John3Thirty

Scripture often warns us to adjust our behavior according to our interaction with others. We are told to be culturally relevant to those we are trying to reach—Paul adjusted his behavior, in relation to the law, based on his audience (1 Corinthians 9:20). We are also told that if exercise of our freedom would harm our brother we should lovingly restrain ourselves (Romans 14:20-22). These are commendable and good, but extremes of either were never intended.

Cultural relevance can easily degrade into a negative version of “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” This is often used as an excuse to pretend there is no higher good than that defined by a culture. Surrender in this area is often the easier way, allowing us to blend in and escape ridicule common among those who are different. Reaching the world for Christ always requires giving the message in a way that works within a cultural setting, but standing for Christ often involves direct confrontation with those cultural elements that violate Christ’s teachings and commands. A culture in which male infidelity is not expected does not excuse such practices among Christian males living within that culture. Relevance, if taken too far, leads to licentiousness.

Restraint for the good of a weaker brother or sister is another area where balance and care is needed. Paul, who gave us this command, also modeled standing up against legalistic tyranny in the church (Galatians 2:11-15). Refraining from eating meat or drinking wine because it will shipwreck the faith of another is commendable. Refraining from drinking wine in the presence of a brother with an alcohol problem is also commendable. However, this is too often used as a bludgeon by the legalists to bind those whom Christ has freed: “I disagree with what you are doing so you must stop doing it!” If your action is not actually going to hurt the other brother’s faith or inspire them to sin, there is no need to abstain. Simply not liking an action is not enough to bind all others from the action. Scripture plainly tells us, if you can eat this or drink that, while thanking God for it, do so. If you can’t, then don’t. But demanding a brother or sister submit to your preferences is not what Paul intended. In this case, abuse leads to legalism.

There is a wide plain between licentiousness and legalism. In that middle land is the Christian life based on love for God and respect for others. But go too far to either extreme and you fall off into disobedience and slavery. The licentious are disobedient in matters of morality and enslaved to their lusts. The legalists are disobedient in love of fellow believers while enslaved to earthly principles having nothing to do with true righteousness.

In Job 1 and 2 we see a divine interview as the angels present themselves before God along the lines of a royal audience. Satan came in with the angels and God initiates discussion with Satan. There are very few differences between these two discussions. In each (all passages from the NIV):

1. God asks, “Where have you come from” (1:7a; 2:2a).
2. Satan answers, “From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it” (1:7b; 2:2b).
3. God directs attention to Job, “Have you considered my servant Job?” (1:8a; 2:3a).
4. God praises Job, “There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless ad upright a man who fears God and shuns evil” (1:8b; 2:3b).
5. Satan calls Job’s obedience into question (1:9f; 2:4).
6. Satan lays out a test for Job’s obedience (1:11; 2:5).
7. God permits the test but sets the limits of it (1:12a; 2:6).
8. Satan goes out from the presence of God (1:12b; 2:7).

While these similarities are important much is to be learned from the differences. In the second event God adds to his praise of Job, “And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason” (2:3c). This was a personal challenge to Satan. Satan had claimed taking Job’s property would cause him to curse God, but it had not happened. Of course it was not the attack on his health that finally got him to curse God—it was the accusations of his friends (which I’ll go into later).[1]

God has a plan for Job and it involves more loss. His reason is kept within his own counsel, though we will see some parts of that later by looking at what did and did not happen. He speaks to Satan in such a way as to get him to act in line with divine plans. To imagine that God did not have a plan in mind, but simply responded to the idea of His creature is of course ridiculous to our understanding of God. While God says Satan incited Him against Job, we know that it was God who brought Job into the conversation. The story is presented as if it was Satan’s idea to inflict Job and how, but we see throughout the story that God was in control all along and the affliction of Job was according to God’s plan. A god who is incited by a lesser creature may do unjustly. In this case the actions of God appeared unjust to the one experiencing them. This had to bring to mind much of the pagan view of gods as arbitrary, fallible and changeable. But the God of the Bible is not a tool of anyone else’s plans. He directs the universe; bestows good; permits evil; inspires or restrains action. He is not fooled by Satan or tricked into doing harm when He would rather bless. If God cannot be wrong, then his allowing harm cannot be wrong. If God cannot do evil, then His permitting evil must accomplish divine good. I sometimes say this as, “If God cannot do evil then His act of permitting cannot be evil. His permitting must be good, even if what is permitted is itself an evil.”[2] In this way, we all must respond as God did to Job, “Let him who accuses God answer Him!”

