sisters;” where was his family in all this misery? And all those people he had helped in his role as counselor, giving advice at the city gate, helping through tough situations – once calamity hit Job, they were nowhere to be found.
Why? Because, if we’re honest, most of us are not comfortable being around people going through hard times. I can tell you I’m not good around sick people. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to ask people "how's it going" without feeling like I’m prying. And maybe I don’t really want to know, just in case it’s really bad and they start crying. I don’t handle emotion very well, either.
And when someone loses his job, loses his position or prestige, it’s human nature to scatter. It’s like we’re afraid of guilt by association. I’ve had friends who lost really good jobs, and even known a few people who were indicted for crimes that they may or may not have committed. I can tell you a lot of people who used to flock to them suddenly looked the other way when they were in the same room; they’d find another table to sit at during a meeting. Some of it may have been mean, but I think most of it was just uncomfortable.
When I was in the media, a career that included newspapers and radio and TV, I had a lot of "friends." People used to tell me, “If you ever leave the media, you’ll be in such demand. We could really use you.” And then when, after 30 years, I did leave, do you think I heard from those people? Even when I called, those people who said they’d love to hire me suddenly were saying, “If I hear of anything, I’ll let you know.” And it wasn’t just me. I’ve seen quite a few of my friends go through the same thing.
Ah, but just like Job’s friends and family, they show up for the party at the end!
Maybe you know some people like that.
Don’t misunderstand my tone. I may sound bitter, but I’m not. I get it. I really do.
But it’s wrong.
Still, for Job, once everyone got the word that God actually showed up and spoke to Job, and that the people who shunned Job would only be forgiven if Job forgave them, suddenly they were all over him, bringing him gifts, helping him get started again in his business, bringing pot luck meals and no doubt offering to help him restart his herds.
And you know what? Job accepted their help. That’s pretty important, too.
There was nothing to be gained by being bitter, by accusing them with “where were you when I needed you?” My guess is that Job, being the righteous man of God that he proved to be, forgave and welcomed these people back into his life, accepted their gifts, went back to work to rebuild his business and his family and his position in society.
Could God have done this without those relationships, as shallow as they seemed to have been? God can do anything, of course – but God chose for Job to get his life back through relationships.
Relationships are, by their very nature, reciprocal. People want to know you, you have to want to know them. People want to hang out with you, you have to want to hang out with them. And that can get messy, and uncomfortable, and even have risks (like getting sick, too, if the person you visit is ill; having people wonder about you if the other person has been indicted for a crime). But most of us think we're worth the risk. Therefore, aren't other people worth the risk too?
The story goes on to say, “The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. And he also had seven sons and three daughters. …”
I don’t know about you, but it kind of bothers me to think that 10 new children could replace the 10 children Job had lost. He and his wife had already raised 10 children to adulthood. My children are out of college now, and as much as I love them and the way they’ve turned out, I can’t imagine starting over. My wife loves babies. She’d gladly have more, if she could. Meanwhile, I had a dog for 18 years who travelled with me and lived with me when I was away from home and I loved, but as much as I miss him now that he died, I just can’t do the puppy thing again.
But somehow Job and his wife – the same woman, I assume, who told Job to “curse God and die” in the early part of the story – come together and had 10 more kids. There is a lot of reconciliation going on here.
The bigger question I have is, how much courage did it take for Job to become a father again? I have read stories of Holocaust survivors who were terrified to bring children into the world because of what they went through and the fear that it could happen again. I read stories of people who say they just think it’s wrong to bring children into a world of such pain and suffering.
Job has seen the absolute worst that life can bring, and he chooses to do it all again. Job – and his wife - choose to bear children again. Job chooses to love and live, even when he knows the potential cost of loving and living, the potential for pain and loss that comes with any relationship.
And while it says Job’s wealth was doubled, meaning he got twice as much of everything this second time around, he didn’t get twice the children. He only got the same number as he had when the story started. Maybe that’s because God knew the first 10 could not be replaced and would never be forgotten; maybe it’s because while those 10 died, they were still alive in heaven which means that Job actually did have twice the number of children.
If I may be so bold, I think there is an underlying question that God is really posing as He talks about the universe and the plan that only He can see. It’s a question that we all face – Job and every one of us.
The question is this: Can you love what you do not control? It is a question worth pondering, as we look at this creation that we can’t control; the ups and downs of life’s events we can’t control; the people we love – even our own children – that ultimatly we can’t really control; even, ultimately, the wild and unpredictable Creator of it all.
Wife, children, job, friends - Job couldn't control any of them. To a certain extent - at least for a time - he lost them all. But he gladly and unselfishly accepted it all back, even knowing the pain of having been rejected by those very same people. Just like you and I have been hurt by (and have hurt) our wife or husband, our children, our friends, our boss, our pastor, our church, our neighbors. The question is, are we willing to get over it, to accept their apology and attempts to restore that relationship, to look past their own imperfections even as we hope they look past ours?
To me, that's a reflection of our relationship with God. We love Him, we reject Him, we want to come back to Him and God accepts us over and over and over. It's the children of Israel in the Old Testament, it's the Gospel of the New Testament, it my life and, my guess is, it's yours.
So the question is, are you willing to love what you cannot control?
I have to admit I didn’t mind being alone. I spent a lot of time on the road in my career, and I loved driving by myself for long distances. Unfortunately for my family, when we’d go on family vacations I too often acted like no one else was in the car and retreated into that world where I live when I drive, where I can think and listen to music and just process whatever is going on.
My family will tell you I can get lost inside my head, and I become difficult to talk to. I can get lost in a good book and make it clear I don’t want to get interrupted. As much as I love my wife and family, sometimes I enjoyed being off by myself.
The other day my wife and daughter were talking about what would happen if my wife died before me (not sure what was going on there!). My daughter told my wife, “Mom, if you die first, Daddy will just sit in the house, read books, never leave, forget to eat, and be grumpy.”
I would have been offended except I can see where she thinks that. And, truth be told, she’s probably right.
But even with that, I can tell you I love being around people. I love relationships. I don’t have that many really good friendships(probably as a result of living so much in my head), but those I do have I value. I get recharged by meeting new people, seeing new places, going into new situations, and making new friends.
Because we are people meant for relationships – with God, with each other. God said it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone, even though Adam had God to walk and talk with, so God made Eve. That’s just how we're supposed to be.
We come to the end of Job’s story in Chapter 42, and see where Job’s position and wealth are restored.
But it’s how they are restored that is important: through relationships with other people.
It says in verse 10, “After Job had prayed for his friends” – remember how important that prayer was, that it was the final test for Job, and again Job proved his righteousness – “the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before. All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the Lord had brought on him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring.”
It says “All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before…” And I can’t help but wonder – where were all these people when Job was in misery? We never knew he had “brothers and sisters;” where was his family in all this misery? And all those people he had helped in his role as counselor, giving advice at the city gate, helping through tough situations – once calamity hit Job, they were nowhere to be found.
Why? Because, if we’re honest, most of us are not comfortable being around people going through hard times. I can tell you I’m not good around sick people. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to ask people "how's it going" without feeling like I’m prying. And maybe I don’t really want to know, just in case it’s really bad and they start crying. I don’t handle emotion very well, either.
And when someone loses his job, loses his position or prestige, it’s human nature to scatter. It’s like we’re afraid of guilt by association. I’ve had friends who lost really good jobs, and even known a few people who were indicted for crimes that they may or may not have committed. I can tell you a lot of people who used to flock to them suddenly looked the other way when they were in the same room; they’d find another table to sit at during a meeting. Some of it may have been mean, but I think most of it was just uncomfortable.
When I was in the media, a career that included newspapers and radio and TV, I had a lot of "friends." People used to tell me, “If you ever leave the media, you’ll be in such demand. We could really use you.” And then when, after 30 years, I did leave, do you think I heard from those people? Even when I called, those people who said they’d love to hire me suddenly were saying, “If I hear of anything, I’ll let you know.” And it wasn’t just me. I’ve seen quite a few of my friends go through the same thing.
Ah, but just like Job’s friends and family, they show up for the party at the end!
Maybe you know some people like that.
Don’t misunderstand my tone. I may sound bitter, but I’m not. I get it. I really do.
But it’s wrong.
Still, for Job, once everyone got the word that God actually showed up and spoke to Job, and that the people who shunned Job would only be forgiven if Job forgave them, suddenly they were all over him, bringing him gifts, helping him get started again in his business, bringing pot luck meals and no doubt offering to help him restart his herds.
And you know what? Job accepted their help. That’s pretty important, too.
There was nothing to be gained by being bitter, by accusing them with “where were you when I needed you?” My guess is that Job, being the righteous man of God that he proved to be, forgave and welcomed these people back into his life, accepted their gifts, went back to work to rebuild his business and his family and his position in society.
Could God have done this without those relationships, as shallow as they seemed to have been? God can do anything, of course – but God chose for Job to get his life back through relationships.
Relationships are, by their very nature, reciprocal. People want to know you, you have to want to know them. People want to hang out with you, you have to want to hang out with them. And that can get messy, and uncomfortable, and even have risks (like getting sick, too, if the person you visit is ill; having people wonder about you if the other person has been indicted for a crime). But most of us think we're worth the risk. Therefore, aren't other people worth the risk too?
The story goes on to say, “The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. And he also had seven sons and three daughters. …”
I don’t know about you, but it kind of bothers me to think that 10 new children could replace the 10 children Job had lost. He and his wife had already raised 10 children to adulthood. My children are out of college now, and as much as I love them and the way they’ve turned out, I can’t imagine starting over. My wife loves babies. She’d gladly have more, if she could. Meanwhile, I had a dog for 18 years who travelled with me and lived with me when I was away from home and I loved, but as much as I miss him now that he died, I just can’t do the puppy thing again.
But somehow Job and his wife – the same woman, I assume, who told Job to “curse God and die” in the early part of the story – come together and had 10 more kids. There is a lot of reconciliation going on here.
The bigger question I have is, how much courage did it take for Job to become a father again? I have read stories of Holocaust survivors who were terrified to bring children into the world because of what they went through and the fear that it could happen again. I read stories of people who say they just think it’s wrong to bring children into a world of such pain and suffering.
Job has seen the absolute worst that life can bring, and he chooses to do it all again. Job – and his wife - choose to bear children again. Job chooses to love and live, even when he knows the potential cost of loving and living, the potential for pain and loss that comes with any relationship.
And while it says Job’s wealth was doubled, meaning he got twice as much of everything this second time around, he didn’t get twice the children. He only got the same number as he had when the story started. Maybe that’s because God knew the first 10 could not be replaced and would never be forgotten; maybe it’s because while those 10 died, they were still alive in heaven which means that Job actually did have twice the number of children.
If I may be so bold, I think there is an underlying question that God is really posing as He talks about the universe and the plan that only He can see. It’s a question that we all face – Job and every one of us.
The question is this: Can you love what you do not control? It is a question worth pondering, as we look at this creation that we can’t control; the ups and downs of life’s events we can’t control; the people we love – even our own children – that ultimatly we can’t really control; even, ultimately, the wild and unpredictable Creator of it all.
Wife, children, job, friends - Job couldn't control any of them. To a certain extent - at least for a time - he lost them all. But he gladly and unselfishly accepted it all back, even knowing the pain of having been rejected by those very same people. Just like you and I have been hurt by (and have hurt) our wife or husband, our children, our friends, our boss, our pastor, our church, our neighbors. The question is, are we willing to get over it, to accept their apology and attempts to restore that relationship, to look past their own imperfections even as we hope they look past ours?
To me, that's a reflection of our relationship with God. We love Him, we reject Him, we want to come back to Him and God accepts us over and over and over. It's the children of Israel in the Old Testament, it's the Gospel of the New Testament, it my life and, my guess is, it's yours.
So the question is, are you willing to love what you cannot control?
Monday, May 21, 2018
The Art of Asking for Forgiveness - and Forgiving (Job 42)
Ah, revenge. We love it, don’t we? To see justice done – particularly when justice involved making right some wrong that was done to us.
My family loves the movie “The Princess Bride.” The character of Inigo Montoya has spent his life seeking revenge on the six-finger man who killed his father. He’s spent nearly his entire life looking for this six-fingered man, and when he finally meets him he utters (repeatedly) one of the great lines from a movie of great lines: “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
Only the thing is, after all those years when Inigo finally gets his revenge, he is lost. He says, “It is very strange. I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it's over, I don't know what to do with the rest of my life.”
We get to the end of Job, and after all the theology, drama, discussion of the previous 41 chapters, it’s easy to simply be thankful Job’s ordeal is finally come to an end, making it easy to gloss over this last chapter as simply the Disney ending of “And everyone lived happily ever after.”
But I think we make a mistake to dismiss these final words so easily.
As far as we can tell, Job’s friends hear God talking to Job, which means they soon understand they have been wrong all this time, Job was right, and God is not happy with them.
God tells the friends, “So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly.”
A couple of things happen here.
One, God tells the friends to ask Job to forgive them. In fact, it sounds like God is saying not only do the friends need to ask for Job’s forgiveness, but whether or not God will forgive them depends entirely on Job.
If you’re Job, that’s pretty powerful. He can have final say over the people who have been doubting him, speaking lies about him, arguing with him that Job deserved all that has happened to him. I don’t know about you, but I like nothing better than to be proven right. I love it when people say, “We should have listened to you.” And it’s only human nature to want to see those people who spoke ill of me to experience a little misery of their own.
Once, many years ago, a young man wanted to join an organization I was part of. I didn’t think this young man was a good fit, and said so. I had enough influence to block the application, but the next week the leaders of this organization brought the application up again and used a rule to block me from having a vote. The young man was accepted into the organization.
It just so happened that I left that organization not long afterward. It had nothing to do with this incident; I simply moved to take advantage of another opportunity. But years later I ran into a few of the people from that organization who told me it was soon evident that I was right, and in fact it became something of a catch phrase whenever this person did something not in keeping with the organization, and someone would say, “Melick was right.” Selfishly, part of me was gratified.
So God tells Job, “I know your friends have spoken ill of you, and they’ve spoken lies about me. If they ask you to forgive them, it’s up to you. If you forgive them, I’ll forgive them too.”
But as Scripture tells us time and time again, we’ve been forgiven so much – our sins, and the penalty of death that those sins call for – how can we fail to forgive someone who wrongs us, some human who really has no power over our eternal destiny?
What does that say to us about how we’re to behave when we realize we’re wrong? What we’d like to do – what most of us do – is simply say, “Hey, that whole thing that I accused you of, that ruined your life? Apparently, I was wrong. Sorry about that.”
God offers a more extreme measure of how to ask forgiveness. Not that we need to go gather livestock to kill in front of the person we did wrong in order to show how sorry we are, but I am afraid that my asking for forgiveness needs to go beyond a simple, “Sorry about that.”
Asking forgiveness is, I think, not something we’re to take lightly. There is a cost in forgiveness. Jesus demonstrated that on the cross. And while I’m not comparing my willingness to forgive someone with Jesus’ sacrifice, when we’re asked to forgive someone for something they did to us there is some humility involved on our part. We could demand justice. We could react with righteous indignation. And who would fault us for that?
Maybe God.
In what we call “the Lord’s Prayer,’’ we’re told to say, “Forgive us, as we forgive others.” (My paraphrase). That’s compelling, that we ask to be forgiven to the extent that we forgive. In fact, Jesus goes on to break this down further when he unpacks it in Matthew 6:14–15: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” That’s huge.
James, the half-brother of Jesus whose language is most like that of Jesus, says in his book (chapter 2, verse 13), “For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.” (NIV). Kind of like Jesus’ words in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” And the Old Testament prophet Micah (6:8): “What is required of you but this: to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.”
And Job – for all we know, Job is still sick. He’s still scratching and sitting in ashes, miserable. When the three friends come to Job seeking his intercession with God on their behalf, it's not just their humility that is on trial. Job is now being asked to love his enemies and pray for those who abused him. He is being asked to bless those who cursed him and not to return evil for evil.
It’s like one last test of Job – even after all this, will Job still do what is right in God's eyes?
The very one that they had accused of being far from God must become their priest to bring them near to God. In other words, God is seeing to it that the only way the three friends can experience reconciliation with God is through experiencing reconciliation with Job. They must humble themselves before Job, not simply before God.
Asking forgiveness should not be easy. It should not be something like a throw-away line. It seems to me it should be serious stuff - and I know I'm as guilty of trivializing it as anyone; of simply asking to be forgiven because I want to end the argument or release the tension and about half the time I don't really mean it because down deep I can make really convincing excuses for myself.
Let me go back to my story up above. I don’t remember that young man’s name. I have no idea of what happened to him. Hopefully, we went on to a great life, and doesn’t remember me or my name either.
But I do wish I had the chance to say to him that I handled that situation wrong, and I know I offended him, and in retrospect no organization was worth the embarrassment I caused him. At the time it seemed really important; now, all I can think of is I never had the chance to at least try to make it right.
Just as the book of Job teaches us about caring for someone who is going through a tragedy, just as it offers us clues on how to comfort and give advice, now we see what asking - and giving - forgiveness should look like.
Let me close with a passage from another of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis who, in his book "The Weight of Glory," wrote about forgiveness:
"... you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart — every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out. The difference between this situation and the one in such you are asking God’s forgiveness is this. In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people’s we do not accept them easily enough.
As regards my own sin it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are not really so good as I think; as regards other men’s sins against me it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are better than I think. One must therefore begin by attending to everything which may show that the other man was not so much to blame as we thought.
But even if he is absolutely fully to blame we still have to forgive him; and even if ninety-nine percent of his apparent guilt can be explained away by really good excuses, the problem of forgiveness begins with the one percent guilt which is left over. To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian character; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life — to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son—how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night ‘forgive our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.’ We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says. ..."
God means what He says.
When asking or offering forgiveness, pray that we mean it, too.
My family loves the movie “The Princess Bride.” The character of Inigo Montoya has spent his life seeking revenge on the six-finger man who killed his father. He’s spent nearly his entire life looking for this six-fingered man, and when he finally meets him he utters (repeatedly) one of the great lines from a movie of great lines: “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
Only the thing is, after all those years when Inigo finally gets his revenge, he is lost. He says, “It is very strange. I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it's over, I don't know what to do with the rest of my life.”
We get to the end of Job, and after all the theology, drama, discussion of the previous 41 chapters, it’s easy to simply be thankful Job’s ordeal is finally come to an end, making it easy to gloss over this last chapter as simply the Disney ending of “And everyone lived happily ever after.”
But I think we make a mistake to dismiss these final words so easily.
As far as we can tell, Job’s friends hear God talking to Job, which means they soon understand they have been wrong all this time, Job was right, and God is not happy with them.
