When You Speak

Job famously has three friends. But in the book of Job, there are four men who speak to him, trying to respond to his situation.

The fourth man, the man who is not counted for whatever reason among Job's friends, is a man named Elihu. He may, in fact, be merely a boy by our own terms, for one of the first things that Elihu says is that he realizes that in the midst of present company, he is young. 

In the context of Elihu's culture, that was important. It tells us why he hasn't spoken until now; it was customary for the young to wait for the old to speak first, assuming that the old had more perspective, wisdom, and knowledge on any matter and that the young would more frequently ask questions or very rarely have anything valuable to add. 

But in the context of our culture, it's important, too. Not because it is customary to let the older speak first. Sadly, we have lost that kind of respect for our elders and their experience in our world, more often thinking our older persons to be out of touch or even unwise, not knowing the ways of today's world (which is so unlike the world they lived in, we think). No, Elihu's patience to speak reminds us of something that we often forget in our world, something we often neglect, that very thing we are most often not thinking about:

We must be mindful of the reasons why others won't hear us. 

Elihu's got some very good reasons to speak. He cites those, too. He declares that the spirit in him won't let him keep quiet, that he's convinced that he has something valuable to add. He believes that the perspective he's about to offer is new, complete, and satisfying to the situation at hand. He believes that the way that it burns inside of him practically requires him to speak it, to share it with others. Job's three friends have been close, maybe, but Elihu's about to bring it all together for them and add that one missing piece that makes it all make sense. 

Isn't that why most of us speak? We have something to say that comes from some place deep inside us, something so passionate in our souls that we know it to be true and believe it to be valuable to, well, everyone else. We jump into conversations thinking that we're going to end them, enter into disagreements believing we can settle them. We put our two cents in on controversial subjects thinking that we're going to change minds because, well, we're right. Aren't we? And isn't the whole world just waiting for someone to come along who's right about this or that and can articulate it for everyone to understand? 

Yeah, how many times has that worked out for you?

We speak because we're confident in what we have to say and how we're going to say it, but the truth is for every single one of us in every single conversation that there are some persons who aren't going to hear us. There are reasons the world won't listen. 

For Elihu, it's because he was young. He knew this, so he claimed it right out front. It's an act of humility, demonstrating that he knows his place and that he has just as clear a vision for who he is as he's about to claim for the issue at hand. 

For us, it's usually something else. Sometimes, it's because we're young. The world doesn't think we have enough experience in one area or another, so they question what we'd have to say. Sometimes, it's because we're male or female, married or single, religious or not religious, Republican or Democrat, straight or gay, Black or white, rich or poor. You name it, there is someone who has put us in their out-group and won't listen to a thing we say. Or at least, won't hear it. 

Or worse, and what happens most often, they hear what they think we're going to say instead of what we actually say because they're hearing us through the lens of what they think our particular demographic represents. 

It takes a great amount of self-awareness for us to recognize those things about us that keep others from hearing us, and it takes a greater amount of humility to be able to confess them. But as Elihu shows, it's also extremely important. Not only for us to know, for it keeps us from speaking out of turn, but for us to say, because it helps others to hear us better. 

What if we did this more often? What if, when we chose to speak, we started with a confession? I am young; I am old. I am male; I am female. I am straight; I am gay. I am Black; I am white. I know why you'll be tempted not to hear me.

But I have something to say that burns in me with a passion that I cannot ignore, and so whatever I am in your eyes, listen anyway. For I have waited my turn, and I am about to speak.

Knowing

Job didn't know what was going on in his life, or why such terrible things were happening to him, but he knew two things and he asserted them without fear: God is good, and I am righteous. For this, his friends thought him either foolish or blind (or worse), and we find ourselves in a world not unlike Job's. 

Our world doesn't believe in truth. Not only does it not believe in truth, but it wants to tell you that you can't, either. If you do have something that you believe with all of your heart, then you're either foolish or blind (or worse); often, you're arrogant. How can you claim to know something when you have not seriously considered all of the possible alternatives and other perspectives on the matter? You can only see through your own eyes, so you can never truly know anything at all. 

