I’ve been doing a bit of catching up on my Bible reading and have recently been hanging out in the book of Job. Now, you’ve got to wonder about the book of Job. Most of the time it’s summed up by a preacher in about three chapters (the first two and then the last one), basically they say: Job’s a good guy, devil asks to test him, God let’s him take away everything Job has and even gives him boils, Job doesn’t curse God, and in the end God comes in a violent storm and then returns to Job double what he originally had, the end.
What we barely ever spend much time on is the nearly 40 chapters of conversation between Job and his three ‘counseling’ friends. I could be wrong but I think that is the longest conversation that there is in the Bible, and it’s an definite argument no less. And I’ve been spending the past two days sitting in the midst of these arguing friends, and boy is it something.
I think there are a ton of situations where you could apply some of the wisdom found here, like don’t argue with someone who just lost everything, but I think you can figure those out. Instead, I’d like to just point out one of the interesting passages I ran across that I think might lend us some insight. (This is from The Message, I looked at the NIV too and I think it’s a acceptable translation)
Job to his friends:
“are you going to keep on lying ‘to do God a service’?
to make up stories ‘to get him off the hook’?
Why do you always take his side?
Do you think he needs a lawyer to defend himself?
How would you fare if you were in the dock?
Your lies might convince a jury-but would they convince God?
He’d reprimand you on the spot
if he detected a bias in your witness.
Doesn’t his splendor put you in awe?
Aren’t you afraid to speak cheap lies before him?”
Have you been there? Eagerly trying to ‘defend God’ with your human wisdom? Is that why we are so into apologetics and theological study?
I wonder if our lack of awe at this concept of god we argue the case of, is the very thing that keeps those we argue against from seeing the splendor and standing in awe of the true living God?
Great article. I’m going to look up the passage in my bible and think on that. What I think you’re saying her is that in our efforts to defend God to others, we sometimes go too far out on a limb in what we understand and make claims and assertions were not sure of, to defend God, and maybe we shouldn’t do that. Maybe we should trust that God can take care of Himself. Interesting. Is that what you were saying?
Zach, if your still subscribed to this post, did you ever read this passage and consider what I wrote? Let me know what you thought.
Ariah, I reread this post and I have some thoughts on it, but I would like you to clarify a little bit more about what you think this passage is alluding to in today’s terms. I agree with you that this is a very interesting verse because it points out something that I wouldn’t otherwise think about. I think it’s speaking to putting winning an argument higher than what’s actually true. Sometimes when I’m arguing with people, I will find that I’ve taken a stance I don’t actually believe, or will repeat a “fact” that I don’t have full trust in, in order to win the point. What I’m doing in those situations is sacrificing the truth for the win. Sounds pretty terrible when you put it like that. Maybe the subconscious justification I use in those moments is that the sacrifice of this minor truth is worth it to arrive at a larger, greater truth, and that the ends justify the means. Writing this outside of one of those situations, it’s clear how terrible that is, and Job, who was bearing the brunt of this, saw quite quickly how cruel a weapon that is. I think an example of this sacrificing the truth to win the argument that I’ve done is I’ve said before in argument about abortion that abortions went down while Clinton was president and up while Bush was president. I read that somewhere once. I’m pretty sure it’s not true though. I think if I did the due dillegence on it, that I would find that abortions did in fact go down under Bush’s presidency. But it makes for such a compelling argument! Is it right to use something I’m pretty sure is not true to push people away from the one-issue voting mentality that has blinded so many Christians to other very important issues? Well, no. Ok, so first off, I need to stop doing that.
Ok, so your second two paragraphs in your post. I’m not sure exactly what you’re getting at. Could you explain it more to me? Do you think we are lying about God to make Him look better? If so, in what ways?
Zach,
I think the stuff you just said above is totally right on, and exactly along the train of thought that I had.
My last point was simply to say that I’ve come to find the sort of apologetic’s movement and arguing for God thing to be a rather serious turn off. I’d imagine non-Christians would feel even more so. I think we do an actual disservice to God when we try and defend God. I think there is a place for explaining what we believe and articulating how we’ve come to our beliefs, but often I think our approach falls into the same sort of errors as Job’s friends.
You catch my drift?