I recently re-read the Book of Job, spurred by a conversation I'd had with a friend not too long ago, in which she alluded to Job while referring to me (I think it was right after I explained what spiritual warfare was). I've been relatively familiar with the story since I took my first-year religion course at St. Olaf in the spring of 2005: Job has family, wealth, and possessions; God then takes all of it away (including his health), which, after some negative prodding from his friends, leads Job to challenge God's will. God, of course, will have none of it and challenges him back. [Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorant words? Brace yourself like a man, because I have some questions for you, and you must answer them. Job 38:2-3 (NLT) ["http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=job%2038:2-3&version=NLT"]] The Almighty, of course, then continues and asks him: [Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. Who determined its dimensions and stretched out the surveying line? What supports its foundations,and who laid its cornerstone as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? Job 38:4-7 (NLT) [“http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=job%2038:4-7&version=NLT”]] Eventually Job gives up and repents (although I'm thinking he still doesn't understand why the things that happened to him did), and God restores everything two-fold.
The entire episode is a bit strange. You have an exceedingly well-to-do man who is completely faithful to the Lord, and in spite of it he has all these random bad things happen to him. I remember a few years back trying to understand it, but failing and getting upset at God that something so random and so cruel could happen and I would've had no right to complain (see this post [“http://amidthenoiseandhaste2.blogspot.com/2006/06/wake-up-call.html”]). The response was a vision in which I was driving down a road and flames surrounded me on all sides. Of course, at the time I thought that it was a vision of hell and where I would be going if I continued to vent my frustrations on it.
What I didn't know (and I probably could've guessed) was that Satan apparently is involved. The little fart crashes a "heavenly beings" meeting, and suggests that God tests Job's faith, which God does, except he orders him not to take his life. Getting back to the vision from the previous paragraph, this knowledge opens up a new and better angle on the vision, in that it wasn't God's idea at all that Job should suffer. Instead, He merely accedes to the challenge, which I still find odd.
Then the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil." "Does Job fear God for nothing?" Satan replied. "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 said to Satan, "Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger." Job 1:8-12 (NIV).
I spent a few days wondering about this Job allusion, since I sure didn't think I was anything like him. But after chatting about it with a couple of friends and re-reading the story, it became clear that the man dealt with a lot of warfare, some of it spiritual. And then more stories from years past flooded my memory. Here's another one:
Sometime during that spring semester in 2005, I went to FCA and filled out a name tag with "Job," kind of as a joke. After all, the Book of Job had been a prominent topic in the religion class that I was taking that semester (the prof was the pastor of the Moravian Church in town, and I have to say, in some ways she was kind of "out there"). I showed my name tag to one of my friends from class who was there, and he got it.
But putting "Job" on my nametag was more than just a joke. Yup, you guessed it: spiritual warfare. Sometime not too long before that evening I had fallen for a female who also was in that class, and for the first time in my life I was going to do something about it (something about thinking she was "the one" had to have contributed). Except, of course, I became so damn nervous that I suffered insomnia the night before I was planning on asking her out on a date -- that's right; I didn't sleep a wink. I'd spent the entire night going over and over again in my head how I was going to go about it. Right before class the following afternoon, I'd realized how much of a wreck I was and aborted the mission. I would no longer be able to really talk to her after that, knowing that I would've had a chance if I'd just given it more time. As far as I was concerned, I'd blown it. That's spiritual warfare for ya: lies, lies, and more lies. But it's what happens to people who have the propensity to be quite gullible. I've learned that I'm apparently quite a war zone.