At the same time that there is no truth, of course, the statement that there is no truth is obviously absolutely true, thus refuting its own argument. But...that's nitpicking. (Isn't it?) 

The trouble in today's world is that if you live like there is a truth and like you actually believe it, others will think you arrogant. They will think you completely inflexible and incapable of change because you assert something that seems unchanging to them. 

Yes and no. 

Truth is, by its nature, unchanging; what is true today is true tomorrow. This is what truth means. But truth is also, by its nature, dynamic; we come to understand it better or worse every day. And that changes the way that we live by it. 

But the only way to discover the dynamic nature of truth is to live as though it is true and see where that takes you. This world wants you to just keep your mind open, to always be thinking and contemplating and considering and never coming down anywhere too firmly, for the very next thing could change everything. Or so the world claims. And so the best approach to truth for the world is never to have any because you simply can't know even what you think you can know and if you have to tomorrow declare something new, then you were arrogant today and tomorrow, you're a liar. Maybe a hypocrite. Yes, even where you think you've settled on something, you should always remember that there is data you haven't received yet, so what you know...is nothing at all. You just can't possibly know it. 

That approach doesn't get us anywhere near real truth, and it doesn't give us a life that is worth living. It's no help in times of trouble, no comfort in times of mourning. It's a vapor in the wind, nothing at all. And it's complete bunk.

The real search for truth requires that we commit to it and live by it. It requires us every day to say, "Here's what I believe, and I'm going to live accordingly." Not because we're arrogant and inflexible about it, but just the opposite - because we are willing to see how our truth works out in the real world. We're willing to put it to the actual test. Not some intellectual, subjective, perspective-based test that rests on our own privilege or learning or whatever, but an actual test where we discover whether or not what we believe to be true "works" in the real world. If it does, then we come to believe it more firmly; if it does not, then we revamp it and try again, ever coming closer to a real, vital, life-giving truth. 

Ever becoming more like Jesus.

Not only is it not arrogant, then, to claim a truth and to live by it, but it actually requires great humility. For you must always be willing to say (and this life frequently requires you to), "I was certain that I knew it, but I wasn't getting it quite right. Let me try again." You have to keep changing your posture while living out truth, so committing to something you're sure you know isn't arrogant; rather, it gives you opportunity after opportunity to practice humbling yourself.  

At the end of yesterday's post, I left off with a question - what do you know? And it seems such a silly question in a world that claims you can't know anything without being arrogant, foolish, blind, bigoted, hateful, hypocritical, and so on. But the world is wrong on this one; you absolutely can, and should, know something. 

And you can only truly know anything by living it out. 

So how are you living? What does your life say that you know is true? How's that working for you?

Known

Job is a man afflicted. That's the crux of the entire story as given to us in the Bible. The question this story seeks to answer is what Job will do with his affliction - how will it change the way that he thinks about, believes in, and lives according to God? 

The shocking answer, of course, is that it doesn't, really. But just how profoundly it doesn't seem to affect his faith is startling.

While addressing his friends, trying to respond to everything they have said about God (some of which, you'll notice, seems to try to throw God under the bus a little bit), Job actually spends two straight chapters (26-27) of his own speech defending the greatness of God. Declaring the greatness of God. Sitting among the ashes, scratching his boils with pots of broken pottery (his broken pottery, which used to be part of his precious treasure), he speaks about how wonderful, amazing, generous, good, and even great the Lord is. 

Even how wonderful, amazing, generous, good, and great the Lord is to him. 

Not only that, but a few chapters later, in Job 31, he will pronounce upon himself a great curse, in keeping with God's perspective on the matter of curses. He will declare all of the terrible things that should happen to him, more terrible even than those things that have already happened to him. IF, in fact, he is a sinner. 

Because, of course, he knows with a fair amount of certainty that he is not. 

And this sets up an incredible lesson for those of us who wrestle with this broken world in which we live. See, Job's friends were spending a lot of their time and energy trying to figure out what was happening to him. Trying to justify the experience he was having. Trying to name anything and everything they could that might be the cause of Job's calamity. 