God tells the friends, “So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly.”
A couple of things happen here.
One, God tells the friends to ask Job to forgive them. In fact, it sounds like God is saying not only do the friends need to ask for Job’s forgiveness, but whether or not God will forgive them depends entirely on Job.
If you’re Job, that’s pretty powerful. He can have final say over the people who have been doubting him, speaking lies about him, arguing with him that Job deserved all that has happened to him. I don’t know about you, but I like nothing better than to be proven right. I love it when people say, “We should have listened to you.” And it’s only human nature to want to see those people who spoke ill of me to experience a little misery of their own.
Once, many years ago, a young man wanted to join an organization I was part of. I didn’t think this young man was a good fit, and said so. I had enough influence to block the application, but the next week the leaders of this organization brought the application up again and used a rule to block me from having a vote. The young man was accepted into the organization.
It just so happened that I left that organization not long afterward. It had nothing to do with this incident; I simply moved to take advantage of another opportunity. But years later I ran into a few of the people from that organization who told me it was soon evident that I was right, and in fact it became something of a catch phrase whenever this person did something not in keeping with the organization, and someone would say, “Melick was right.” Selfishly, part of me was gratified.
So God tells Job, “I know your friends have spoken ill of you, and they’ve spoken lies about me. If they ask you to forgive them, it’s up to you. If you forgive them, I’ll forgive them too.”
But as Scripture tells us time and time again, we’ve been forgiven so much – our sins, and the penalty of death that those sins call for – how can we fail to forgive someone who wrongs us, some human who really has no power over our eternal destiny?
What does that say to us about how we’re to behave when we realize we’re wrong? What we’d like to do – what most of us do – is simply say, “Hey, that whole thing that I accused you of, that ruined your life? Apparently, I was wrong. Sorry about that.”
God offers a more extreme measure of how to ask forgiveness. Not that we need to go gather livestock to kill in front of the person we did wrong in order to show how sorry we are, but I am afraid that my asking for forgiveness needs to go beyond a simple, “Sorry about that.”
Asking forgiveness is, I think, not something we’re to take lightly. There is a cost in forgiveness. Jesus demonstrated that on the cross. And while I’m not comparing my willingness to forgive someone with Jesus’ sacrifice, when we’re asked to forgive someone for something they did to us there is some humility involved on our part. We could demand justice. We could react with righteous indignation. And who would fault us for that?
Maybe God.
In what we call “the Lord’s Prayer,’’ we’re told to say, “Forgive us, as we forgive others.” (My paraphrase). That’s compelling, that we ask to be forgiven to the extent that we forgive. In fact, Jesus goes on to break this down further when he unpacks it in Matthew 6:14–15: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” That’s huge.
James, the half-brother of Jesus whose language is most like that of Jesus, says in his book (chapter 2, verse 13), “For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.” (NIV). Kind of like Jesus’ words in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” And the Old Testament prophet Micah (6:8): “What is required of you but this: to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.”
And Job – for all we know, Job is still sick. He’s still scratching and sitting in ashes, miserable. When the three friends come to Job seeking his intercession with God on their behalf, it's not just their humility that is on trial. Job is now being asked to love his enemies and pray for those who abused him. He is being asked to bless those who cursed him and not to return evil for evil.
It’s like one last test of Job – even after all this, will Job still do what is right in God's eyes?
The very one that they had accused of being far from God must become their priest to bring them near to God. In other words, God is seeing to it that the only way the three friends can experience reconciliation with God is through experiencing reconciliation with Job. They must humble themselves before Job, not simply before God.
Asking forgiveness should not be easy. It should not be something like a throw-away line. It seems to me it should be serious stuff - and I know I'm as guilty of trivializing it as anyone; of simply asking to be forgiven because I want to end the argument or release the tension and about half the time I don't really mean it because down deep I can make really convincing excuses for myself.
Let me go back to my story up above. I don’t remember that young man’s name. I have no idea of what happened to him. Hopefully, we went on to a great life, and doesn’t remember me or my name either.
But I do wish I had the chance to say to him that I handled that situation wrong, and I know I offended him, and in retrospect no organization was worth the embarrassment I caused him. At the time it seemed really important; now, all I can think of is I never had the chance to at least try to make it right.
Just as the book of Job teaches us about caring for someone who is going through a tragedy, just as it offers us clues on how to comfort and give advice, now we see what asking - and giving - forgiveness should look like.
Let me close with a passage from another of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis who, in his book "The Weight of Glory," wrote about forgiveness:
"... you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart — every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out. The difference between this situation and the one in such you are asking God’s forgiveness is this. In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people’s we do not accept them easily enough.
As regards my own sin it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are not really so good as I think; as regards other men’s sins against me it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are better than I think. One must therefore begin by attending to everything which may show that the other man was not so much to blame as we thought.
But even if he is absolutely fully to blame we still have to forgive him; and even if ninety-nine percent of his apparent guilt can be explained away by really good excuses, the problem of forgiveness begins with the one percent guilt which is left over. To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian character; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life — to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son—how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night ‘forgive our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.’ We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says. ..."
God means what He says.
When asking or offering forgiveness, pray that we mean it, too.
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
What ticks God off (Job 42)
There is a song recorded most famously by Ray Charles (among others) but written in Nashville by a writer named Cindy Walker called “You Don’t Know Me,” and the first verse goes:
You give your hand to me
And then you say hello
And I can hardly speak
My heart is beating so
And anyone can tell
You think you know me well
But you don't know me
I think it’s basic human nature to want to be known. Some of us want to be known more than others. But even those of us who want, basically, to be left alone would like to have someone who doesn’t just know us, but – and here’s the real key, I think – understands us.
Have you ever heard yourself described by someone else? I was a minor public figure for awhile and used to hear people talk about me, and realized they didn’t really know me. I have worked for or with far more famous people, people who are well-known, but realize they are often not understood. It is amazing how people will talk about them very confidently, but as someone who knows the person being talked about reasonably well I can tell, “You don’t really know them.”
I admit I don’t mind if people talk about me and make me sound better than I am (and that’s not hard to do!).
But I don’t think any of us like being talked about in a way that doesn’t reflect who we really are, in a way that misrepresents our character, our intentions, our words, our true nature.
And as we wrap up the story of Job, we find out that God doesn’t like being talked about incorrectly either.
In Chapter 41, it says, “After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me …”
If I may be so bold as to help clarify what I think God is saying here, it is something like, “You thought you were speaking about me and on my behalf to Job, but you were only speaking from your own wisdom, which turned out to be foolishness.”
Good intentions – which Job’s friends were full of (at least initially) – don’t cut it. Particularly when God has gone to great lengths to reveal Himself (as we discussed in previous posts).
I led a study one time on the so-called Minor Prophets (are any prophets of God really “minor?”) based on a book called “What Ticks God Off” by Bruce Bickel and Stan Jantz. It was a really good introduction to those books at the end of the Old Testament, back where the underlining often stops until we get going into the New Testament.
What we see here in Job is one of the things that “ticks God off” is people talking about God as if they know him. And you hear it all the time – preachers who confidently tell you what God thinks or does or would do in a given situation. But very often, just like Job’s very smart and well-meaning friends, they are just flat-out wrong.
I was reading the book of Ezekial the other day, and it spells out God’s reaction to those who take it upon themselves to speak for God without really knowing Him.
This is Ezekiel 13, from Eugene Peterson’s “The Message,’’ because the language is so straightforward (and I’ve edited it for space).
“Son of man, preach against the prophets of Israel who are making things up out of their own heads and calling it ‘prophesying.’ Preach to them the real thing. Tell them, ‘Listen to God’s Message!’ God, the Master, pronounces doom on the empty-headed prophets who do their own thing and know nothing of what’s going on! …. All they do is fantasize comforting illusions and preach lying sermons. They say, ‘God says . . .’ when God hasn’t so much as breathed in their direction. … Aren’t your sermons tissues of lies, saying ‘God says . . .’ when I’ve done nothing of the kind? Therefore—and this is the Message of God, the Master, remember—I’m dead set against prophets who substitute illusions for visions and use sermons to tell lies. The fact is that they’ve lied to my people. They’ve said, ‘No problem; everything’s just fine,’ when things are not at all fine. …”
So how do we know about God?
Now we get to the point (and forgive me, but I know I’ve written this before).
The primary way we get to understand God is by reading the Bible. God’s Word. Holy Scripture. As Luther would say, “Sola scriptura,” which means that Scripture alone is authoritative for the faith and practice of the Christian. The Bible is complete, authoritative, and true.
I’m not talking memorizing Bible verses, although that’s not a bad thing. Personally, I can’t give you chapter and verse, yet when someone starts quoting a verse of Scripture chances are I know it and can say it along with them (in one translation or another). I know people who can give you chapter and verse and I wish I was like them. I even bought a little book called “52 Verses Every Christian Should Memorize” or something like that, and really worked on memorization. At the end, I knew the verses – but still couldn’t recall book, chapter and verse!
What I’m talking about is just reading. Letting the words seep into your brain, your heart, your soul. It’s reading with a purpose – not to make ourselves smarter, but to know God better.
Jesus, in Matthew 22:37-38 (I know the verse by heart, but had to look up the reference), said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.”
All your heart, soul and mind, which is pretty thorough. And as we have seen in Job and Ezekiel, wrong thoughts about God produce wrong belief about God. You can’t really love what you don’t really know.
Paul writes in Philippians 1, “It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” Love “abounds” with knowledge and discernment.