Endnotes

1 Of course many will say, “Job never cursed God!” That depends on your definition of a curse. In 19:5f, Job says, “If indeed you would exalt yourselves above me and use my humiliation against me, then know that God has wronged me and drawn his net around me” (emphasis added). Job ends up accusing God of injustice and of wrong doing; he cursed God. Interestingly Satan did not incite this from Job, but his well-meaning friends did.

2 When something evil happens, our omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God permitted it. Without his permission nothing happens. This permission can be in one of two forms: action planned and executed by another agent not stopped by God; action planned by God to be accomplished by divine directive. It is this first form of permitting that I am speaking of here. When someone does evil and God permits it (by not stopping it) then God’s action of not stopping the deed is not itself evil, but good. This permitting of something to happen can be good even if the thing permitted is itself evil. Let me use something from raising children. If I as a parent see my child doing something that will inflict pain and I stop it then the child does not experience the pain—my action was good. At time it may be better to permit the child to experience the pain to learn a lesson. The experience of pain itself may be perceived as evil by the child, but my permitting it was a good action because it was with the purpose of teaching the child a lesson that otherwise would not have been learned.

As we continue into the story of Job (we’re still in chapter one), we see God as the great restrainer of chaos and evil. God places a hedge of protection around his loved ones and the only harm that happens is because God permits it. Job presents us with Satan in a divine audience. Satan goes about seeking opportunities to undermine mankind. Job chapter one shows Satan permitted to use enemy attack and natural phenomena to destroy Job’s wealth. Once unleashed by God, Satan hits Job within the bounds placed upon him. God moved the proverbial hedge of protection in closer, leaving some things outside. Satan could take away Job’s family and wealth, but had to leave his body untouched.

Satan struck four areas of Job’s life. The story leads us to conclude these were simultaneous attacks and the messengers arrive almost together—“While he was still speaking another messenger came [. . .].” In each report we see the same formula: a catastrophe happened, Job’s possessions were lost through theft or destruction, servants were killed, and only one survived to report the loss. Job lost his children, domesticated animals and servants. When it was over, Job’s property was reduced to his wife and his health. Perhaps this is where we get the old saying, “At least you’ve got your health.”

Blessing or at least protection is portrayed as coming straight from God’s active intervention in the affairs of man, but destruction, though permitted by God, was here seen as accomplished by another agent released or hindered by divine command. While it is easy to say that since God has the power to restrain, his choice to not do so makes the destruction at least consequent of his action. While true, notice that in Job, God did not send lightening, the wind, the Sabeans or Chaldeans. There is an active effort on the part of the inspired author to show this evil as not the direct work of God. God is the ultimate authority of course, and evil as well as good must be part of his plan, or it would not be permitted. Don’t take this too far, because there are times when scripture speaks of God sending destruction or evil in his own agency. God actively hardened Pharaoh’s heart; scripture says God sent the Assyrians and the Babylonians to punish his people, etc. But in this case, it is interesting that so much effort is used to show God as hands-off in the affliction. We are looking at Job’s view of God, not the full revelation of God’s nature demonstrated through the rest of scripture. Could it be that Job, though needing this scourging for his own good did not deserve it? In the end we discover Job, who was so holy and upright, still had a problem—self-righteousness. He believed God’s actions against him were unjust. God answers Job, but never gives a reason for his action. In this case being God “means never having to say you’re sorry.” You can’t be sorry, if you can’t be wrong. God was right to scourge Job to drive self-righteousness from him.

We often look at the friends of Job, and I will go into more on them later, but we forget that there were four friends and not three. Three friends were rebuked by God—they were the ones who accused Job of some secret sin bringing the wrath of God. The fourth friend rebuked Job for what he was saying about God. The fourth friend did not get rebuked. God told the other three to ask Job to pray for them—Job who had made sacrifice for his children was to pray for God’s hand of punishment to be restrained from them—their false accusation were no less sinful just because they were defending God. The fourth friend received nothing at all. He had hit the nail on head—God may have sent it, but God cannot be unjust—Job either deserved it or needed it. The indicator of justice is not guilt, but divine choice.

