called to stand here

It didn't take long; I was getting weary of my constant attention to the grief of Job. But all it took was spending some time with real people who are confronting the reality of unrelenting pain, and the meaning of the Job dilemma came back into sharp focus. Tonight is was Venita. Other days (and nights) it's been Margy. An old friend who inhabited a wheelchair once declared, "You're only temporarily able bodied." She called those of us who walk without assistance TABs. That's a hard thing to hear when it's starting to look like you're getting a chronic illness. The hope that health and freedom from pain is in your future starts fading into a fog. These joy-filled women who used to glow with life are starting to grow desperate with dread that this is a corner turned, and they might become one of those who limp and wince into their futures. The words of Elihu ring out: "Take care; do not turn to iniquity, for this you have chosen rather than afflic...

Elihu really is a very complete composite of all the elements Job's friends present in the first half of the book. Their key argument is that God doesn't punish people without cause. If you're getting afflicted, you have some evil, whether it's hidden or apparent (4:7; 34:11, 12, 26, 27). Subordinate to this is that nobody is perfect; no one can stand before an almighty, perfect God and say they are without fault (4:17; 33:12). He takes on Job's assertion that living a righteous life doesn't bring a person any greater benefit than living as a sinner (35:3ff). Like most people of faith who acknowledge to their friends the insights and understanding they've experienced, Elihu shares his perspective on right living. Each of Job's other friends have done that, too, and he's felt the harsh blows of their condemnation: he isn't living like they think he should, and they consider it their obligation to let him know. So the let him have it. Their common ...

Premise: Elihu is a type of the soulish church (as opposed to the true Church/bride of Christ). And Elihu doesn't know what to do with Job. As Job is a type of Christ (true suffering servant, afflicted without cause, interceding for others), Elihu reveals much about the church throughout the past 2000 years. Elihu bursts on the scene from nowhere as a response to Job's tragic affliction, just as the soulish church shows up as a cultural response to the incredible circumstances of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. Every spectacular (and supernatural) phenomenon draws a crowd. Elihu's first response is burning anger. Three times in 32:2, and once in v. 5, he is described as burning with anger. Although he is never mentioned as an observer, apparently he accompanies Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar at the end of chapter two when they meet to console Job. Or maybe not; maybe he showed up later because 2:11 is explicite that Job's three friends — not four — made an appointm...

Archibald MacLeish started writing a play in 1953 -- the year I was born -- that won the Pulitzer prize for drama in 1959. Its title is  J.B. , a modern adaptation of the biblical Book of Job. Carl Gustav Jung published his book, Answer to Job , in 1952. It was translated into English in 1954. Both of these works take the view that traditional religion (Christianity especially, is being indicted, I think) offers inadequate doctrines addressing suffering, calamity and affliction. Jung depicts God as cruel and unjust on one hand, and on the other, a poor card player to Satan the shark by unwittingly letting him get the opportunity to inflict evil on such a good and upright man as Job. Neither author appears to see the connection between Job and Jesus, or if they do, it is to affirm their rejection of the fact that God has sovereign control over a universe that delivers such horrors into the lives of good people. I'll need to revisit both works, as it's been over 30 years since re...

I'm reading through Job again in my regular devotions, and have been struck with a new concept of the overall meaning of the structure of the book--who Job's friends are, and  what their arguments symbolize. Job's three friends in the first half off the book are like the Hebrews/Israelites/Jews: they respond to Job's plight with a  narrow interpretation that doesn't appear to have room for the complexities of a just, sovereign and merciful God who does things that we in our limited perspective can't rationalize: how can God be in control and allow Satan to cause the pain he inflicts on Job's fortune and family first, and then on Job's flesh? But he does. And without relinquishing his justice, sovereignty and lovingkindness, God does this terrible thing to Job, just as he does it to Jesus later. The mysterious fourth friend, Elihu (who God ignores at the end of the book, unlike the other three), has a slightly different perspective than his elders. I'...