Paul, again, in 2 Corinthians 3:18, “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
We become what we behold. When I was a kid, I wanted to be like the characters John Wayne played in the movies. So I watched and, without realizing it, studied them, trying to walk and talk like the heroic characters John Wayne played (which conjures up a pretty funny image, I know).
Likewise, when we read and study God’s Word, we find it transforms us. We find ourselves suddenly losing interest in doing things we used to do; find that better person that reflects the image of God that resides in us. We start to actually act more like Christ! (Paul says we should be “imitators” of Christ in Ephesians 5).
Paul, in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, writes, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
Most of us want to do “good works.” Young people today in particular seem more interested in getting involved in making the world a better place to live than they are in getting a good job, a career, etc. Many young people honestly desire to do something for God. But what Paul said is pretty clear: you can’t be equipped to really do good work until you are immersed in the word of God.
The Bible shows us God’s priorities, His values, His mission, His heart. It shows us what he has been doing in the world, and what He is doing. It shows us, as one writer said, how to love “the forgotten and the misfit. It shows us the value of shepherding our families. It introduces us to the generosity of other Christians (2 Corinthians 8:1–7), and calls us to be openhanded with what God gives us. It heralds the sanctity of every human life and inspires us to fight for the unborn. It declares that race should not be a barrier to Christian unity, but a beautiful occasion for it.”
But along the way, we have to know how to speak correctly about God. And that only comes from knowing God’s Word.
It’s not emotion (although certainly our emotions react to God, which is important). It’s not how we imagine a “fair and loving” God to be. It’s not what we honestly believe God “should” be like. All of that is exactly how Job’s friends talked about God – their vision of God and God’s motives – which clearly made God angry.
At the same time, we’re going to make mistakes. I have grown up in the church, and at various times had roles of leadership in my local church. I know I have said and taught things 20 or 30 years ago which I now regret because I know I was incorrect, even though I was expressing my best knowledge of God at the time.
In high school, I had a terrific youth pastor named Dan DeHaan who once gave us all a piece of advice (what that advice was is not important to this story). Years later, when I graduated college, I went back to Dan and told him I was struggling because I was trying to follow that particular advice and Dan told me, “Oh, I wish you hadn’t remembered that. I wish I’d never said it. I was wrong, and I know I’ve caused some people some pain with those words.”
We’re called to talk about God, to share our knowledge of God, and yet warned to be cautious – to speak only what we know to be true of God. It’s really a pretty awesome responsibility.
Job didn’t have Scripture. It’s one of the oldest – if not the oldest – books of the Bible. But clearly God had revealed Himself to Job. That’s still true today, that God reveals himself to us and, as it says in Romans, we are “without excuse.”
I don’t know exactly where I heard this so I don’t know who to give the credit to, so let me just say this isn’t my original idea. But the words went something like, “This world is not falling apart; God’s plan is coming together.” I like that. It is a great reminder, and a great comfort. But I don’t understand what God’s plan is unless I see the picture presented in Scripture, and really try to understand what Scripture means.
God wants us to know Him. He wants us to talk about Him. In Deuteronomy 11 it says about our children that we should tell them about God’s laws by “… talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”
Or, again to use the language from The Message, “Place these words on your hearts. Get them deep inside you. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder. Teach them to your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning until you fall into bed at night.”
It’s amazing that Job, for all his complaints and concerns about God, is never accused by God of speaking incorrectly about Him. I think that speaks volumes about God – that he can take our doubts, our anger, our frustration as long as those doubts, anger and frustrations are expressed within the confines of our faith; and that even in the midst of those issues we don’t lose sight of who God is.
How many stories are in the Bible? The answer, really, is just one – the story of God. All Scripture is designed to reveal God to us, through many mini-stories, if you will.
And you begin, as Job did, to get a sense of the majesty, the power, the sheer greatness of God.
I read a story recently that Theodore Roosevelt had a habit of staring up at the night sky with a friend. They would step outside on a clear, starry night and point out the stars and galaxies and constellations. It was said the conversation went something like this:
“That is the Spiral Galaxy of Andromeda. It is as large as our Milky Way. It is one of a hundred million galaxies. It is seven hundred and fifty thousand light years away. It consists of one hundred billion suns, each larger than our own sun.”
Then there would be a pause, after which Roosevelt would grin and say, “All right. I think we feel small enough now. Good night.”
Or, as Job said at the start of chapter 42, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
We are called to know God ... in order to make Him known.
Truthfully.
You give your hand to me
And then you say hello
And I can hardly speak
My heart is beating so
And anyone can tell
You think you know me well
But you don't know me
I think it’s basic human nature to want to be known. Some of us want to be known more than others. But even those of us who want, basically, to be left alone would like to have someone who doesn’t just know us, but – and here’s the real key, I think – understands us.
Have you ever heard yourself described by someone else? I was a minor public figure for awhile and used to hear people talk about me, and realized they didn’t really know me. I have worked for or with far more famous people, people who are well-known, but realize they are often not understood. It is amazing how people will talk about them very confidently, but as someone who knows the person being talked about reasonably well I can tell, “You don’t really know them.”
I admit I don’t mind if people talk about me and make me sound better than I am (and that’s not hard to do!).
But I don’t think any of us like being talked about in a way that doesn’t reflect who we really are, in a way that misrepresents our character, our intentions, our words, our true nature.
And as we wrap up the story of Job, we find out that God doesn’t like being talked about incorrectly either.
In Chapter 41, it says, “After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me …”
If I may be so bold as to help clarify what I think God is saying here, it is something like, “You thought you were speaking about me and on my behalf to Job, but you were only speaking from your own wisdom, which turned out to be foolishness.”
Good intentions – which Job’s friends were full of (at least initially) – don’t cut it. Particularly when God has gone to great lengths to reveal Himself (as we discussed in previous posts).
I led a study one time on the so-called Minor Prophets (are any prophets of God really “minor?”) based on a book called “What Ticks God Off” by Bruce Bickel and Stan Jantz. It was a really good introduction to those books at the end of the Old Testament, back where the underlining often stops until we get going into the New Testament.
What we see here in Job is one of the things that “ticks God off” is people talking about God as if they know him. And you hear it all the time – preachers who confidently tell you what God thinks or does or would do in a given situation. But very often, just like Job’s very smart and well-meaning friends, they are just flat-out wrong.
I was reading the book of Ezekial the other day, and it spells out God’s reaction to those who take it upon themselves to speak for God without really knowing Him.
This is Ezekiel 13, from Eugene Peterson’s “The Message,’’ because the language is so straightforward (and I’ve edited it for space).
“Son of man, preach against the prophets of Israel who are making things up out of their own heads and calling it ‘prophesying.’ Preach to them the real thing. Tell them, ‘Listen to God’s Message!’ God, the Master, pronounces doom on the empty-headed prophets who do their own thing and know nothing of what’s going on! …. All they do is fantasize comforting illusions and preach lying sermons. They say, ‘God says . . .’ when God hasn’t so much as breathed in their direction. … Aren’t your sermons tissues of lies, saying ‘God says . . .’ when I’ve done nothing of the kind? Therefore—and this is the Message of God, the Master, remember—I’m dead set against prophets who substitute illusions for visions and use sermons to tell lies. The fact is that they’ve lied to my people. They’ve said, ‘No problem; everything’s just fine,’ when things are not at all fine. …”
So how do we know about God?
Now we get to the point (and forgive me, but I know I’ve written this before).
The primary way we get to understand God is by reading the Bible. God’s Word. Holy Scripture. As Luther would say, “Sola scriptura,” which means that Scripture alone is authoritative for the faith and practice of the Christian. The Bible is complete, authoritative, and true.
I’m not talking memorizing Bible verses, although that’s not a bad thing. Personally, I can’t give you chapter and verse, yet when someone starts quoting a verse of Scripture chances are I know it and can say it along with them (in one translation or another). I know people who can give you chapter and verse and I wish I was like them. I even bought a little book called “52 Verses Every Christian Should Memorize” or something like that, and really worked on memorization. At the end, I knew the verses – but still couldn’t recall book, chapter and verse!
What I’m talking about is just reading. Letting the words seep into your brain, your heart, your soul. It’s reading with a purpose – not to make ourselves smarter, but to know God better.
Jesus, in Matthew 22:37-38 (I know the verse by heart, but had to look up the reference), said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.”
All your heart, soul and mind, which is pretty thorough. And as we have seen in Job and Ezekiel, wrong thoughts about God produce wrong belief about God. You can’t really love what you don’t really know.
Paul writes in Philippians 1, “It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” Love “abounds” with knowledge and discernment.
Paul, again, in 2 Corinthians 3:18, “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
We become what we behold. When I was a kid, I wanted to be like the characters John Wayne played in the movies. So I watched and, without realizing it, studied them, trying to walk and talk like the heroic characters John Wayne played (which conjures up a pretty funny image, I know).
Likewise, when we read and study God’s Word, we find it transforms us. We find ourselves suddenly losing interest in doing things we used to do; find that better person that reflects the image of God that resides in us. We start to actually act more like Christ! (Paul says we should be “imitators” of Christ in Ephesians 5).
Paul, in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, writes, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
Most of us want to do “good works.” Young people today in particular seem more interested in getting involved in making the world a better place to live than they are in getting a good job, a career, etc. Many young people honestly desire to do something for God. But what Paul said is pretty clear: you can’t be equipped to really do good work until you are immersed in the word of God.
