Curtain Call (Part 1)

We are pleased to introduce a new contributor to RFYM, and we will be sharing his insights with you on a weekly basis. David Roper served as a pastor for many years. Now, he and his wife, Carolyn, offer encouragement and counsel to pastoral couples through Idaho Mountain Ministries. David is the author of thirteen books, including Psalm 23: The Song of a Passionate Heart, A Burden Shared, and Seeing God, and is a regular and popular writer for Our Daily Bread. Over 630,000 of his books are in print. We welcome David to RFYM.

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.”

~Shakespeare, As You Like It

In Job 8:6, Bildad, one of Job’s friends and “comforters,” blusters in with this suggestion: “If you [Job] were really pure and upright, God would deliver and restore you” (author’s paraphrase).  In other words, Bildad is suggesting that goodness and the good life go together.

Bildad begins with a bad premise that leads to bad manners, for, as Job wailed, “A despairing man should have the devotion of his friends” (6:14). All he got, however, was an explanation. Cold comfort to a man who had endured so much pain.

(I’m always a bit uneasy around those sincere but all-too-certain folks who can explain everything that comes my way. Their wisdom is proper and theologically familiar, but their explanations, though well-meant, only make me more miserable. I’m more comfortable with those who say, “I’m not sure why you’re suffering, but I’ll wait here with you and pray.” Folks like that are a pure benediction!)

Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and theologian, once pointed out that we’re like schoolboys who want to steal the teacher’s answers before a math exam so we don’t have to work through the problems. In Job’s case, however, there were no answers to steal, at least no earthly answers, for he had not read the first two chapters of his book. His explanation awaited heaven, where God would supply the reasons for all he’d gone through. In the meantime he had to rest in the fact that there’s more to life than he could know in this world.

Actually, Bildad was quite orthodox in his thinking—sin does have its consequences. But in Job’s case he was wide of the mark, for Job was a good man. Even God said he was. No, Bildad’s explanation would not do, nor would the explanations of Job’s other friends, for they could not know what we know by reading his book. From our advantageous perspective, we read the great debate in heaven:

“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan asks. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You  have    blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”

The Lord replies, “Everything he has is in your hands . . .” (Job 1:9–12).

Would Job love God for nothing, or must he be bought off? Wait and see.