1 ¶
Moreover Job continued his parable, and said, 2 As God liveth, who hath taken away my
judgment; and the Almighty, who hath vexed my soul; 3 All the while my breath is in me, and the
spirit of God is in my nostrils; 4 My
lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit. 5 God forbid that I should justify you: till I
die I will not remove mine integrity from me. 6
My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go: my heart shall not
reproach me so long as I live.
Here is
something to consider. Your life is a parable, a story that teaches something.
What does your life teach? What is God saying through you and is anyone
listening?
Job accuses God
of having taken away his reasoning ability and oppressing him, one definition
of vex.
Exodus 22:21
Thou shalt neither vex a
stranger, nor oppress him: for ye
were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Judges 2:18
And when the LORD raised them up judges, then the LORD was with the
judge, and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the
judge: for it repented the LORD because of their groanings by reason of them
that oppressed them and vexed them.
Job declares
himself so righteous he has the spirit of God, lowercase s, the understanding
and wisdom of God, in him and Job’s greatest weakness and most egregious sin,
his self-righteousness, is apparent.
Job promises
that he will speak no wickedness nor will his tongue be used to utter deceit.
But, he has no intention of admitting that his friends are right in their
assessment of him. His argument remains, that he is a righteous person and he
will not criticize himself.
I know people
who are unteachable. Whatever bad things happen to them they are incapable of
doing anything but blaming someone or something else for their trouble. We know
Job did nothing in particular to merit the suffering he has endured but we also
know that Job’s weakness is that he is self-righteous in the extreme. At no
time will he consider that there is something he can learn from all of this
other than that God has picked on him unfairly.
There are
people in your life whose only ability to admit wrong on their part is that
they were wrong for letting someone else do something to them, or for trusting
the wrong person. They are always innocent, always the victim of circumstance,
and they cannot accept their own culpability in any matter. Even when they are
truly innocent of any specific wrong they are unable to learn any valuable
lessons from what happens to them. It’s always going to be someone or something
else’s fault, whether a bad, stupid person or just the wind, that causes them
to fail. And don’t think you are going to change them.
There are Christians
in churches just as self-righteous as Job and unteachable as the example I gave.
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