The Bible shows us God’s priorities, His values, His mission, His heart. It shows us what he has been doing in the world, and what He is doing. It shows us, as one writer said, how to love “the forgotten and the misfit. It shows us the value of shepherding our families. It introduces us to the generosity of other Christians (2 Corinthians 8:1–7), and calls us to be openhanded with what God gives us. It heralds the sanctity of every human life and inspires us to fight for the unborn. It declares that race should not be a barrier to Christian unity, but a beautiful occasion for it.”
But along the way, we have to know how to speak correctly about God. And that only comes from knowing God’s Word.
It’s not emotion (although certainly our emotions react to God, which is important). It’s not how we imagine a “fair and loving” God to be. It’s not what we honestly believe God “should” be like. All of that is exactly how Job’s friends talked about God – their vision of God and God’s motives – which clearly made God angry.
At the same time, we’re going to make mistakes. I have grown up in the church, and at various times had roles of leadership in my local church. I know I have said and taught things 20 or 30 years ago which I now regret because I know I was incorrect, even though I was expressing my best knowledge of God at the time.
In high school, I had a terrific youth pastor named Dan DeHaan who once gave us all a piece of advice (what that advice was is not important to this story). Years later, when I graduated college, I went back to Dan and told him I was struggling because I was trying to follow that particular advice and Dan told me, “Oh, I wish you hadn’t remembered that. I wish I’d never said it. I was wrong, and I know I’ve caused some people some pain with those words.”
We’re called to talk about God, to share our knowledge of God, and yet warned to be cautious – to speak only what we know to be true of God. It’s really a pretty awesome responsibility.
Job didn’t have Scripture. It’s one of the oldest – if not the oldest – books of the Bible. But clearly God had revealed Himself to Job. That’s still true today, that God reveals himself to us and, as it says in Romans, we are “without excuse.”
I don’t know exactly where I heard this so I don’t know who to give the credit to, so let me just say this isn’t my original idea. But the words went something like, “This world is not falling apart; God’s plan is coming together.” I like that. It is a great reminder, and a great comfort. But I don’t understand what God’s plan is unless I see the picture presented in Scripture, and really try to understand what Scripture means.
God wants us to know Him. He wants us to talk about Him. In Deuteronomy 11 it says about our children that we should tell them about God’s laws by “… talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”
Or, again to use the language from The Message, “Place these words on your hearts. Get them deep inside you. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder. Teach them to your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning until you fall into bed at night.”
It’s amazing that Job, for all his complaints and concerns about God, is never accused by God of speaking incorrectly about Him. I think that speaks volumes about God – that he can take our doubts, our anger, our frustration as long as those doubts, anger and frustrations are expressed within the confines of our faith; and that even in the midst of those issues we don’t lose sight of who God is.
How many stories are in the Bible? The answer, really, is just one – the story of God. All Scripture is designed to reveal God to us, through many mini-stories, if you will.
And you begin, as Job did, to get a sense of the majesty, the power, the sheer greatness of God.
I read a story recently that Theodore Roosevelt had a habit of staring up at the night sky with a friend. They would step outside on a clear, starry night and point out the stars and galaxies and constellations. It was said the conversation went something like this:
“That is the Spiral Galaxy of Andromeda. It is as large as our Milky Way. It is one of a hundred million galaxies. It is seven hundred and fifty thousand light years away. It consists of one hundred billion suns, each larger than our own sun.”
Then there would be a pause, after which Roosevelt would grin and say, “All right. I think we feel small enough now. Good night.”
Or, as Job said at the start of chapter 42, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
We are called to know God ... in order to make Him known.
Truthfully.
Thursday, May 10, 2018
Who does God think He is? (Job continued)
The church I grew up in was a Baptist church south of Atlanta, Ga. There are a lot of things I could say about this church. It was a great church in many ways: for supporting missionaries, for turning out young people who went into ministry, for teaching Bible memorization, for creating a sense of community, for teaching the importance of sharing your faith.
On the other hand, it wasn’t a very tolerant church – at least the leadership wasn’t - when it came to race relations or long hair (this was the late 1960s-early 1970s) or rock music. I say, “the leadership wasn’t” because many of the rank and file members were some of the most Godly people I have ever known, whose positive influence on me they may never know. But there was a period where a certain pastor came in and a cabal of Deacons took power and a whole bunch of us younger people simply left (or felt chased away). Not long after, a number of our parents left, too. After my junior year of high school, I never went back to that church.
But the church itself had what seemed, to a small kid, this huge auditorium that angled down to the pulpit and choir loft. Above the choir loft was a huge map of the world, with all these yellow lights representing every place that the church had missionaries that it supported. The baptistry, if I remember correctly, was right in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean (perhaps appropriately).
But I’ll never forget the words written across the map of the world: “To know God … to make him known.”
I have come to recognize that we cannot know God unless He reveals Himself to us – which He has, of course. Not only in Scripture, but Romans 1:20 says “For since the creation of the world God's invisible attributes—his eternal power and divine nature—have been understood and observed by what he made, so that people are without excuse.”
Psalms 19 says “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world …”
However, we do try to imagine what God is like. We try to create Him in an image we are comfortable with, so we say things like “A loving God would:
- Never allow suffering
- Never allow pain
- Never allow evil
- Never (fill in the blank).
These things sound good, but they are nothing more than human arrogance defining God by what we think God should be like.
We say things about God like Job does: "Oh, that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come even to His seat! I would lay my case before Him and fill my mouth with arguments . . . Why are not times of judgment kept by the Almighty, and why do those who know Him never see his days?" (23:3–4; 24:1; 13:23–24).
Well, after much dialogue and discussion and arguing over theology and the nature of guilt and sin and blamelessness among Job and his four friends, God does show up - but it’s not what Job expected. Rather than Job getting to question God, God questions Job.
It is interesting to me that God comes to Job as a voice in the whirlwind, in a storm. I wonder what Job thought about that, since it was a whirlwind/storm that killed his children!
But then the truth is, very often God speaks to us through our suffering; certainly He did with Job.
Let me say a few things about pain.
Pain is one of the loudest voices you’ll ever hear. It can drown out what you know to be true with lies – lies that say “You’ll never feel better. You’ll never be able to live a normal life. You’ll never be able to be the person you were before. You’ll never be able to do anything fun again. You’ll never be a good partner or parent. You’ll never …”
Having lived with someone who lives with chronic pain, I know there are times when pain changes the personality of that person I love, when the pain causes them to become someone different. I also know pain can convince some people there is no reason to go on, that life is not worth living if it’s going to be lived in pain. Pain truly is Satan’s voice, the father of lies, drowning out what you believe, what you know to be true, your ability to think clearly and reasonably.
But my wife has told me there are times, right in the worst of the storm of pain, that she can hear that still, small voice saying, “You are my child, you are worthy, your life has purpose and meaning. Trust me. I’m right here with you.”
Just as with Job – and so many other people in the Bible who saw God – in the midst of the storm, God often shows up.
For the first time since the second chapter of Job, God enters the story. For us, as readers, we know it’s the second time. But for Job and the other participants, it’s the first time they hear from God.
In speech after speech, Job cries out to God – pleads, argues, cajoles, whatever – and now, even as the fourth friend Elihu is speaking, (Job 32–37) a thunderstorm gathers and fills him with awe. It is as though Elihu senses the approach of God in this storm and brings his words to a close. And sure enough, somehow, out of the whirlwind comes the voice of God to Job (chapters 38–41). It’s almost as if God has grown tired of the ranting by the friends.
Now, I read recently where pastor Rick Warren noted there are 365 verses in the Bible that say, ‘Fear not.’ Warren recently wrote on his website. “It’s interesting that almost every time God talks to someone in the Bible, the first thing he says is, ‘Don’t be afraid!’” You know story after story where an Angel of the Lord’s first words are “Fear not!”
Yet here are God’s first words, as recorded in Chapter 38:
“Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?" (38:2). Job doesn’t respond.
"Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me" (38:3). Job keeps quiet.
"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much" (38:4).
One question would have been enough for Job, but it isn’t enough for God.
"Do you know how its dimensions were determined and who did the surveying? What supports its foundations, and who laid its cornerstone, as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?" (38:5-7).
The questions simply keep on coming. They pour like sheets of rain out of the clouds as he watches God Almighty define who is who in the universe.
So much for “fear not!” These are not great tidings of comfort and joy.
Rather than give Job an “attaboy” speech, God jumps in with both feet, banging on the proverbial table, and basically says to Job, “Have you ever run, much less created, an entire universe? If not, then I suggest you simply say ‘thank you’ for every breath you take and leave being God to God.”
That sounds kind of mean spirited, doesn’t it? So what is God doing here?
I think God’s questions weren’t intended to comfort or even teach, but to stun Job and his friends. They aren’t to enlighten them with knowledge as much as to awaken an appreciation for who God really is.
And God lays it all out – the mountains and valleys, the birds and animals and monsters of the sea, the stars and suns as well as the depths of the ocean.
He talks about big things, like the power to control the oceans. (Job 38: “Or who enclosed the sea with doors when, bursting forth, it went out from the womb; When I made a cloud its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and I placed boundaries on it, and set a bolt and doors, and I said, 'Thus far you shall come, but no farther; And here shall your proud waves stop'?”
He talks small things, like watching over the birth of a baby deer. (Job 39: “Do you watch when the doe bears her fawn? Do you count the months till they bear? Do you know the time they give birth? …”)
It is an amazing picture of all the things that are on God’s plate, a reminder that God didn’t just create the universe and then walk away, but watches over it all.