There can be at least five reasons why God would permit evil in our lives: retribution, correction, redirection, strengthening, or preparation. With retribution there is a correlation between the evil and some sin—sinful practice brings divine punishment. With correction there may be sin or some other error involved. God can allow evil in our lives to correct us and bring us back onto a proper course. With redirection, God may use evil in our lives to change our course and cause us to go a direction we either never considered or perhaps never wanted. For example, God got my attention years ago when my little girl was born with a heart defect. With strengthening, God may permit things in our lives to make us stronger. Once we suffer our way through an ordeal it makes us stronger to face them again. With preparation, God uses things, including evil, in our lives to prepare us for better service. For example there is the death of my son. This was terrible and we suffered greatly by losing a child. Years later, when ministering to a couple who had just lost their son, the mother said to us, “You are the only ones here who know what we’re going through.” This was true. Part of God’s allowing this in our lives must have been to prepare us to minister in other’s lives. We were prepared through suffering.

So God was allowing evil in Job’s life to correct a self-righteous mindset. He should see God as ultimately just and right, no matter what God allows. Could the inspired author be setting us up for later? God permitted the evil that Job had not earned, but did not perform it. In this way God is insulated from the false charge of injustice. He had the right to permit the evil on Job—and could have even performed it had He elected to—but he stayed hands-off.

This is one of the problems of the old Question of Evil. It assumes God can be compelled to take, or to refrain from, certain actions. However, God is such that the justice of His actions is not determined by why he acts but by His action alone. If God acts it is a just act simply because it is a divine act. God is not restrained by or accountable to some external sense of good or evil, right or wrong. God defines good and evil, right and wrong. The only restraint on God is God’s own nature. If He does something it is just, because His doing it proves its justice. If He permits something it is right because his permitting it proves its rightness. The act performed by another may be evil—as Satan’s striking of Job was—but God’s permitting it was right. So the question of evil shows itself to be based on a giant error. It assumes God is restrained to act in a particular way. Nothing restrains God, but God himself.

Looking deeper into Job and finding his view of God or the author’s view of God we learn something else rather quickly. One of the deepest questions of history has been the philosophical Question of Evil. It is asked all through history through philosophy, most of the world’s religions and is asked in scripture. This is the question that asks “Why do bad things happen?” Job is an attempt to answer this question and in the first chapter we see a premise upon which the rest of the book and its theodicy (defense of a good God in the face of an evil world). This premise is found in verses eight through ten of the first chapter.

In 1:10 Satan points out that God has placed a hedge of protection around Job, his household and his possessions. This lays the beginning of the argument throughout the rest of Job. In this view prosperity and good come through the active protection and intercession of God in the affairs of the blessed. It is this idea upon which the rest of the views and argument in Job will be built. If good comes from the active intercession of God and evil results from the lifting of his hand of protection or even His active direction of it, then upon what basis does God make such decisions? Does God decide out of a sense of justice to bless one and curse another? Is God like the pagan gods who curse or bless in response to human devotion or even from arbitrary impulse? Most of the pagans believed their gods needed no reason for their interference in the lives of men and sometimes caused great suffering out of boredom or pettiness. In Gilgamesh, humans are destroyed in a flood simply because the noise of human activity kept the gods from napping. Was God one who would simply destroy or bless man out of whim or did he have greater reasons?

Chapter one gives us a part of the answer. Job was prosperous because God actively protected him from calamity and harm. This will of course lead us into several other questions about God. Why did God point Job out to Satan? God obviously had some plan, some intention. He intentionally brings negative attention to Job. At first it seems almost like one of those arbitrary pagan divine actions. It could be assumed that God called attention to Job to cause harm to one who had devotedly served him and did so simply on a whim. We will not be able to move further into the argument of Job until we see a few more premises.

There is of course one application of this passage that I would like everyone to consider. All of us, at one time or another asks the Question of Evil: “God, why did you let this happen to me?” When things are going good, we never ask the reverse of that question: “God, why are you blessing me like this?” We tend to assume we deserve good but not evil. Scripture says the exact opposite—none of us deserve good and we all deserve evil. Because of this, when someone asks me, “Why do such bad things happen to innocent people?” My response is, “What innocent people? There is no such creature.”

Recently I read an interesting article on Job in BAR magazine. In it the author argues Job was swearing legal oaths to take God to court. This fascinated me and inspired me to reread Job, which is one of my favorites because of my fascination with the philosophical Question of Evil. Job can be taken as a form of an ancient Theodicy. There is one thing that always jumps out, stopping me for meditation in the first chapter. This is Job’s sacrifices on behalf of his children.

