Yahweh Rebukes the Fundamentalists: A Lesson from the Book of Job

This post is not really about suffering. It's about expanding our understanding of God.

Aside from the fact that the book of Job is great literature, who among us can't empathize with Job's predicament? He is being tested by God. He has lost his children, his goods, and his health. He's covered in painful sores and he smells. Dogs lick his wounds. His wife is shrieking at him and his supposed friends, those misguided comforters, are accusing him of being a sinner. Job doesn't understand what is happening with his deity. God is behaving in ways that don't make sense. Something is terribly wrong, but what and why?

The fact is, Job's friends and accusers were standing on solid ground. They were drawing on God's holy, inerrant, unchanging Word. Deuteronomy 27 and 28 assure the reader that bad things happen to disobedient sinners. Good things happened to the obedient. They had ineffable tradition on their side. 

"Ask the former generation and find out what their ancestors learned, for we were born only yesterday and know nothing, and our days on earth are but a shadow. Will they not instruct you and tell you?" (Job 8:8)

How could any sane person impugn God's pure justice? The friends had an eloquent repertoire of speeches with which to defend God. How could they not be on perfectly safe ground, not only with God but with everyone they knew. Their argument was a sure thing, their reputations secure. The longer they pleaded with Job to mend his ways and confess his error, the holier these men felt.

As for Job, he was the miscreant. What new idea is this, that a good man could suffer so? One thing well-churched fundamentalists know is that they know everything they need to know. They have the whole revelation, and there will surely never be anything new. I myself have been there, done that. A perfect God must uphold all of the righteous revelations of the past. He cannot waver, cannot change. Old is good. Formulations, rules, laws, traditions are important because they're clear and safe, like the hometown you grew up in. But Job was calling for a mediator, something new, an advocate who had a foot in heaven and a foot on earth, one who could plead man's cause with God and explain the inscrutable deity to mankind (Job 9:32-35). Job suggested, and not always respectfully, that there were gray areas in the traditional understanding of suffering. The old formulas don't always work.

And yet, when all of the speeches had been made, with Job crying out in confusion and doubt and the three friends laying out how things have always been, God rebuked the friends and defended Job. 

"After the LORD had spoken these words to Job, He said to Eliphaz the Temanite, 'My wrath is kindled against you and your two friends. For you have not spoken about Me accurately, as My servant Job has.'" (Job 42:7)

They had to sacrifice seven bulls and seven rams, and Job had to pray for their atonement. Job became their priest in a sense. He also became an instrument of (gasp) a broader understanding of God. Good people can suffer! It's not all cut and dried. It's not that Deuteronomy was totally wrong...it's just that it's a broad brush over a cumbersome problem...a problem more complicated than two Scripture chapters can resolve.

That's why Jesus warned against putting new wine in an old wineskin. Old skins are brittle and will crack. They can't take the pressure of new thoughts, changes in culture, scientific discoveries, rockets to the moon, and female attorneys. Fundamentalist leaders are faithful stewards of all that is old and fixed, but anything new is dangerous and is a slippery slope that the truly pious will avoid at all cost. They are prone to rebuke, chasten, and persecute anything that isn't frozen in time, you know, like wives submitting to their husbands in all things. Like the priesthood versus the minister. Liturgies. Formulas for baptisms. Whether the earth revolves around the sun or the sun around the earth. So many dogmas, quite a few of them very old. We often stand guard with our swords at the ready to cut down any new thought or way of worship.

Fear is part of the problem. Fear that we'll blow past the guard rails, the old trails and byways, and get irrevocably lost. Fear that God is strict and holy and will rain punishment down on His wayward people. There's no manual other than the Bible to know which changes are beneficial and really reflect God's nature and which are compromises with the world and the devil. Catholics burned Lutherans at the stake. The new Reformation denominations drowned Anabaptists. John Wesley was a scandal because he preached to the masses in outdoor settings. The established denominations told Pentecostals that their gifts were of the devil. The Pentecostals in turn called the mainliners "the frozen chosen."

There are powerful women in the Bible. Most female church attenders know about Deborah, Hannah, Huldah, Phoebe, Lydia, Priscilla, etc. The apostle Phillip had four daughters that prophesied. Those anecdotal Bible stories stand in contrast to the clear rules that women submit to men, that women must pray and prophesy with their heads covered, that women should not speak in the church but should consult with their husbands at home, and that a woman must not teach a man because Eve sinned first and lured Adam into sin. Women should be keepers at home because God created team Adam first and Eve was just the logistical support. Adam reflected the glory of God. Eve reflected the glory of Adam. Be like Sarah. She called her husband "my lord." All these negative proscriptions for women are in the New Testament. When my class at the Assembly of God Bible college in Sacramento graduated, a bunch of us stood in the hallway talking. One of the men reviewed these Scriptures and asked, "What do you do with those? Where do you put them?" I didn't answer out loud, but in my head I said, "In the first century where they belong."

Well, some new things should be cut down or excised, but there is no stop sign at the end of the apostolic era. The Holy Spirit blew right past it and is still at work in the world today. Our human intellect is part of how we reflect God's image. He made us resilient, gave the ability to analyze our values and to understand His word. If we look carefully and the words and deeds of Jesus foremost, we will find our way through the shoals of controversy. Our ears and eyes need to stay open. God is still afoot in the world and I don't ever want to miss what He is doing.

Scripture quotes are from biblehub.com, Berean Standard Bible version (my favorite). Image from https://www.freebibleimages.org

This essay can also be seen at https://medium.com/@janetkatherineapplebysmith/yahweh-rebukes-the-fundamentalists-a-lesson-from-the-book-of-job-e0571c855813.