Isaiah 40 is a very Job-like passage where it says, “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance? Who can fathom the Spirit of the Lord, or instruct the Lord as his counselor?”
In other words, who is Job – or who am I, for that matter – to challenge God?
Finally Job’s feeble hand lifts, and God stops long enough for him to respond. "I am nothing - how could I ever find the answers? I lay my hand upon my mouth in silence. I have said too much already" (40:4).
God’s message eventually connects: Job is a peasant, telling the King how to run the kingdom. Job is an illiterate, telling Shakespeare how to write a play. Job is the clay, telling the Potter not to press so hard. "I owe no one anything," God declares. "Everything under the heaven is mine" (41:11).
And Job couldn’t argue. God owes no one anything. No explanations. No excuses. No help.
Which makes the fact that He gave us so much even more astounding.
How you interpret God's thundering response is critical. You can interpret God’s speech as a divine "in-your-face" tirade if you want. You can use the list of unanswerable questions to prove that God is harsh, cruel, and distant. You can use the Book of Job as evidence that God gives us questions and no answers.
But that is not how Job heard it. All his life, Job had been a good man. All his life, he had believed in God. All his life, he had discussed God, had notions about Him, and had prayed to Him. But in the storm Job sees Him! He has a personal encounter.
And no longer does Job expect or even want a straight answer from God. He realizes he can’t be like God – knowing all things. Instead, Job sees himself as a creature under the care of the Creator.
Don’t misunderstand what is happening here. God is not saying, “I can do these things because I’m God and you can’t stop me.” God is not irrational, using His power capriciously.
No, God says no man can imagine what it’s like, making decisions on how to run the world. But there is purpose, and that purpose is to uphold God’s Glory so that man can (as the Confession says) “enjoy Him forever.” We live believing, as the Psalmist said in Psalm 84, “God withholds no good thing from those who walk uprightly.” Of course, it is precisely because God not only sees the big picture but painted the big picture that allows Him to know what those “good things” are.
Few of us have had or will have the experience of God that Job had. But if we’re watching, we can see God for ourselves.
Where?
Well, in Jesus of course; the Light of the World who enables us to walk with Him when it darkness abounds. He is the One who is patient with his disciples, but who tests their faith in the storm, so that when he speaks the storm is stilled and his disciples exclaim '‘Who is this that the wind and waves obey him?’ Here we realize that we won't be left as orphans but that Jesus will come back to bring us into the family; who, until that days, lives within us in the form of the Holy Spirit. We have Jesus, who has been tested in every way as we have and yet triumphed over sin. And one day we will look back on the story of our lives and proclaim, “It is well with my soul.”
God isn’t bragging. He’s showing Job how much bigger God is than Job could ever imagine. And that it’s not all about Job – there are so many other moving parts to this earth that is under God’s hand and make up God's plan.
We know sometimes that what we see as tragedy, God means for good; and that what sometimes what we think is a blessing turns out to be a curse.
There is a Buddhist story that tells this tale:
The old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. "Such bad luck," they said sympathetically.
"Maybe," the farmer replied.
The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. "How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed. "Maybe," replied the old man.
The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. "Maybe," answered the farmer.
The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. "Maybe," said the farmer … and so on. You get the idea.
We have one response to God: Worship. Faith. And humility – that it’s not all about me.
My wife was hit by a drunk driver and no one on the scene expected her to live. We were told that if we had not been so close to a Level One trauma unit at UAB Hospital, that if she had to been taken to a lessor hospital to be stabilized before being flown to the proper center, she wouldn't have made it.
I know that UAB hospital wasn’t built exactly where it was at the time that it was just for my wife’s accident. It has saved the lives of countless numbers of people. But it was also in exactly the right place at the right time to save my wife’s life. There we so many ‘coincidences’ to our story, a whole list of "coincidences'' from the head of the emergency room who just happened to be on duty that morning, to the most unlikely stories concerning my kids' travel home, to even people who happened to be on call at the hospital that weekend. But as much as everything was perfectly prepared for us that weekend, we were not the only people in the hospital that Saturday morning, that week, that month. I met many others in the waiting room whose family members were in serious condition and who were being helped by the same doctors that helped us. It would have been foolish for me to declare: these doctors are only here for my benefit. They only care about me.
It’s the same with God. Like those doctors (at the risk of adding to the God-complex of doctors) who cared about us individually, but also collectively, so God works in us as individuals while the massive pieces of the universe continue to fall into places.
Like Job in chapter 42, we can say to God, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”
And live in the assurance that, despite what we see and feel and fear, the only thing we can know about God for certain is that He in in control.
Tuesday, May 8, 2018
When you can't keep your mouth shut (Job and the art of giving good advice)
Silence is golden.
But it is difficult. We're creatures that can make a wide variety of noises, from beautiful songs to embarrassing grunts and groans.
We are creatures meant to be in relationships, and as my wife has often reminded me, good communication is essential to a good relationship.
So we talk. Part of talking is sharing experiences in the hope that some of what we know will be helpful to someone else, or that hearing some of what they have gone through helps me with my situation.
As a writer, one of the greatest compliments I have ever received is when someone has said to me, "What you wrote is exactly what I was feeling and couldn't figure out how to say myself." I have friends who are song-writers, and one of those friends likes to say, "I was writing that song the day I heard it on the radio,'' by which he means someone else has found a way to say exactly what he wanted to say.
Our words can encourage, build up, give confidence, inspire, bring healing, educate, unite ... and they can do all the opposite as well.
For Job's friends, the quiet ran out after seven days. I guess they couldn't stand it anymore. They wanted their friend to deal with what was happening, and so they offered their best advice, their learned suggestions, and shared their frustrations of watching Job go through what he was going through.
It was only natural for them to begin to offer reasons for Job's pain, and solutions for getting over what was happening.
Among their suggestions:
Job 4:1-8 – basically, bad things happen to bad people.
Job 5:6-9 – things don’t happen for no reason. Turn to God and perhaps He’ll forgive.
Job 8:1-4 – maybe your children sinned and you’re paying for that.
Job 11:4-6 – whatever this is, it’s less than you deserve.
Job 15:1-6 – your arrogance condemns you.
Job 22:21-23 submit to God and be restored
Here’s the point. All of these statements have a basis in truth. They certainly sound legitimate. I guarantee you there are times in your life (and certainly in mine) when this type of advice is right on the mark. Job's friends are not considered foolish, and, like Job, they were probably used to offering counsel.
And yet, they are wrong.
Have you ever sat and listened to a Christian give bad advice? I have. Heck, I’m sure I’ve given bad advice in the name of bringing Christian comfort or Christ-like council.
But while we know Job’s friends meant well, from our perspective we can recognize that they, too, were being used by Satan to try to bring Job down. I don’t think any of us ever want to be the tools of the great Accuser working for evil in the lives of our fellow believers!
Reading Job has caused me to pause before offering up advice. I recognize that, in a sense, I’m offering advice as I write this blog, but I feel compelled to take that chance. Maybe it would be better if I left the pages blank and just kept my mouth shut. But lets consider a few guidelines for giving advice – or for receiving it.
First and foremost, ask yourself: is it Biblical?
One of Job's friends said, "We have examined this, and it is true . . ." (Job 5:27) But how do I know that what I’m hearing from a friend or what I’m about to say to a friend is indeed true? Only if I have spent enough time in God’s Word so that I have a basis for knowing what is really Biblical advice or not. The Bible is called a "double-edged sword" capable of penetrating to the deepest places, and "judging the thoughts and attitudes of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12).
My own personal observation and opinions do not necessarily equal fool-proof counsel. Even what was true for me in a given situation – a verse that really spoke to me or the wise counsel of a friend that got me through something – may not have the same effect on someone else. Honestly, there are so many differing opinions available to any of us from a variety of sources that to assume that all opinions are true would be one of the most foolish decisions anyone could make. As one Christian write put it, "Only the Bible is trustworthy for perfect counsel, and when you can lean on clear, Biblical teaching, you are leaning on a rock that will not move."
Secondly, is what you are saying based in truth??
Job's friend Zophar urged Job to "put away the sin" that was in his hand, and to "allow no evil to dwell" in his tent. (Job 11:14) Zophar couldn't look at Job's condition without assuming that Job had sinned greatly against God. Likewise, Eliphaz shared the same counsel with Job: "Those who sow trouble reap it." (Job 4:8)
But the facts simply didn't support their observation. God had called Job "blameless and upright," (Job 1:8) bragging on how well his faithful servant had been living. The suffering that followed was the toughest test of Job's life, not punishment for his worst sin.
Eliphaz and Zophar's counsel, while wise in some cases, simply missed the mark when said to Job because it was not based in the truth of Job’s situation.
Careful attention must be paid to the factual information behind any counsel. If the facts aren't correct, the counsel is almost certain to be just as faulty. Slow down, and check the facts.
And here’s a tough one: is what you are going to say really necessary?
I'm sure you know some people who just can't help but tell other people what is wrong with their life, or what they could do better. If you tell them something that is bothering you, they can't help but tell you how to fix it. If you're having problems with work or your mate or children, they can and will offer answers.
Hopefully it's because those people care. But sometimes we need to verbalize what is going on in our lives without hearing someone tell us how to fix it. Most of the time we know how to fix it, or what caused it, or that there is nothing we can do; it just helps to share our concerns with a friend.