The passage says Job was “upright and blameless” and “feared God” (Job 1:1). To demonstrate how much he feared God, and to set up the setting for one of the disasters, it records that whenever his children held a feast Job would sacrifice a whole burnt offering for each of them, “In case they have sinned and cursed God in their hearts” (Job 1:5 NIV). What I wonder is did Job simply provide the sacrificial animals for them and help them make the offering? Did he sacrifice in their place? The passage seems to imply that he actually made the sacrifices himself on their behalf. He was the active agent in the sacrifices.

Could one person make an offering for the forgiveness of another? The law says the one who sinned owes the offering. For some reason Job believes his sacrifice for his sons would be effective in bringing God’s forgiveness for his children. One might say Job offered the sacrifices on his own behalf in case his children had sinned and he was liable, like the High Priest Eli, for not correcting them. The only problem is that it says on such mornings Job would send and have his children purified then continues on describing the sacrifices. The intent was not Job’s forgiveness but that of his children.

As I look at this and share my thinking understand that the details of divinity were slowly revealed throughout the history of God’s people. Many of the views of divinity and sacrifice among the Israelites and patriarchs varied little from the pagan society around them. Until God saw fit to intercede and correct some of their assumptions they often saw Him in similar terms to the pagan gods around them. Could it be that Job sees sacrifice as something that God needs or things that God himself desires? We know sacrifices demonstrated the cost and harm of sin and symbolized the final sacrifice of Christ, but many of the ancients believed the gods ate, drank and interacted much like we humans do. Many believed that they needed sustenance to either survive or for pleasure. There is evidence that many of the people of ancient Israel saw YHWH the same way. Could it be that Job sees the sacrifice as literal food for God who will respond to it by blessing others in gratitude to the worshipper? Could Job believe he is purchasing from God the forgiveness of his kids?

I don’t have an answer to this, but without considering the neighboring views of deity and sacrifice I am hard pressed to understand why Job thinks he can make offerings to cover his children’s sins. We know from the rest of the book that Job, though a devout worshipper of God, had some wrong ideas about Him. Job brought charges against God and accusing Him of acting unjustly. This shows at least some bad theology, even if Job’s acts of devotion toward his misunderstood Lord were sincere. I am not saying Job saw God as one among many gods, but did local pagan ideas of divinity flavor Job’s view of YHWH. I plan to reread Job with an eye toward discovering everything I can about Job’s view of divinity.

I’m preaching this week on John 12:43, “for they loved praise from men more than praise from God.” This passage got me thinking about our lives today. In the context of the passage we see that many influential people had come to believe in Jesus but would not publicly admit it because they feared being kicked out of the synagogue. What about us and our lives today? What things do we do because it pleases men even when it displeases God? Is it possible some things we claim to do for God have more to do with pleasing those around us?

Paul says in Galatians 6:4, “Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else, for each on should carry his own load” (NIV). He uses a word that shocks many believers if used positively. This word is pride. Some believers mistakenly think the scriptures never say anything positive about pride. I have even seen parents who feared taking pride in their children because it is supposedly evil.

Pride is not always wrong. If it were, Paul would not have encouraged it here. The inspiration for pride makes it good or evil. Positive pride grows from assurance and confidence. The confidence is based on past behavior, while the assurance is from knowing who one truly is and what one has accomplished. Paul is able to boast with pride of his accomplishments. He complains about doing this and expresses shock, but not at his pride. He complains about being forced to speak of it to get a church to listen to the one who should always have their ear. Negative pride is juxtaposed to the positive in this passage. We are told we can have pride in ourselves without comparing ourselves to another. Good pride is of assurance, evil pride is of superiority. Evil pride says I am better than you; I am too good for that; I am superior. It is this pride we are to avoid. We can avoid evil pride, while still being proud of our service and accomplishments.

Many times, in scripture when the covenant people interact with the surrounding populace, things happen that find meaning in local mythology. By this I do not mean that it supports local mythology, but like in the book Eternity in their Hearts, it seems God demonstrated truths to people using things they already believed.

In Exodus we see Moses strike the Nile and the water turn to blood. It is commonly held that each of these plagues was against some element of Egyptian religion—for example the Nile was seen as sacred. However, I wonder now if this did not have to do with the ancient Egyptian belief in Hathor’s Destruction of Mankind. According to this story the god Re declared a judgment on mankind for rebellion and sent Hathor to destroy them. During the judgment Re changed his mind and inundated the land with a “red beer.” Hathor, because of its similarity to blood, saw it as a sign of the success of her mission but got drunk and forgot to kill the rest of mankind. It seems likely that this plague in which the Egyptian people were judged and harmed by something similar to their mythology showed the powerlessness of Re and his human representative, Pharaoh.

