Links for today’s readings:
Jan 21 Read: Job 22 Listen: (2:54) Read: John 21 Listen: (3:58)
Scripture Focus: Job 22:4–5
4 “Is it for your piety that he rebukes you
and brings charges against you?
5 Is not your wickedness great?
Reflection: Assumptions
By Erin Newton
When headlines break with news of some new atrocity, the details are often vague and incomplete. With the lack of information, assumptions rush to fill the void. Whatever the incident, whoever the person, assumptions are a common exacerbator of suffering.
When Job’s friends arrive on the scene, they give him a week’s silence. Then the verbal (and emotional) onslaught begins. As Francis Andersen notes in the Tyndale commentary on Job, “The idea of a good man suffering never enters their thoughts. It would demolish their theology, or, as Eliphaz has already said, undermine religion.” Eliphaz, just a few chapters earlier is dismayed by Job’s repeated insistence of innocence. “But you even undermine piety and hinder devotion to God” (15:4). The thinking, at that time, was that bad things happen to bad people. He deserved it. And then they probe to find it.
But we keep returning to the fact that we already know the reason for Job’s suffering; his friends, however, do not. Three rounds of debates between Job and his friends ensue. Eight different conversations grow in their intensity. First, they all generally suggest that suffering is caused by a person’s sin. By Job 22, Eliphaz is not mincing his words anymore: “Are not your sins endless?” (v. 5) and “That is why snares are all around you” (v. 10). Job’s friends cast the cause of his misery onto his own head.
When our first instinct is to heap responsibility back onto the person who suffers, we are often acting like Eliphaz himself. We cannot see a world outside of our own assumptions—even more so, our assumptions rooted in preconceived biases.
Andersen reminds us: “The reader … understands that Job is neither stubborn nor arrogant. He is honest and tenacious. From the depths of a sick body and broken mind, his spirit is still thrusting its faith into God, even though his blind cries sound wild to his friends.”
For those who suffer from chronic or life-threatening illness, are we quick to assume they’ve done something wrong? For those who lose a loved one to violence, are we blaming the victim for “being in the wrong place at the wrong time”? For those who have been abused by someone, are we analyzing their outfits, their demeanor, or their gullibility?
To avoid being like Job’s friends, we must be quick to listen, slow to speak—and I’d like to add—slow to assume.
Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence
Let my cry come before you, O Lord; give me understanding, according to your word.
Let my supplication come before you; deliver me, according to your promise. — Psalm 119.169-170
– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phyllis Tickle.
Read more: Return from Financial Sins
One rarely hears sermons on financial sins that approach the passion and zeal of sermons about sex or drugs or pornography…unless one reads the Bible.
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