Consider Job and his friends' advice. As well-meaning and well-intentioned as I'm sure their advice was, in the big scheme of things, did Job really need these long-winded debates about sin and justice and why good things happen to bad people in those days after the greatest crisis of his life? Was it really necessary for even his wife to offer her opinion of what he should do?
Will Rogers once said, “Never miss a good chance to shut up.” Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes once said of his sidekick, Watson: “You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.” The writer George Eliot said, “Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.”
It may be that the wisest comfort we can bring to someone who is hurting is to say as little as possible.
Sometimes – and maybe more times than we recognized - there are times when the best thing we can do for one another is simply to sit together in silence. Maybe even cry together. Job 2:13 tells us his friends "sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was." How wonderful it would have been if Job's friends had followed that counsel, and kept their silence past a single week. Because so much of what they go on to say was not just unnecessary, but simply wrong.
In giving advice, acknowledge you could be wrong! .
Not once in the book of Job do any of the friends leave the door open for possible error. "I've observed it," said one (4:8). "We have examined it," said another, "and it is true." (5:27).
I'm usually not one to sound overly confident. Maybe because I've been wrong enough to know better. Sometimes the smartest thing we can say is that we may never know why something happened. And in the end, when face to face with God, we realize "why" is meaningless. Job's questions of "Why" disappeared the moment he encountered God, and as far as we know they never appeared again. All of the "great debates" of the middle chapters of Job are forgotten once God showed up. As a pastor once put it, "The Perfect completely overwhelmed the imperfect."
I am always amazed at how spiritually and intellectually dense Jesus’ disciples could be. Here were these 12 men who spent three years walking with Jesus, hearing him debate others, seeing him comfort people, getting a chance to discuss the days’ events in private with him well into the night. And yet they could still, at times, be so thick-headed.
John 9 tells the story how one day the disciples were walking along the streets of Jerusalem and engaged in a theological debate. It was the kind of conversation that Jewish Rabbis and teachers had been having for centuries.
"Rabbi," they asked, "who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
Imagine that. A blind man, almost certainly within hearing distance, suddenly becomes the subject of an insensitive, unnecessary discussion about his morality, or at least the morality of his parents. Wasn't life hard enough for a beggar who couldn't see?
And Jesus treats their debate as utter foolishness.
He says, in effect, "You've missed the point entirely. You're debating theology and philosophy and what you think are lofty ideas – which has nothing to do with this man’s physical condition. This has happened so God can be glorified."
Finally, do the people you are talking to know you love them?
As this dialogue continues between Job and his friends, it gets more heated. Job insists he’s justified, and the friends are frustrated that Job won’t admit he's wrong. Bildad, in chapter 8, even takes a cheap shot at Job’s children when he says, “When your children sinned against (God), he gave them over to the penalty of their sin." Of course, Bildad doesn’t know that Job’s children were not suffering any penalty for their sin, but that their death was an unprovoked attack on Job by Satan.
No matter how Biblical, truthful, and needed advice might be, let’s be honest: it won’t be listened to if not given in love. Paul urged one of his early churches to "speak the truth in love." (Eph. 4:14) To another, he reminded them that he could sound out wonderful truth with the voice of an angel, but without love, his words would sound more like an irritating, clanging cymbal to the person who needed to hear the counsel. (1 Cor. 13:1)
Remember, it’s not just the person going through the tough time who is to glorify God. Ideally, if we’re in a position to bring comfort and perhaps advice or counsel, we want to glorify God with what we say.
Let me return to where we started: How do you glorify God?
I wonder how many times have you met someone going through something like what Job went through - lost their job, maybe lost their family, lost their ability to provide, lost their health - and thought to yourself, “Now, that’s how you bring God glory!”
When you see someone suffering, do you ever think that person might be doing more to glorify God than, say, Billy Graham?
I’m not trying to compare here because certainly I don’t know the answer to that. But we know Job brought down Satan. In a great cosmic battle played out in the landfill of the land of Uz, Satan was humiliated.
I have a feeling that, to some extent, so were Job’s friends.
But it is difficult. We're creatures that can make a wide variety of noises, from beautiful songs to embarrassing grunts and groans.
We are creatures meant to be in relationships, and as my wife has often reminded me, good communication is essential to a good relationship.
So we talk. Part of talking is sharing experiences in the hope that some of what we know will be helpful to someone else, or that hearing some of what they have gone through helps me with my situation.
As a writer, one of the greatest compliments I have ever received is when someone has said to me, "What you wrote is exactly what I was feeling and couldn't figure out how to say myself." I have friends who are song-writers, and one of those friends likes to say, "I was writing that song the day I heard it on the radio,'' by which he means someone else has found a way to say exactly what he wanted to say.
Our words can encourage, build up, give confidence, inspire, bring healing, educate, unite ... and they can do all the opposite as well.
For Job's friends, the quiet ran out after seven days. I guess they couldn't stand it anymore. They wanted their friend to deal with what was happening, and so they offered their best advice, their learned suggestions, and shared their frustrations of watching Job go through what he was going through.
It was only natural for them to begin to offer reasons for Job's pain, and solutions for getting over what was happening.
Among their suggestions:
Job 4:1-8 – basically, bad things happen to bad people.
Job 5:6-9 – things don’t happen for no reason. Turn to God and perhaps He’ll forgive.
Job 8:1-4 – maybe your children sinned and you’re paying for that.
Job 11:4-6 – whatever this is, it’s less than you deserve.
Job 15:1-6 – your arrogance condemns you.
Job 22:21-23 submit to God and be restored
Here’s the point. All of these statements have a basis in truth. They certainly sound legitimate. I guarantee you there are times in your life (and certainly in mine) when this type of advice is right on the mark. Job's friends are not considered foolish, and, like Job, they were probably used to offering counsel.
And yet, they are wrong.
Have you ever sat and listened to a Christian give bad advice? I have. Heck, I’m sure I’ve given bad advice in the name of bringing Christian comfort or Christ-like council.
But while we know Job’s friends meant well, from our perspective we can recognize that they, too, were being used by Satan to try to bring Job down. I don’t think any of us ever want to be the tools of the great Accuser working for evil in the lives of our fellow believers!
Reading Job has caused me to pause before offering up advice. I recognize that, in a sense, I’m offering advice as I write this blog, but I feel compelled to take that chance. Maybe it would be better if I left the pages blank and just kept my mouth shut. But lets consider a few guidelines for giving advice – or for receiving it.
First and foremost, ask yourself: is it Biblical?
One of Job's friends said, "We have examined this, and it is true . . ." (Job 5:27) But how do I know that what I’m hearing from a friend or what I’m about to say to a friend is indeed true? Only if I have spent enough time in God’s Word so that I have a basis for knowing what is really Biblical advice or not. The Bible is called a "double-edged sword" capable of penetrating to the deepest places, and "judging the thoughts and attitudes of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12).
My own personal observation and opinions do not necessarily equal fool-proof counsel. Even what was true for me in a given situation – a verse that really spoke to me or the wise counsel of a friend that got me through something – may not have the same effect on someone else. Honestly, there are so many differing opinions available to any of us from a variety of sources that to assume that all opinions are true would be one of the most foolish decisions anyone could make. As one Christian write put it, "Only the Bible is trustworthy for perfect counsel, and when you can lean on clear, Biblical teaching, you are leaning on a rock that will not move."
Secondly, is what you are saying based in truth??
Job's friend Zophar urged Job to "put away the sin" that was in his hand, and to "allow no evil to dwell" in his tent. (Job 11:14) Zophar couldn't look at Job's condition without assuming that Job had sinned greatly against God. Likewise, Eliphaz shared the same counsel with Job: "Those who sow trouble reap it." (Job 4:8)
But the facts simply didn't support their observation. God had called Job "blameless and upright," (Job 1:8) bragging on how well his faithful servant had been living. The suffering that followed was the toughest test of Job's life, not punishment for his worst sin.
Eliphaz and Zophar's counsel, while wise in some cases, simply missed the mark when said to Job because it was not based in the truth of Job’s situation.
Careful attention must be paid to the factual information behind any counsel. If the facts aren't correct, the counsel is almost certain to be just as faulty. Slow down, and check the facts.
And here’s a tough one: is what you are going to say really necessary?
I'm sure you know some people who just can't help but tell other people what is wrong with their life, or what they could do better. If you tell them something that is bothering you, they can't help but tell you how to fix it. If you're having problems with work or your mate or children, they can and will offer answers.
Hopefully it's because those people care. But sometimes we need to verbalize what is going on in our lives without hearing someone tell us how to fix it. Most of the time we know how to fix it, or what caused it, or that there is nothing we can do; it just helps to share our concerns with a friend.
Consider Job and his friends' advice. As well-meaning and well-intentioned as I'm sure their advice was, in the big scheme of things, did Job really need these long-winded debates about sin and justice and why good things happen to bad people in those days after the greatest crisis of his life? Was it really necessary for even his wife to offer her opinion of what he should do?
Will Rogers once said, “Never miss a good chance to shut up.” Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes once said of his sidekick, Watson: “You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.” The writer George Eliot said, “Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.”
It may be that the wisest comfort we can bring to someone who is hurting is to say as little as possible.
Sometimes – and maybe more times than we recognized - there are times when the best thing we can do for one another is simply to sit together in silence. Maybe even cry together. Job 2:13 tells us his friends "sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was." How wonderful it would have been if Job's friends had followed that counsel, and kept their silence past a single week. Because so much of what they go on to say was not just unnecessary, but simply wrong.