Job wasn't really interested. At least, not in the same way that his friends were. He probably had some desire to know. He probably ached to figure it out. But he doesn't spend his time guessing about things he's not sure of. Rather, he spends his time speaking confidently about what he does know.

What Job knows is that God is wonderful, amazing, generous, good, and great - even to him, that sinners deserve curses, and he proclaims those curses so boldly because he is just as sure that he is not a sinner. 

In other words, while his friends are asking, "What are you missing here?" Job is focused on "What do I know?" 

And it enables him to maintain his faith. 

Most of us, we're like Job's friends. We spend our lives trying to figure out what it is that we don't know, always looking for that missing piece that will explain our experience. We figure if we just knew a little more, if we just figured one more thing out, if we could put a rhyme or a reason to all of it, then we'd understand. Then, we'd be sure. Then, we'd seal our faith.

But more often than not, our search for understanding every little thing leads us to question what we were once so sure of. We find ourselves wondering, trying to explain our misery, if God is even good at all. Although if you'd asked us yesterday, we would have said that He was. We find ourselves questioning whether we know ourselves, but honestly? If we weren't trying to be something else, we know exactly who we are. Over and over again, our searching for answers raises questions that we shouldn't have to answer because the truth is that we know what we already know. Or at least, we thought we did. 

So we lose our faith at a moment when we most desperately need it when Job shows us that it's really not so hard. We don't really need to know what we think we need to know; what we already know is enough. 

What we need to learn is how, like Job, to say it.

"This I know, that God is good. This I know, that I am righteous. This I don't understand, that this broken world causes pain. But what I don't understand changes not what I know, that God is good and I am righteous."

Sometimes, we just have to say we don't know, then go back to what we do know. 

What do you know?

The Perfect Life

As Job goes back and forth with his friends and with God, a small little sentence creeps in that asks an extremely valuable question - if I were perfect, would that be of any benefit to God?

The question is valuable precisely because so many of us would very quickly say, "Well, of course." But Job implies that the real answer is, "no."

For us, we've gotten the idea that the goal of the Christian life is, "be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." And yet, we read through the Bible and find not one perfect man who is not Jesus; we find not a single person who is praised for being perfect and getting everything right. Even we don't praise Jesus, the perfect man, for being perfect; that's not what we love about Him. 

Yet, we continue to believe that what God desires from us, and what we should desire from ourselves, is to be perfect. To get everything right. To never fail, never falter, never sin. To not need God's forgiveness or redemption.

We live as though the ultimate goal of the Christian faith is to have no need of Jesus at all. 

When you put it that way, it sounds sort of silly, doesn't it? God sent His perfect Son, His one and only Son, to die for the redemption of our sins and create a way for us to live in perfect intimacy with Him for eternity...and then desires from us that we don't need His greatest sacrifice. Desires from us that it would all be in vain. Totally pointless. Useless. Unnecessary. 

The greatest victory of the Christian faith is not a perfect life; it's a humble spirit. It's a spirit that readily confesses not for the sake of admitting how much we get it wrong, but for the sake of demonstrating how much we need God. And how amazingly present He is for His children. 

God's greatest glory is in the way that we depend upon Him. Period. And we will only ever depend upon a God we need.

Job knew that if he were perfect, there would never be a test of his faith. There would never be a chance for him to show how much he loves and depends upon the Lord because he would never be in need of Him. It is of no benefit to God for Job to be perfect, but it is for God's glory if he is not, for then the world can see how the man turns to the Lord in his time of desperate need.

Paul says something similar - that God's glory is revealed in our sin. His grace, mercy, and deep love for us is shown best when we don't live up to it. When we falter and fumble. When we're not perfect. 

And then Paul goes one step further, knowing how the human mind thinks. He says, "Should we then go on sinning, just so that God's grace can shine through all the better? By no means!" In other words, of course not. We shouldn't set out to intentionally sin just to demonstrate God's glory; willful sin is rebellion, not faith. 

