SUCCESSFUL LIVING

“We have examined this, and it is true.  So hear it and apply it to yourself.” (5:27)

The remainder of Eliphaz’s opening speech trails off in a string of spiritual banalities, each one as patently true as it is monstrously callow. In the light of Job’s present circumstances, for example, it is plainly ludicrous to promise that if he trusts in the Lord, “You will take stock of your property and find nothing missing” (5:24). And how cruel to croon comfortingly, “You will know that your children will be many” (5:25). When Eliphaz further assures Job, “You will be protected from the lash of the tongue” (5:21), surely there are few words in the entire book more larded with the sharp irony of inadvertent self-condemnation.

This rosy picture of the life of faith that Eliphaz paints for Job adds up to what is nowadays called the “health-and-wealth gospel.” In this twisted theology, material and physical well-being are viewed more as rewards for faith than as wholly unmerited blessings, more as promised entitlements than as gracious gifts which, like all the gifts of God, are “distributed according to his will” (Heb. 2:4). As followers of a Lord who was whipped, pierced, destitute, and crucified, it is astonishing how hard of hearing we Christians can be when it comes to the necessity of suffering. We do not really want to be healed (with all that process entails); we just want to be well right now, period, thank You very much. It seems we are interested in every kind of health except spiritual health. Not many of us could address our sufferings in the way that Alexander Solzhenitsyn did in his famous apostrophe to the Gulag: “Bless you, prison . . . for it was in you that I discovered that the meaning of earthly existence lies, not as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul.”

Where the health-and-wealth gospel does its deepest damage is not so much in convincing us that we should be materially and physically well off, but in luring us into thinking that we should also be well in every other respect, including emotionally and psychologically. How the world admires the “well-adjusted” personality! Unfortunately, what has been adjusted to in most cases is simply the fallen, evil nature of humanity. That can be adjusted to amazingly well, and in such a personality complacency becomes the prime strategy for living. Strong, competent, resilient individuals can grow so well-insulated to the normal shocks of life that they are barely aware of their own pain, let alone compassionate towards the struggles of others. Jesus issued a stern challenge to this illusion of the well-rounded, holistic Christian life when He preached, “If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire” (Matt. 18:8). The gist of this teaching is that the person who is manifestly impaired (whether physically, emotionally, or mentally) may be the one who is truly alive, while the person who appears from a worldly point of view to have it all together may be bound for destruction.

As the Dialogue section of Job unfolds, it will be important to see how the highly reasonable theology of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar is gradually exposed as little more than a private coping mechanism, a kind of protective armor against the harshest realities of life. Their religion is one that provides good insulation for themselves, but no consolation for others. In arguing with Job, their understandable concern is that in the depths of this man’s despair his thoughts seem to be irreverently taken up with the collapse of God’s good favor towards him, rather than with the collapse of his own faith. The supreme irony of this judgment is that really it is they who, by clinging to their theology of successful living or else, show themselves to be lacking faith in God, while Job, by honestly and passionately facing the shambles that his life has become, proves that in the pit of his heart he trusts his Lord.

John Calvin wrote, “While it is true that we are saved by faith alone, the faith that saves is never alone.” As a general principle the point is a fair one. Nevertheless, in the story of Job we do see faith utterly alone. For so precious to God is the mystery of simple, naked faith that there are times when it is within His purposes to isolate it drastically, so as clearly to demonstrate that faith certainly can stand all by itself, cut off from every visible authentication of its worth.

Mason, M. (2002). The Gospel According to Job: An Honest Look at Pain and Doubt from the Life of One Who Lost Everything. Crossway.