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Re: Can Someone Explain Job to Me?

Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2010 11:41 am
by selah
TK wrote:This has all been a very good discussion, with a lot of good arguments that give plenty of food for thought.

I think this has been a good example of what makes this forum such a blessing, at least to me. I appreciate everyone's time who has responded.

TK
me too ;)

Re: Can Someone Explain Job to Me?

Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2010 1:31 pm
by steve7150
I hope you shall not be torn to shreds by anyone at this forum. However, you asked a lot of questions. I hope you won't consider the presentation of sensible and true answers to be a destructive activity.

I have not said anything about whether you are a Word of Faith follower or not. You have sometimes claimed that you are not. I accept a man's testimony about his own beliefs. The only reason I am responding, here, to the Word of Faith teachings is that they are the best known source of the views represented in your posts. Perhaps you reached your conclusions entirely apart from any contact with the Word of Faith teachers. What matters is that we represent the truth, and correct error when it is presented





The primary reason i may sometimes sound WOF is because of stmts by Jesus found in Mark 11 and other places. I think you have said Mark 11 may be an allussion to the destruction of Jerusalem and it may well be but to me it it's primarily Jesus speaking about faith in God. Not faith in faith but faith in God , yet i do understand everything is subject to God's will.
I have no difficulty with persecution or suffering for righteousness sake , nor any difficulty with sickness if i'm wrong and i try not to love my life though i'm a work in progress.
The main difference i have with you is the source of persecution and suffering and i consider what you say carefully as you do have a vast knowledge of scripture. I hope i know as much as you have forgotten and i don't say that to patronize.
I want to end with two closing thoughts on Job which are , 1st John 3.8 where the devil is said to be a sinner from the beginning, which to me suggests that if he were simply carrying out God's will he would'nt be sinning yet John called him a sinner from the beginning. The next thing is Jesus said "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect", we should try to be like Christ, we should try to be like our Father in Heaven, this means we should try to copy God's righteous attributes. If Jesus tells us to follow these attributes then we must be capable of recognizing them and of course they are in God for us to see, yet where else do we find God supposedly actively involved in torturing a blameless man. Destroying evil is righteous and i have no difficulty with it , but Job is very different and i know Job is an example to learn from but even Job stumbled and needed a personal visitation from God.

Re: Can Someone Explain Job to Me?

Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2010 3:46 pm
by steve
I see the implications of 1 John 3:8 and Matthew 5 considerably differently, but I see no need to belabor those points. I would clarify, however, that your last paragraph seemed to misrepresent or misunderstand my position.

1. I do not see God "actively involved in torturing" anybody—whether they are good or bad. The Book of Job does not see God as the active agent in Job's troubles, and neither do I. It is clear from the beginning that Satan is the initiator and actor throughout Job's ordeal. God is the passive agent, but one who chooses to be passive without that being His only option. God chose to allow Satan to afflict Job, and He must have done so for a good reason. It was also Satan who engineered the crucifixion of Christ, though Jesus saw His Father's fingerprints all over it. So did the Prophet, who wrote, "It pleased the Lord to bruise Him" (Isa.53:10). All that Satan did to Job or to Jesus (or to you and me) is done "on God's watch" (Matt.10:29), and it is His to decide whether or not to permit it. When He does permit suffering, we accept it, as Jesus did, as something chosen for us by "a faithful Creator" (1 Peter 4:19).

2. To say that Job was "blameless" is true, and certainly would make God out to be a scoundrel if He saw fit to punish him. But this is not the explanation of Job's sufferings. They were not a punishment. His friends thought that they were, but they were rebuked for their comments.

Job was tested. Just like Jesus, and the rest of us, Job was in a school of faith and obedience, in which tests are given. When professors give tests to their students, they are not thereby punishing them—even if the student finds the taking of a test to be "torturous."

Seen yet another way, though Job was blameless (and therefore not in need of punishment), yet he was part of a spiritually sick race, and (like the rest of us) was a patient in God's hospital. Surgery is not punishment for the sick patient. Nor does God punish believers, for whom "there is no condemnation." The cancer-ridden child that sees every surgery permitted by his father as a punishment will certainly have difficulty loving his dad. But neither will it give any peace to the child to think that his father is helpless to spare him from the capricious whims of a mad surgeon.