Thursday, March 19, 2015

Job 36: When Principles Become Absolutes

Elihu makes some sweeping claims in Job 36 (including his boast that he is "perfect in knowledge" in verse 4!)  Elihu may be correct that God often acts the way he describes in this chapter - but does he go too far when he paints his vision of the universe in stark black-and-white terms?  There is no gray area with your fate, Elihu insists.  Instead, he says that it is absolutely true that you get in this world what you deserve.

Elihu is attacking what he sees as Job's claim to exceptionalism: "I have faithfully followed God and yet I have suffered immensely."  Such a situation does not compute with Elihu's worldview.  To him, the calculus is simple.  Good people = rewards, Bad people = punishments.  End of story.

We might be persuaded to agree with Elihu because much of what he says can be generally true.  I believe the experiential evidence shows that the universe is set up in such a way that healthy habits (spiritually and physically) lead to healthier states of being.  And the inverse of that is true as well - unhealthy, sinful habits lead to a spiraling state of "dis-ease" as well.  These are time-honored principles that Elihu and Job's friends agree upon, and so would I.

However, they not only agree upon these statements - they insist upon them being universally true for everyone.  Here is where the problem lies.  We know that these statements are not true for Job.  Job makes a case for "special pleading" that his situation is unique.  Well, guess what?  It is!  Elihu and Job's friends miss the larger picture of what God is doing (or what God is allowing) here because they are convinced in the absolute rightness of their position.  They would have done better to be less prideful and more sympathetic.

P.S. If I were dividing scripture into chapters and verses, I would end Job 36 with verse 23.  Verse 24 seems to go with the next chapter which uses the imagery of a storm to describe the Lord's power.

No comments:

Post a Comment