This morning while reading in Galatians 5, I was impressed with verse 26, which says, “Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other” (NIV). This passage shows us something very true about human nature that most of us would like to deny. Provoking and envying are rooted in our image of ourselves and others.

This is easier to show with envy so I will start there. When you have something beneficial, whether a physical object or a beneficial arrangement, others may envy your good fortune.  While it is acceptable to be inspired by another’s success, to be driven to envy is not. Envy, as the negative side of desire, is born of believing you deserve the desired object (or blessing) as much as or more than the other person. Envy grows from viewing one’s self as of equal or greater status than another and seeing the success of another as an attack on that belief. Seeing one’s equality is not bad. We are all equal in God’s eyes, but when you believe the success of another actually makes you less equal then envy grows and we act to reestablish equality. Feeling you are greater than another is not bad when it is expressed as “this person can do something, but I can do it better.” If this is true, then believing it is not conceited—we are supposed to believe the truth. Conceit causes us to see the other person as less deserving than ourselves. We then see their success as a personal injustice. This causes us to envy them.

The other result of conceit is provoking. When we see our own happiness as more important than that of another we often provoke that person. We attack and pick at them because it is their role to make us happy as a part of the universe of which we are the center. We’ve all seen bullies picking on other children. This can happen when the bully himself feels vulnerable and seeks to mask his weakness by demonstrating and attacking another’s weakness. Of course this springs from an idea within the bully that he and his feelings are important enough to reduce the other person to being a tool. The attacker assumes a right to use the other person, regardless of the other person’s feelings.  Another reason people might provoke one another is the belief that the other person exists for their entertainment and that their ability to attack the other gives them a right to attack them. Either of these is an example of what Kant would have seen as using someone else as a means to an end, rather than seeing them as an end in themselves. I have no right to reduce you to a tool for my own purposes. It is conceit that inspires this behavior.

Another reason we provoke is because we believe the other person needs our guidance to live and act properly. We see ourselves as the other person’s personal conduit to the Holy Spirit. While I might love you enough to provoke you to righteousness and to seek your own best as a servant of God, this does not give me the right to provoke you to do what I want or what I believe you must do. There is a difference between seeing myself as your encourager to act and your guide to action. When we get conceited, we often believe our own understanding of the Word is special and that of others is suspect. Because of this, we provoke them to follow us rather than encouraging them to follow God. This too is conceit in action.

Each of us was created for God’s purposes. We have been created to serve him. Even though he has given us individual gifts and talents, no combination of such makes one superior to another or more deserving in God’s sight. So, when another receives a blessing it’s between the recipient and God. If you do not receive such, rather than blaming those who did receive by attacking them or envying them, look at yourself—your own decisions, your own devotion—to see if there is a reason blessings are withheld from you. More often than not, you will find you have received exactly what you deserved or have not received because you did not deserve. If honest, we understand that what we received from God was far more than we deserved. When you understand the world this way there is little room for provocation or envy among God’s people.

Do you believe in scripture? Most reading this will say they agree with and believe in the Christian scriptures as the Word of God. They affirm scripture as the rule of faith and practice and hold to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. This means the beliefs professed and ethics practiced are to find their root in scripture alone. So my question should really say, “Are the doctrines you profess and the life you model founded upon the scriptures alone?”

While I could argue for months on certain doctrines, most of these have been treated over and over by many scholars much better than me. Read these—or my other posts on them—and come to your conclusions. Over the next few posts I really want to talk about the ethical/moral considerations found within scripture. Is the morality taught within scripture sufficient? Does it meet the needs for our life or is lacking and in need of other rules to make it truly moral?

While most Christians would shout from the roof tops that the ethics of the Bible are sufficient, I find few actually believe it—at least in my own circle of contacts. This claim does not only apply to so-called liberal Christians. Actually, when it comes to ethical practice many—if not most—conservative, evangelical and fundamentalist Christians hold to views that have nothing to do with scripture. Some of these are pretty harmless, but some do great harm, by undermining the plain teaching of the Word of God.

Let’s look at some of these. Don’t forget that all truth is God’s truth so if we find our practice contrary to the teaching of the Word of God the onus is on us to change.