We'll sin plenty without intending to, anyway. We do not need any help in the "fallen short" department. Our flesh takes pretty good care of that itself. 

But we do need to rethink how we think about it. Because it's too easy for us to fall into the trap of thinking that what God desires from us is our perfection, and that's just not the case. What God requires from us, what has always been counted to our righteousness, what has always been our witness to the world...is our faith.

A Human Ambivalence

I just want to die, and I don't understand why God won't just let me do that. This world, this life, has become too much for me in all its brokenness, and I've got nothing left in me to try to fight back. I am overwhelmed, discouraged, defeated, and the only way out of this whole thing is death.

Although, I suppose, comfort might work, too. 

Yes, our journey through the Bible has brought us squarely into the story of Job, and it's a story that is so humanly familiar to most of us that we can't help but be drawn in by Job's raw honesty and bold speech. In this case, it's his very human ambivalence that we relate to.

Ambivalence is the state of being torn between two alternatives. In this case, death and comfort. And it's interesting that even for Job, a man of great faith, and for us, a people of faith, death often seems to be our first inclination. And not in the way you might think.

In good times and in times of peace, it seems only natural. We who believe in eternal life and heavenly glory can't wait to die and get there, to this place where we have perfect peace and wholeness and wellness, where we get to live forever in intimate fellowship with God and Jesus, in a mansion prepared just for us. For a people who believe, who wouldn't want this? It's as Paul says - I'm ready to die and embrace glory, but it's for the sake of the work remaining here that I live.

But that's not the posture that Job has, and it's not often the posture that we have. Job doesn't have a promise of Heaven; He doesn't have a Jesus who has atoned for his sins. He's atoned for his own sins as best he can, but the current struggle he finds himself in seems to indicate that maybe he hasn't done as well as he thinks he has, no matter how insistent he is about it. But for Job, death is just the end.

That's what we often want out of it, too.

We just want the pain to stop. We just want the brokenness to end. We've run out of shoes to drop, and yet we know that something else is still coming, and it seems like the only way we're ever going to get any peace, the only way we're ever going to get any rest, is to just stop. For everything to just stop. And the only way we know to do that for sure is to die. It's weird, right? In our deepest despair, we talk like a people for whom death is the end. Like a people who want death, just so it can be the end. 

Yet there remains something in us that isn't quite satisfied by that idea, either. So like Job, we pull ourselves back and as a second thought, if God would just be God-like for a second and end our pain for us, if He would heal and restore us, if He would put the brokenness back together and make the bleeding stop, well, then, we'd just as soon go on living, if it's all the same. 

We want to live. Yes, living is good, we decide. It's good for us to be alive, for being alive is far better than being in the eternal blackness of death (again, having forgotten that death is life for those who believe). But we remain torn, for we know that from here, living looks like pain and brokenness and unpredictability. Death, though it is nothingness, is something secure; it is certain. 

We are torn, perpetually, between the certain and the incertain, forgetting all along what is sure. 

See, Job never stopped believing in God, but he forgot for a bit just what it is that he so truly believes. A man of great faith and confident assurance, Job looked at his problem for awhile as though he had to figure out how to solve it. Either he could give up and die or he could ask God to solve it for him. And this led him to his ambivalence - "What should I do?" 

It leads us to ours.

Because the truth is that there really is no ambivalence in true and constant faith. If you know for certain who God is, love Him, and trust Him - and if you remember this even in times of trouble - there's not a moment of time where you stop to wonder if you really want God to be God right now or if you don't; you desperately cling to Him. You crave Him. You long for Him. Ambivalence only comes when you think you have to be your own god, you have to solve your own problems. When you're looking for a way out that doesn't depend upon God, but might somehow use Him if it seems fortuitous to do so. 

It's all so complicated, isn't it? Yet, it's simple. 

Eh, I'd rather just die. I haven't the energy to figure all of this out, to know what I should do or how I should do it, whether I'm right or whether I'm wrong. I'm worn out, weary, exhausted, and death...death right now looks pretty good. 

But then again, all things being what they are, maybe I would rather live....