Today's passage is Job 5.
Eliphaz continues with advice to Job. First he gives Proverbs-like truths and wisdoms, such as "man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward." He says if he were in Job's predicament he would appeal to God. He goes on to say his research shows him that God protects the innocent and thwarts the wicked, that God rescues the faithful from seven calamities, that the person God corrects with discipline is blessed, and many other such things. Eliphaz says Job should look at his situation in light of the research and see how it applies to him.
Eliphaz sounds like a theology professor who's never been out of the library. If he has ever experienced suffering, his words do not show it. With the famous "man is born to trouble" line, there's the sense that Eliphaz will say something profound about the mystery of suffering, but he doesn't. He continues with his theme of God protecting and caring for the righteous.
Why doesn't Eliphaz touch on repentance?
Has he never sinned? His understanding of God is shallow.
His God protects the weak, needy, innocent and faithful and punishes the wayward so they'll get back in line.
Eliphaz is trying to put Job's situation in a box too small.
Not only does Job's situation not fit Eliphaz's box, Eliphaz can't even see that it doesn't.
Where does this leave me? Both stuck and humbled.
Just as Pastor Kim keeps going back to the humbling years of hardship during her first marriage, I keep going back to my years of denying my first wife's alcoholism.
I didn't want to see my wife's alcoholism because I didn't want to see myself objectively.
If I saw the truth of my wife,
I would have to see the truth of my adultery with her before she divorced her first husband.
I would have to see my responsibilty for her pregnancy that led to her divorce and marriage to me.
I would have to see the fantasy family myth I created to hide my sins in.
I would have to see the fantasy of fame, fortune and happiness that I made to justify years of graduate school, poverty and indebtedness.
I would have to see my utter failure as a husband and head of my family.
I did not lead responsibly, I did not make good goals and good plans for the care of my wife and family.
I made a mockery of my roles and thus made a mockery of myself.
In the long run, I threw my wife away because I wouldn't see myself.
In the West, TV sitcoms changed in the late 60s and 70s.
Before that time, the TV father was an upright man who worked hard and dispensed family justice with love.
He was the leader of the family, his word was law, his wife obeyed.
Was life really like that? Sort of.
The TV shows represented an ideal that reality often failed to live up to.
During my life, those TV sitcoms changed.
The father became a fool, an overgrown adolescent, constantly corrected and criticized by his wife because he had given up his role as husband and refused to lead responsibly.
He just wanted to be his wife's friend, not her husband.
He didn't want to make hard decisions.
Was life really like that? Sort of. The
TV shows reflected a society that was losing its family identity.
I hated those TV shows of the 70s that depicted the husband as a fool.
I wanted to be the husband who stood for something noble and upright.
But to be that husband, I had to see myself objectively, acknowledge my sins, repent and pray for help to change. I never did.
My wife died of alcoholism while I chased another woman, and my children received poor guidance from me. I was a fool living a life of folly.
To be my wife's husband is not to be my wife's friend.
Paul makes that very clear in his letters, especially 1 Corinthians.
A wife will not be good and obedient if a husband does not lead with the authority God gives him.
It's not a matter of being nice, it's a matter of being the marriage and family leader.
Belatedly and ironically, I'm learning a lot of this by being a principal.
No one can do my job except me.
It I don't do it, someone near me will do it and misery and misdirection will ensue.
Like Eliphaz, I had a little box I put life in when I was first married, and I refused to see that life didn't fit in it.
I refused to see myself objectively and accept who I was. In the end I had to face humility over and over again.
I learned I can't be the leader I am called to be unless I am humble.
I can only be humble by seeing myself, seeing my sins and repenting.
Lord, let me not be blind to my reality or to yours. Help me see myself truly, repent and lead others with due humility. Help me advise and counsel others with a mind of repentance.
