Chapter 16 opens with
another kick to the shin from Job. He finds no comfort in the counsel of his
three ugly sisters and says so.
He is quite capable of similar vain ramblings, but feels that if roles were reversed he would strengthen and not break down. He confesses to feeling deeply isolated. Sadly, crisis always cuts us off, because so few can truly identify with our pain.
He feels abandoned and
crushed by his God and that saddens him even more, but with tears he looks to
the throne, for vindication and the witness he so needs.
Into darkness
Chapter 17 also
reflects isolation from his community, who, for lack of any solutions, choose
to give him a wide berth - not offensively, but because it is all they can do.
He admits too that his
horizons have shrunk and the day has become night. That too is a typical
confession of souls in crisis, where all they can do is take one step at a time
to who knows where and for who knows how long.
Bildad completes the
cycle by withdrawing (pouting if you want). It’s a selfish response, reflecting how it affects him
not what Job is going through.
As the disciples scattered from Jesus, so Job
stands alone
I once went through a life class crisis. As I reached the dead zone of denial, as Kubler Ross predicted, my
counselors tried to resolve their own dilemmas by rushing me into forgiveness
for the offender, before I had even grasped reality.
As reality did dawn on
me, I then lashed out in anger, just as Kubler Ross predicted. An experienced counselor should have seen it as a healthy sign. Instead they were taken aback by the reaction, which isolated me further and left me judged unfairly.
That resulted in
personal withdrawal and a long, deep season of loneliness, whilst the offender
recovered and moved on. Make no mistake, when it comes to the depths of the soul,
theology is too theoretical and way out of its depth.
And like Jesus we face an unjust court of
ignorant and unfair opinions
That is exactly what
Bildad does to Job. Because the poor man won’t see it their way, they isolate
him and abandon him to his own apparent folly. They have wrongly and arrogantly
assumed that they have all the answers and that Job is wrong to heed their
counsel.
Bildad leaves him with
the bitterest contemplation, of a future without family or friends, sentenced to
a shadow of his former life. How helpful. It sounds like
misguided church discipline.
A friend lost his
business to the shady dealings of a brother, but like Job he saw the church take sides with the other party, because he had better connections. That left him to
walk the cold, rainy streets in lonely dejection, cut off by the unjust court
of human expedience.
Its so well depicted in Inarritu's Revenant and the cruel abandonment of the main character to a brutal wilderness, terrible wounds and stalking threats.
Into the wilderness
The trial facing Job
was not unlike the wilderness that Jesus faced. Haunted by long shadows and
fleeting images, mirages and whispers on the wind, he traipsed more through a
wilderness of the mind than a physical desert place.
Though weak and
starving, his enemy cared not and like David he felt hemmed in on every side,
cast into a narrow canyon of the soul, bereft of the perspective of an open
country.
The three facets to
his trial compare well with Job’s trial. Their naïve grasp of God and misguided assumptions about His unbridled nature, attacked his concept of God and shook the
vertical stays of his life. That left him questioning God.
The naïve assumption that
miracles only needed a simple confession and a fitting petition, targeted his
spiritual depth, by oversimplifying his dilemma. He could well have answered, “not
by bread alone, but by every word of God”.
Yet his own internal
resolve and the fight in him also willed him to test his boundaries, by
effectively tempting God or by getting ahead of himself. That shook his
horizontal stays.
God is in it all
In time he would find
that all his stays remained true and that by them God held him suspended in the
center of his will, just as unseen cords suspend our world in space.
He will never forsake
us.
The Wilderness template recurs in scripture because it reflects the three
areas that Satan always targets in search of the levers of our soul: namely our
thoughts, feelings and physical needs.
In time we will, by God’s grace,
rise above it all, to stand tall through whatever future God has called us to,
for these things have come to pass. That is because such trials settle our position in God, ground us, anchor us to the rock of truth and thicken our armor.
Best of all, His gracious hand always brings reconciliation in the realization that the actors in our drama are so vital to the lessons that God needs to teach us.
Best of all, His gracious hand always brings reconciliation in the realization that the actors in our drama are so vital to the lessons that God needs to teach us.
God will always have the last say. Then will come healing.
(c) Peter Missing @ bethelstone.com
Image source: The Revenant, from New Regency Pictures, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu
