Considering Job and an Epiphany

Epiphany (noun)

1. (initial capital letter) a Christian festival, observed on January 6, commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles in the persons of the Magi;

2. Twelfth-day.an appearance or manifestation, especially of a deity.

3. a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.

4. a literary work or section of a work presenting, usually symbolically, such a moment of revelation and insight.

I had an epiphany at community group last night. We were studying Job, but I had a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality of Job, and much of life lately.

I recommended we study Job in light of all that was going on in 2020. As we’ve gone through the rounds of debate between Job and his friends that revealed they were miserable counselors I felt stuck. So much felt hauntingly familiar. It was dredging up a host of previous situations.

My brain was churning to put it all together, to make more sense of it. But as I said, I was stuck. I felt like my leadership of the group was mediocre at best.

Christopher Ash talks about the Scheme that Job’s friends held to. It can be described as a mechanistic view of God and the world. God is just and so sinners suffer the (immediate) consequence of their sin. Job is suffering, therefore Job has sinned.

Ash is right, as far as he goes. But I felt like this was not getting far enough or deep enough. Something was missing. I felt like I was just repeating myself. In a sense Job’s counselors were too.

Last night we began the 3rd and final round of this debate, focusing on Eliphaz and Job. I forgot my study guide at the office so I had to “wing it”. Suddenly as we were talking it all fell into place. I had a gestalt moment and the mental sluggishness fell away. The context of the text made more sense as we discussed it. I want to stress “we”. In the course of our discussion the pieces fell into place.

On the surface this debate is like this:

Job’s “friends”: You are suffering because you are a sinner. Repent and it might end.

Job: I didn’t sin. Not all who suffer have sinned.

The narrator and those who read it know that Job is right. He is blameless, fears God and turns away from evil. But the friends just keep fortifying their arguments and get increasingly harsh with Job accusing him of increasingly wicked actions. In this third exchange Eliphaz accuses Job of exploiting the “least of these”, the must vulnerable or the widows, orphans and poor. Though a “great man” who is supposed to care for them, they say (without any evidence) he has neglected, exploited and destroyed them. The evidence, in their minds, is his suffering.

Suddenly, I got it. I’ve felt not just the escalation of disagreement found here, but also the sense of being in a different universe. In their universe Job is all to blame. In Job’s universe, God has brought this without cause. Their debate is not going anywhere because they have different presuppositions about life. Job’s universe had room for unjust suffering. Suffering can be at the hands of the wicked. He has experienced both moral evil (the Sabeans and Chaldeans robbed him) and “natural evil” (wind and lightning storms destroyed his property and killed his kids). Suffering can have redemptive or purifying purposes, not simply punitive purposes.

On a deeper level, Job’s friends are operating and arguing on the basis of the covenant of works. Job is operating and arguing on the basis of the covenant of grace. They are in different universes. These universes have different operating systems and this is why the debate stalls and gets more entrenched much like in WWI. In WWI the conflict stalled, trenches were dug and for years the front essentially didn’t change despite the loss of so many lives.

I’ve been in so many of these conflicts in recent years. People get entrenched and don’t evaluate the presuppositions driving their position. In this case they were not arguing the finer points of theology but a basic, foundational point. There was no common ground to be found because they had different operating systems or different lenses through which to interpret life.

Ash and our study guide note that for Job to concede would be to fall into the Satan’s premise in chapters 1 & 2. Job doesn’t recognize this, but he won’t budge because he absolutely believes they are wrong. They are unwittingly the mouthpieces of the Satan, just as the Sabeans and Chaldeans were his instruments earlier. William Gurnall, in The Christian in Complete Armor, reminds us from Paul that our struggle is not between flesh and blood. That is the enemy you see, but not the real Enemy.

The light burned brighter, so to speak. If Job loses his faith and life by conceding so do his friends. In their minds they can’t be wrong. To be wrong about Job is to be wrong about God, life, the universe and everything. Their whole world view would shatter. They would move in one of two directions.

They could move toward truth via faith and repentance. Larry Crabb, who recently passed away, addresses this in Finding God and Shattered Dreams. Conversion is, in part, God dismantling your world view so you begin to adopt a biblical world view. God brings you from the covenant of works to the covenant of grace. Even as Christians, we can still reason along the lines of the covenant of works, and there are circumstances that help us to see we are the elder brother so we repent.

But not all convert. Some fall into despair. Job’s friends don’t want to be wrong because they don’t want to be in Job’s shoes: suffering without cause. They don’t grasp the glory of grace, they see only a God who doesn’t to control things and moral chaos as the option. They don’t see that God is in control, but that His providence is mysterious to us because His purposes are more complex than simply punishing the wicked.

I likened it to Les Miserables. Javert is the epitome of the covenant of works. People don’t change. Once a criminal, always a criminal and Jean Valjean is a criminal. Javert hounds him. He is Ahab and Jean Valjean is his white whale who must be destroyed.

And then Jean Valjean saves Javert’s life. He is not the man Javert thought he was. He lived in the covenant of grace which made no sense to Javert. But Javert can’t escape the fact that he was wrong. He is filled with despair. Instead of arresting the man who saved him, he throws himself into the canals of Paris to drown.

Job’s miserable counselors are in the midst of a similar existential crisis. If Job is right they can’t face the consequences. They have been not simply wrong but wicked. Eventually God will catch up with them. They can’t face this possibility. They don’t want to move from the universe they currently exist in for the one Job lives in. So they angrily press their flawed argument.

“Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment.^[1] It may evoke changes in them such as cognitive dissonance or low self-esteem, rendering the victim additionally dependent on the gaslighter for emotional support and validation. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction and misinformation, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim’s beliefs.” Wikipedia

When you have that sense of being gaslit, this can be what is happening. You may live in one universe and they live in another. They may not be lying to you (as in gaslighting), they may sincerely believe what they are saying. But you begin to question your memory, perception and judgment because you are told it’s all your fault (the message of the miserable counselors). This is a result of different operating systems. You have to examine your operating system to make sure you are seeing life accurately. Are you viewing life through a secular or biblical world view? On the basis of the covenant of works (must you hide your fault) or the covenant of grace (can you own your fault)? Is God trying to explode the box you’ve tried to put Him in or the one they’ve put Him in? Are you Job or one of his miserable counselors? Either way, they both needed Jesus.

In Job this third round peters out. When you realize you live in two different universes and neither changes, it really makes no point to continue. It is a waste of time and destroys relationships (which is unavoidable if one plays accuser of the brethren). It only begins to be profitable if you begin to address the differences in universes, world views, the character of God and presuppositions. Just don’t keep treading over the same old ground, time after time.