Today's Reading: Job, Chapter Thirty-four
Elihu continues in his defense of God. He claims that Job is accusing God of being unjust. Job does make this claim in a roundabout way. If one believes that only the guilty would receive the kinds of awful things in this life that Job received, and if Job is truly innocent, then this was an injustice.
What the reader knows is that Job is innocent. God and the Satan (Accuser) are testing Job's goodness to see if it will stand up to calamity. So far, he hasn't cursed God yet as the Satan predicted.
But what we see in this work is that a proclamation of innocence doesn't necessarily make God unjust. It may be that the world operates differently than we supposed.
Elihu makes the argument that God doesn't need to put people on trial because God knows us thoroughly. This is a movement toward omnipotence which is new theological ground.
We see the earlier thought (that you can hide from God and that God doesn't know everything) with the story of the Garden of Eden in Genesis. God calls to Adam asking, "Where are you?"
We begin to see a movement away from this in the book of Jonah when he runs the opposite direction from God's call but discovers that God is just as powerful outside of the promised land (and even on the seas) as God is at home.
Elihu makes the argument that both rich and poor answer to God and each one dies. There is a balancing among human beings in our mortality and one's riches cannot buy them out of Sheol. But this line of thought could call into question the notion that the rich are wealthy due to God's favor which aligns with the good receive tangible blessings while the evil receive tangible punishments. So, in a way, Elihu is making Job's argument for him.
Of course, he ends with a refutation of Job. They can't get past the idea that he must have done something to deserve this and now he is rebelling because Job must be in denial. Elihu seems to believe that Job is not very self-aware but it really has to do with Elihu's own misconceptions about how God works in the universe.
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| Sometimes we just know we're right! |
Does self-assurance ever lead to conflict in our lives? How can we remain confident while at the same time leaving room for the idea that we might be incorrect? Some people continue to double-down on a statement no matter what. The difficulty is that if it is proven wrong, their fall is that much greater.
Prayer for the day:
God, help us to remain steadfast in our assurances of your grace and love. May we not move our stance on the forgiveness that we find and offer in Christ. Let us see that mutual respect is not something from which we will waver. And as these come from our faith, deepen our faith today. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.
New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
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