Bad theology and the book of Job

Job 7:11-21

In preaching Job, especially these passages today, I think it’s incredibly important to point out that Job’s friend, Eliphaz, doesn’t understand God at all. It’s one of these challenges reading the Bible out of context when we pick up a chapter and read someone like Eliphaz saying, “Isn't your religion the source of your confidence; the integrity of your conduct, the source of your hope? Think! What innocent person has ever perished?” and it’s real tempting to think, “Well, that must be biblical wisdom!” The problem being that Eliphaz is simply wrong and Job, God, and the reader all know it.

            Job’s friends probably mean well. That might be me putting on my 8^th commandment hat and believing the best of them, but I’ll try it out here at least. Let’s say that Job’s friends actually believe that they are helping him; that Job has some terrible, secret sin that is the reason God took everything from him—never mind that we already know from the story that this isn’t true. If we can put the best light on Eliphaz, we might believe that his understanding of God is just as likely as Job’s. After all, none of us really have met God and been able to interrogate the divine about these matters of theology. Karma makes logical sense; so does an eye for an eye.

            But this story should demonstrate pretty clearly that all theology is not the same, and all of us do theology, whether we think we do or not. If you say, “God is love” then your understanding of what that means is theology; it is using a particular scripture to explain God’s relationship to us. Likewise, if you quote from John and say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and none come to the Father through me,” claiming that Christianity is the only faith that holds water in light of this verse, you are doing theology. Some theology is good; some is bad; much is unclear.


            The important point is that none of this matters to Job, because Job knows with absolute certainty that Eliphaz is wrong. Rather than trusting Job that maybe Job knows a bit more about Job than they do, Job’s friends value their theology more than they value their friend’s own lived experience.

            This is a problem today in much the same way. We value our theology, our convictions, our beliefs—and about things far afield from God—and we value them more than the experience of other people. So, when somebody explains how they feel about something—you name it the subject, but in America 2020, you can substitute the lived experience of racism or COVID-19 for much of this—if your preconceived notions about your own convictions and beliefs define their experience rather than their own testimony of their experience, then we’re about as much help as Job’s friends.

            Silence would have been much better.

            Job’s response in chapter 7 is particularly hard to hear, because I think it’s the mental and emotional endgame for so many right now. First, Job wonders if perhaps he did do something wrong beyond his knowing. I feel this hard, because I know I am always failing somebody unknowingly. I’m not being the parent I should; I’m not being the pastor I should. You can fill in your own life; if you’re introspective enough, you already do. So, I feel Job’s response. The nihilism, the despair. The most famous nihilist in history, Fredrich Nietzsche was the son of a Lutheran pastor. His understanding of the universe was more or less the same as the faith of his family, but for one absolutely critical difference. Where Job sits in despair and the knowledge of his own unworthiness, and Nietzsche would gladly point to the pointlessness of it and the evidence for the absence of God, the Christian would agree and add a single word we call “grace.”

            Job is forgiven. Which means Eliphaz is, too. Which means you are, too.

            Grace doesn’t solve all of our problems. People of faith face depression and anxiety; we face those feelings of worthless and meaninglessness. In the face of COVID-19, we face the destruction of our narratives; the ripping up of the world we imagined for ourselves a year ago. And division is all the more real when you tear back the curtain from how we typically keep up appearances. And we think less of each other. And we hurt over the pain we cause one another. And some of it is justified, which is the hard part. It’s not simply a case of letting it go. The Eliphazes of the world do real harm. If you lack a theology that preaches Jesus as he was—and not how you imagine to be—you are going to do real harm. I suspect more people are harmed in the name of love than hate, weaponizing our beliefs against one another because we believe we have it all figured out.

            But we don’t understand God. We can’t even understand a virus. We struggle immensely with big conceptual issues like systemic racism. How on earth are we going to understand God?

            Actually, that’s pretty much the point of the book of Job. You can’t understand God. Actually, that sets the stage for everything that is coming. You can’t understand God, because you never would have guessed God was going to send Jesus. You can’t understand God, because you never would have guessed that there would be a girl named Mary who would be front and center in history. You never would have guessed that this Savior was going to come and die. I know you wouldn’t have, because we still don’t really live like it’s true.

            Like Job’s friends, we too often use theology as a weapon, inflicting harm. But the great news is that we are not dependent on theology to save us—not any longer. Job needed a Savior. What he is going to get instead is a confrontation with the living God, which is going to hurt. Yet, in the end, it will also demonstrate the kind of God we are dealing with—a God who rejects karma for grace and who lifts up our connectedness with all of creation. A kind of God who saves.