Counterfeit: Job (mind blown)

So, here's the thing. The whole blogging thing is obviously not my strong suit. I'm just not consistent, or faithful. Kind of like my relationship with God sometimes. After an unfaithful spell with my bible, I got back on the horse. I've been reading...just not blogging about it.

To be entirely honest, I felt a little bit convicted about the harshness of my first two posts in this series. I kind of bashed the church a little bit and felt bad about it. Sorry about that. I know what I did. That's one of the reasons I stopped blogging, even though I was reading. Needed to refocus a bit.

But I have been reading. Today I read Job 35-37. This book has been blowing my mind. I've read it before. I've even studied it in class. But this time around....man, good stuff.


Back to Job.

A lot of times in the book of Job, his friends get a really bad rep. Everyone who's ever heard anything about the book assumes that they are giving bad advice and are just horribly wrong in everything they say. But guess what?!?!?! A lot of what they say is a story version of what's in Psalms and Proverbs. It's pretty nuts. After taking a class on Hebrew Poetical and Wisdom Literature (bible college shout out!) I realized that they weren't completely off the deep end. They were using the accepted wisdom of their time, their understanding of God, to try to explain the situation.

How often do we do that? I know I use the accepted wisdom of today to explain away why bad things happen. Phrases like "Everything happens for a reason." Or "God works everything out for the good." Sure, great phrases that encourage....but have we ever stopped to think that maybe we are horribly wrong in how we apply those? I mean...that's what happened to Job's friends.

Sure, as readers of the story we knew that God had something going in the background that none of the characters knew about. God was testing Job. That was a concept they didn't understand at that time. If something was going wrong in your life, it was a sin issue. No questions asked. That was it. So when Job started questioning it....they went a little nutso. They didn't know what else to say to him.

I guess I just can't help but take this as a warning not to rely to much on the way we, as Christians, tend to explain situations we don't completely understand. I know I don't want to end up like Job's friends. I don't want to look like the fool.

So just be careful. Sometimes things aren't as simple as they seem. Sometimes we have to ask God what's going on. And then when he answers...all he's gonna say is "I'm God. Trust me."