In giving advice, acknowledge you could be wrong! .
Not once in the book of Job do any of the friends leave the door open for possible error. "I've observed it," said one (4:8). "We have examined it," said another, "and it is true." (5:27).
I'm usually not one to sound overly confident. Maybe because I've been wrong enough to know better. Sometimes the smartest thing we can say is that we may never know why something happened. And in the end, when face to face with God, we realize "why" is meaningless. Job's questions of "Why" disappeared the moment he encountered God, and as far as we know they never appeared again. All of the "great debates" of the middle chapters of Job are forgotten once God showed up. As a pastor once put it, "The Perfect completely overwhelmed the imperfect."
I am always amazed at how spiritually and intellectually dense Jesus’ disciples could be. Here were these 12 men who spent three years walking with Jesus, hearing him debate others, seeing him comfort people, getting a chance to discuss the days’ events in private with him well into the night. And yet they could still, at times, be so thick-headed.
John 9 tells the story how one day the disciples were walking along the streets of Jerusalem and engaged in a theological debate. It was the kind of conversation that Jewish Rabbis and teachers had been having for centuries.
"Rabbi," they asked, "who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
Imagine that. A blind man, almost certainly within hearing distance, suddenly becomes the subject of an insensitive, unnecessary discussion about his morality, or at least the morality of his parents. Wasn't life hard enough for a beggar who couldn't see?
And Jesus treats their debate as utter foolishness.
He says, in effect, "You've missed the point entirely. You're debating theology and philosophy and what you think are lofty ideas – which has nothing to do with this man’s physical condition. This has happened so God can be glorified."
Finally, do the people you are talking to know you love them?
As this dialogue continues between Job and his friends, it gets more heated. Job insists he’s justified, and the friends are frustrated that Job won’t admit he's wrong. Bildad, in chapter 8, even takes a cheap shot at Job’s children when he says, “When your children sinned against (God), he gave them over to the penalty of their sin." Of course, Bildad doesn’t know that Job’s children were not suffering any penalty for their sin, but that their death was an unprovoked attack on Job by Satan.
No matter how Biblical, truthful, and needed advice might be, let’s be honest: it won’t be listened to if not given in love. Paul urged one of his early churches to "speak the truth in love." (Eph. 4:14) To another, he reminded them that he could sound out wonderful truth with the voice of an angel, but without love, his words would sound more like an irritating, clanging cymbal to the person who needed to hear the counsel. (1 Cor. 13:1)
Remember, it’s not just the person going through the tough time who is to glorify God. Ideally, if we’re in a position to bring comfort and perhaps advice or counsel, we want to glorify God with what we say.
Let me return to where we started: How do you glorify God?
I wonder how many times have you met someone going through something like what Job went through - lost their job, maybe lost their family, lost their ability to provide, lost their health - and thought to yourself, “Now, that’s how you bring God glory!”
When you see someone suffering, do you ever think that person might be doing more to glorify God than, say, Billy Graham?
I’m not trying to compare here because certainly I don’t know the answer to that. But we know Job brought down Satan. In a great cosmic battle played out in the landfill of the land of Uz, Satan was humiliated.
I have a feeling that, to some extent, so were Job’s friends.
Friday, May 4, 2018
Sometimes, the best thing we can do for people is shut up (Job, continued).
Glorify God and Enjoy him Forever.
Yes. If you are a follower of Christ, I assume you want to do that. You want to glorify God. Certainly you want to enjoy Him forever.
Then I start thinking, what does it mean to “glorify God?”
So I think – Let me go rehab houses in North Birmingham and deliver food to the hungry and those shut in. Let me go dig wells and bring clean drinking water to people in Southeast Asia. Let me go with a team of doctors and tend to the sickness of people high in the mountains of Honduras. Let me start a drive to collect shoe boxes that bring not only joy but the Gospel to thousands of children around the world.
But then I look at Job, and I wonder – what if glorifying God means losing everything I have – my job, my income, my children, my health? What it if means my spouse turning on me, or betraying me (think Hosea, a prophet who was given the dubious honor of marrying a beautiful woman who turned out to be incredibly unfaithful, but to whom Hosea was told to remain faithful so his life could be a living example of God’s relationship to Israel)?
Whoa. Wait a minute. Do I really want to glorify God like that?
Mother Theresa once said, “I know God won’t give me more than I can handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me so much.”
It’s like a youth director I had when I was in high school, a guy named Dan Dehaan who said, “If you are going to ask God to be humble, be prepared for him to humiliate you.” That has stuck with me. Truthfully, I want the kind of humility I can be proud of, you know?
And that kind of “glorifying God” is, to me, scary. But remember the C.S. Lewis quote on Aslan: “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
So we see Job, having lost so much, sitting outside the city gates where he once sat as a leading citizen, trusted advisor, example to all who passed before him, now reduced to sobbing over his losses and scrapping himself with pottery shards in an attempt to get some relief for the sores that have broken out all over his body.
With all else gone, we see that Job has still got friends. Good friends, actually. They hear about Job’s problems and come to him as good friends do.
Job 2:11 - “Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They made an appointment together to come to console with him and comfort him. And when they saw him from afar, they did not recognize him; and they raised their voices and wept; and they rent their robes and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.”
Think about that. The friends saw their friend lose everything – family, wealth, health, position, prestige – and while so many people would avoid someone like that (and we’ll see in Job 42 that apparently quite a few people did just that), these three are moved to compassion, to tears, to true sorrow over the plight of their friend.
One of the hardest things to do – at least it is for me – is to know what to say when a friend is going through something hard. We want to show we care, our hearts are in the right place. But we just don’t know what to say.
When I was a boy, I had an older cousin who was a missionary in Equador. She dedicated her life to serving God in South America, married a doctor, became pregnant, then came home to see her family and the baby died. Just months old – what we used to call “Crib death.” Our family was at the house, trying to do what we could, but I remember a pastor who came over and, looking for something to say, said something like, “Just know that your son is in the arms of Jesus.” And I’ll never forget what she said, “I’d rather my baby be here in my arms, where he belongs.”
I remember being so impressed with this kind of honesty. The pastor was right – at least, we hope he was – that the baby was in the arms of Jesus. But my cousin was hurting, and those words didn’t bring any comfort.
I know it’s hard to be with someone who is going through something difficult and not say something. I know we all feel like we have to say something, make an attempt to say something of comfort.
Is there anything worse than going through the receiving line at a funeral? We say things like “Doesn’t he look natural!” when we know a dead body is about the most un-natural thing in the world. We say, “He is in heaven now” and I think of my cousin and her response of, “yeah, well, he belongs here with me.”
We say, “Call me if there is anything I can do for you.” That’s not bad and it’s well-meaning and I’ve said it myself. But I had someone say to me, “What does that mean? Do they really think I’m going to pick up the phone in the middle of the night when I’m crying my head off and call so they can hear me cry?” I know my friends’ reaction seems a little extreme, but it was an honest reaction to all these people who she rarely saw when her husband was dying and now suddenly they want her to call.
I know a couple who went years trying to have a child, but to no avail. And a well-meaning friend actually said to them, “Well, maybe God just doesn’t mean for you to be parents.” Can you think of anything more un-comforting to say? Fortunately, this couple did eventually have children and are wonderful parents.
I read a story of a lady whose child was born with a condition that caused it to die rather quickly, and she tells of a friend who said to her, “Well, we prayed for our children every day of my pregnancy and they were all born healthy and with no problems.” The first lady, of course, was left wondering, “Did I not pray enough? Is this my fault?”
My own wife was in a terrible car wreck a few years ago, in a coma and we didn’t know if she’d live. Her recovery took months (and continues even now, years after the accident). I will never forget a well-meaning lady saying to her, “Well, you certainly look good. Look at all the weight you’ve lost!” Yes, this is what you call a “crash” diet: get hit by a car, be fed through a tube for a month …
We’re going to get critical of Job’s friends in a few minutes. But first – let’s give them credit for caring enough to stick their nose in Job’s business. They see a friend hurting, and they come to him, and sit with him for seven days, not saying a word. Do you know how hard that must have been? And yet we’ll soon see it was the smartest thing they did.
And you know what it says to me? Sometimes the best thing we can do for people is just be there. Don’t talk. Just be there. Your physical presence can mean more than anything you can say.
When my wife was in ICU and I was at the hospital day and night for a month, we had some wonderful friends who came by. But one friend, in particular, came and just sat in the waiting room. She never asked for me to come out of the ICU where I sat by my wife’s bed, she had no expectation of coming back to see us. She was just there for us.
Another friend called me and said, “Let’s go to lunch.” We walked to a fast food place across the street from the hospital. He said, “I don’t want to know how you are or your wife is or what is going on. Let’s just be normal for a few minutes.” He’ll never know how much I appreciated that. Our conversation was banal, ordinary, maybe even at times we didn’t speak, but it meant so much to me at that time.
It’s hard to be quiet. Particularly after a certain amount of time passes and we start thinking, “OK, you’ve suffered. It’s time to get on with your life.”
But then, very often we don't know the whole story. What we learn from the story of Job is that there was something more going on, greater than we could imagine, with cosmic consequences, and whatever Job's friends would say (and we'll get to that in the next blog) was just wrong. Oh, it sounded good. And in another situation, Job's friends might even be right.
Not this time, though. And that's a lesson for all of us.
Be careful - no, be thoughtful before you speak.
And there is nothing wrong with silence. Just being there can speak volumes.
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