Friday, January 16, 2009

Job 7: Insignificance

Job 7:17 "What is man, that you make so much of him, and that you set your heart on him?"

Job here seems like a big picture guy. He seems to realize his place in the grandest scheme of things. He recognizes several things. Life isn't that long. Life is already hard enough. Death is permanent. 

Why would God consider Job to mess with him? Job is very near nailing it here. God has allowed Satan to mess with him. Job, in his uprightness, has become the target. Job was the squeaky wheel in a sense. Job stood out in his righteousness. He seemed to catch special attention from God because of this. Which is a paradigm shift from what we typically think of God. What we stereotypically think of God. Do we not have the impression that it is our good deeds that bring about God's blessing? Reward, right? 

But God was not impressed by Job, I don't think. Nothing Job could have done would have impressed God. That would have been an emphasis on Job's own works, rather than God's choosing to bless Job. In the same way, God chose to upset Job's apple cart.

In all of Job's worrying about losing his integrity, he holds nothing back here. He is real before God, masking nothing. He doesn't claim to know what God is doing. He doesn't offer to explain it away. He doesn't seem to care about masking his anguish with a facade of stoicism. In realizing his own ignorance, Job maintains his integrity. Is Job whining? I could see an argument in that with some of the words recorded here. Without knowing Job's predicament, one could tack a sense of "stop picking on me" to his emoting. But Job didn't care how he looked before his friends, and before his God, and that's pretty heroic to me.

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