The Book of Job starring who?

Where is one’s stability if it is not union with the Creator of the universe? Our world with its nations are like waves in a sea that rise up and splash down over each other. So it is also with the succeeding generations; they rise up and splash down over each other. Youth always seems to know better, but it is always the same old salt water with the occasional bit of flotsam. Stability is the ground where the Creator and created overlap in a maintained union.

The Apostle Paul spoke of this stable union like a body; we are members of that body. However, that still does not quite express the living nature of the union. For that we have to look for Paul’s “one things.” He expresses these in several places, most notably in 1 Corinthians 2:2. For I determined to see the meaning of nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified in an ongoing way. The type of knowing is seeing the meaning of something, and that something is in a verb tense we do not have in English, but do express like when we say, “It happened, so deal with it!” The crucified reality is something ongoing that squelches the wave tossing of the nations and the shifting preferences of people who know better.

It is no mystery that I think God has had all this already figured out in the Bible. Our world is perfectly explainable as the result of ingesting the fruit from the tree of knowing both good and bad-evil relative to individuals. Taking of that tree on our own brings death. The Creator had planned to share this knowledge in time, but only seen through His way of being through it.

The Book of Job is about navigating the tree of knowing good and bad. The discourse between Job and his three friends is essentially, “you did something bad, no I am good.” It goes on this way for most of the book eventually hitting an impasse; nothing is solved. Both sides are still blind to their own plight. Finally, by an unlikely source, the situation begins to unravel until Job is confronted with the reality that he must give up his own goodness, which is known by default from that delusional tree. Thus, Job despises himself when he captures God’s perspective in some small measure. So, the book ends when Job ceases to maintain his part in the knowing of good as opposed to evil relative to himself. This revelation takes the form of seeing the Creator’s perspective of how He expresses Himself in creation.

This expression of the Creator through what He does was always the way through the blinding morass of the delusional tree, and it still is. But we are so blind to it at such a deep level that even one of the most righteous men in the Bible is utterly blind to the human predicament. It required outside intervention. The same holds true today. However, now we have the intervention of Jesus Christ expressing the Creator’s nature through the torturous execution on the Roman cross.

This nature is very elusive, because our blindness is total from conception. The only existence we can formulate expresses out from what is good as opposed to bad for me. Whether we embrace it or attempt to eschew it during the blip of time we live, everything being about us flows by it.

All of this goes back to what Paul decided to only see the meaning of in and among the local body of Christ. It is very elusive. Our default is seemingly illusive, because our design is elusive. What a mess; God please intervene!

As I say all the time, the answer has always been in the Bible. Most folks just read it by their default. They get all bent out of shape about this injustice or that unfair thing, because they cannot escape their own default of good vs. bad relative to themselves. “How can God be good if this evil thing? That is so unfair! Hey, I know what is just.” So, the fruit of the delusional tree just keeps on expressing itself in such a manner, generation after generation washing over the next, with nation splashing over the next, and so on.

While spending time with my Intervention Counselor, I was expressing my desire to help explain this to people. The Holy Spirit then responded with a question, as He often does, “What happens if you cast someone else into the role of Job?” This is when I immediately realized His point, because I had just then been spending quite a bit of time looking at the life of David, asking that question yet again, “How is David a man after God’s Own heart?”

Even that is bound to drum up a host of various answers until your Intervention Counselor has taken you by the heart to stare in the face of Jesus being tortured to death on that Roman execution rack. It is only there that you can actually see what is un-seeable otherwise. And even then, only the Same Spirit can reveal this when taken to the end of the flesh’s breath.

David was an oddball in the Bible – a lot like Jesus, because both would often do or say things that dumbfounded the closest people to them. I will let you hunt these down, but consider the story of King David and his men hiding from King Saul in the very cave that King Saul decided to use as a toilet. God had made David king instead of Saul. Then Saul tries to save his own position by hunting David. Now here Saul was, exposed. All David needed to do was backstab Saul and the throne given him from God was his. But David would not take by force anything God had given Him. (I hope you can hear that in terms of the forbidden tree in Eden, because they do link.) However, no one serving with David understood. They were all baffled, because David refused to do what they would do.

Here is another from the time of Absalom’s conspiracy to usurp his father’s throne. If David would not use force to take power already given him, then it is clear from this story that he does not try to maintain it that way either. As Absalom seeks to move in by force, David moves out. During the retreat, a relative of Saul, Shimei, starts throwing stones at King David, and calling him a bloody man. The mighty men with David immediately wanted to rush over to Shimei and kill him. But David told them to leave Shimei alone, for perhaps God had brought this stone throwing episode on him. And I believe this is true, to show us the Spirit in the heart of Jesus, the son of David.

So, again, what would happen if David starred in the role of Job? I think it is obvious. Job would have been a very short book as David accepted all the labels of evil, injustice, and implications of wrong-doing upon himself. He would have remained silent and looked guilty. Not a word would have come out of his mouth. Instead, his face would reveal one totally dependent on God, silently calling out to Him in the Spirit of the Psalms.

The only way out of the default whims of this world is by being in union with the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. The rage of Adam ebbs and flows, but the Unshakeable One already passed through all the fury that man could muster. People in their default do not know what they are doing. Of course, they think the opposite, which makes their blindness even more insidious. Yet, David did not dwell with his thoughts on the pressing flood of humans pushing forth their agendas. Instead, David kept looking to the Unshakeable One as his strength, his song, and salvation. When present circumstances threaten to smother you, there is One Who supplies from the endless expanse. This comes not to fix the circumstances per se, but to nurture and reveal the union with the Unshakeable One Who is.