not, and they long for Reality.( Job 15:14–16)
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crushes the life out of what is going on in the present. If the traditional manner has any weight at all, it should make men courteous with the problems which are recent. Paul's advice to Timothy was—"Let no man despise thy youth." "Don't try to make up for your youth by dogmatism and talk, but see that you walk in such a manner that you are an example to the believers." No really wise, liberal-minded person ever needs to say, "Remember how old I am."
ology is second, not first; in its place it is a handmaid of religion, but it becomes a tyrant if put in the first place. The great doctrines of predestination and election are secondary matters, they are attempts at definition, but if we take sides with the theological method we will damn men who differ from us without a minute's hesitation. Is there any form of belief which has taken the place of God with me? We only believe along the line of what we conceive of God, and when things happen contrary to that line, we deny the experience and remain true to our theological method. Job is on the right trail.
Traditional belief has the root of the matter in it, but its form is often archaic. We begin our religious life by believing our beliefs, we accept what we are taught without questioning; then when we come up against things we begin to be critical and we find that however right those beliefs are, they are not right for us because we have not bought them by suffering. Job's experiences and his suffering made him re-state his beliefs. It is absurd to tell a man he must believe this and that; in the meantime he cannot. The traditional manner sits on the safety valve of every new type of experience. After the war, the Redemption will need to be re-stated theologically. Redemption must be seen to be God's "bit," not man's. A man cannot redeem himself. At present "Redemption" is not in the vocabulary of the average earnest Christian man. When the traditional believer hears men talk as they are doing, he is apt to get scared and to squash the life out of what, behind its insufficient expression, is going to be a re-illumination of traditional truth. If Eliphaz had been wise he would have seen what Job was getting at—"Job is facing something I do not see; I don't understand his problem, but I will treat him with respect." Instead of that he said, "According to my traditional belief, you are a hypocrite, Job."
4. The Words of the Tragedy-Monger ( Job 15:17–35) I will shew thee, hear me; and that which I have seen I will declare. ( Job 15:17)
Eliphaz empties all the vials of his wrath on Job, he takes the facts of Job's life and colours them, then states them again as "a man of straw." He pictures the terrific tragedy which is likely to happen to his "man of straw," and drives it home with—"Thou art the man." If Job is right, Eliphaz must be wrong, so he has to come to the conclusion that Job is a hypocrite, the worst of bad men, because what his creed declares to be the portion of a bad man, has come to Job. This accounts for the tirade of Eliphaz.
As a product of shallow evangelical teaching, people are led to "cod" themselves into believing that they are what they know perfectly well they are not; whereas the New Testament says if a man has the Holy Spirit it will show itself in fruit—"Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them." There are any number of men who suddenly realise the shallowness of persuading themselves that they are what they are not, and they long for Reality.
3. The Ways of the Theological Method ( Job 15:14–16) Behold, He putteth no trust in His saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in His sight. How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water? ( Job 15:15–16)
The standard for God cannot be experience; the standard is what Jesus Christ has revealed about God. If anything we may be told about God contradicts the manifestation given by Jesus Christ, we are at liberty to say, "No, I cannot believe that." Things have been taught about God which are seen to be diabolical when viewed in the light of Our Lord's revelation of Him. Remain steadfastly true to what you have learned, and when you have to suspend your judgement, say it is suspended. This was Job's attitude all through. "Your creed distorts the character of God, but I know in the end He will prove to be all that I trust Him to be, a God of love and justice, and absolutely honourable."
Theology is the science of religion, an intellectual attempt to systematise the consciousness of God. If we take the doctrine of the Trinity (which is a noble attempt of the mind of man to put into an theological formula the Godhead as revealed in the Bible) and say—"That is God," every other attempt at a statement of the Godhead is met by a sledge-hammer blow of finality. My theology has taken the place of God and I have to say—"That is blasphemy." The-
66 Baffled to Fight Better
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the FrontIers oF despaIr
Job 16–17
Then as I weary me and long and languish, Nowise availing from that pain to part Desperate tides of the whole great world's anguish Forced thro' the channels of a single heart, Straight to thy presence get me and reveal it, Nothing ashamed of tears upon thy feet, Show the sore wound and beg thine hand to heal it, Pour thee the bitter, pray thee for the sweet.
not necessarily a wrong reason, because revolt is of a moral order. If we come across a counterfeit, reality is sure to be found somewhere. Job is up against the religious pose of men who do not begin to understand where his sorrow lies.
2. The Recapitulation of Pain ( Job 16:6–22) Job's honesty and his freedom from cowardice come out very clearly; he would not say he was guilty of what he knew he was not guilty. He says, "I am not suffering because I have committed sin; I do not know why I am suffering, but I know that is not the reason." The majority of us would have caved in and said, "Oh, well, I suppose I am worse than I thought I was." What looks like revolt against God may really be not against God at all, but against the presentation being given of Him.
F. W. H. Myers
Up till now we have seen Job as a sane pessimist, but now we find him on the frontiers of despair. A man may get to the point of despair in a hundred and one different ways, but when he does get there, there is no horizon. In everything else there is hope that a dawn may come, but in despair there is no hope of anything brighter, it is the most hopeless frontier a human mind can enter without becoming insane. An insane person is never despairing, he is either immensely melancholy or immensely exalted. Despair is the hopelessness that overtakes a sane mind when it is pushed to the extreme in grief.
(a) The Psychology of It ( Job 16:6–8) Though I speak, my grief is not assuaged: and though I forbear, what am I eased? But now He hath made me weary: Thou hast made desolate all my company. ( Job 16:6–7)
1. The Revolt against Pose ( Job 16:1–5) Then Job answered and said, I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all. ( Job 16:1–2)
Many forms of grief find relief in expression—"the garment of words expressing the thing," but Job says that he cannot get any assuagement of his grief through expressing it. Not one of his friends can endure him; they believe he is desolate because God has left him. Every line of Job's experience seems psychologically to justify their judgement of him, and yet Job knows that what they say is not the explanation.
Job ironically takes on the pose which Eliphaz adopted, the pose of the superior person. Eliphaz has scolded Job and said that he is suffering because he is a bad man and a hypocrite. Job recognises that Eliphaz does not begin to understand his problem, and he revolts against pose. It is difficult to evade pose in religious life because it is of the nature of unconscious priggishness. If you have the idea that your duty is to catch other people, it puts you on a superior platform at once and your whole attitude takes on the guise of a prig. This too often is the pose of the earnest religious person of to-day. Of all the different kind of men one meets the preacher takes the longest to get at, for this very reason; you can get at a doctor or any professional man much more quickly than you can a professionally religious man.
(b) The Providence of It ( Job 16:9–15) God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked. I was at ease, but He hath broken me asunder. ( Job 16:11–12)
These verses describe in Oriental terms the providence of Job's pain; everything has come out against him. "God seems to have engineered everything dead against me; the inner circumstances and the outer are all the same—God has beset me behind and before like a wild beast; everything in my providential setting and my human life goes to prove that my pain is the outcome of my sin."
The religious pose is based, not on a personal relationship to God, but on adherence to a creed. Immediately we mistake God for a creed, or Jesus Christ for a form of belief, we begin to patronise what we do not understand. When anyone is in pain the thing that hurts more than anything else is pose, and that is what Job is fighting against here. No one revolts against a thing without a reason for doing so,
(c) The Pathos of It ( Job 16:16–22) O earth, cover thou not my blood, and let my cry have no place. . . . My friends scorn me: but mine eye poureth out tears unto God. O that one might plead for a man