Ep. #05 “JOB: PART THREE” [Series: GENESIS & JOB]

Causation or correlation? When you rely on your own experience and judgments, you are always at risk of coming to the wrong conclusion. Job and his friends could see that he had fallen from his high position. Now they wanted to explain why. Without a good explanation, they could not fix his problem. Nor could they protect themselves.
Bildad’s comments in Job 8:3-6 are an example of how he correlated righteousness with prosperity and unrighteousness with punishment. “Does God pervert judgment? Or does the Almighty pervert justice? When your children sinned against him, he gave them over to the penalty of their sin. But if you seek God earnestly and plead with him, if you are pure and upright, even now he will rouse himself on your behalf and restore you to your prosperous state.”
Bildad and his friends were on very dangerous ground and did not realize it. They were blind to the fact that they had very little information about very important things. They misunderstood the nature of God and even ignored or misinterpreted reality to fit their own views. For instance, Eliphaz started his discussion with this observation, “Consider now: who, being innocent, has ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed?” If Eliphaz had been able to understand, he would have realized he was talking to an upright man who was being destroyed. Surely, they had all seen innocent people perish because of war or other circumstances beyond their control.
When examined in detail, the eloquent debates of Job and his friends reflect the same inadequacies of modern arguments and debates. Whether they are expressed or not, the assumptions of a debate usually dictate the conclusions. Does God behave according to formulas or our own understanding? Is suffering always caused by our own actions or inactions? Can we manipulate God through our sacrifices and prayers?
Job and his friends reach an impasse. He knows that suffering is not always related to righteousness, but he cannot understand what causes suffering. His friends absolutely know that suffering is related to being unrighteous. Unfortunately, they will not be able to come to understanding because their base assumptions about God are incorrect. God is about to give them some new information.