New Eyes, Old Blind Spots (Job Pt. 3) | Ep. 81
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Jeremy: [00:00:00] Years ago, we were on a trip and we got a rental car, the rental vehicle we ended up getting assigned was a Jeep Wrangler.
Now, I had never driven a Jeep Wrangler before, and I gotta tell you, I really liked it. I really enjoyed the driving experience. I just loved getting in it, getting out of it. The whole thing I thought was awesome.
And so we really enjoyed this trip, really enjoyed driving around. Then when we got home, I remember talking to my wife and I'm like, "Hey, I kinda think we should get a Jeep Wrangler." Like, that was really fun. Let's, let's do that. And so we traded in... I had a car at the time. We traded in the car and got a Jeep Wrangler, and I loved this vehicle.
It was so fun. And I learned something when I owned my Jeep Wrangler, was that there is a club in which you become a part of if you are driving a Jeep Wrangler. You may not know this, you may not have ever seen this before, but there is a, an entire [00:01:00] sub-club happening, below the surface, if you will, and it's known as the Jeep wave.
And this is a thing you learn how to do. It's two fingers. While you hold the steering wheel, you throw two fingers up when you see another Jeep coming your way, and it's a way of acknowledging Jeep to Jeep. Now, the only thing I've seen similar is that motorcyclists will do something. They'll, they'll do a little wave to each other.
But Jeep drivers do this to each other, and there's even, like, a sub-club where people start to give little ducks to other people's Jeeps. I mean, there's all these things in this that I didn't really know when I just had a rental vehicle. But I got into all of this, and I realized this is pretty cool. But what it did was it started to cause me to notice Jeeps everywhere.
Like, I, I tuned in my vision where I was just always aware of Jeeps because I was constantly waving to them. And, you know, sometimes the, the driver of the Jeep coming [00:02:00] my way wouldn't wave back, and, you know, my kids would be disappointed, like, "Oh, Dad, you waved, and they didn't wave." And I, I had this expression where I just said, "The Jeep wave is not gonna die with me," right?
Like, I'm not gonna be the reason why people stop doing the Jeep wave. And if it dies off, it dies off, but not because of me. And so I always did the Jeep wave. And here's what's funny. I don't own that Jeep anymore. We've traded that in for a different vehicle, and yet I still notice Jeeps. Yeah, I still am very aware of Jeeps because I have tuned my awareness to it.
I have learned over many years to pick out Jeeps driving along the road. And what's funny is if you're, you know, I don't know, like in a minivan, they don't wave back. So you could do the Jeep wave, but they don't, they don't wave back. And so it was funny, even when I would be driving one of our other vehicles, if I would, you know, get in the habit of doing the Jeep wave like, "Oh, they're not gonna wave back to that."
But especially when you don't own a Jeep, there's no reason for me to keep noticing Jeeps and, [00:03:00] and still I have that ability. I, I just, I notice them. And there's, there's a lot that I don't notice, and the fact that I notice Jeeps makes me aware of all the other vehicles that don't ever get to that level, that I don't ever notice like that.
Now, today we're continuing the series we've been in called Job in Exile. It's based on Dr. David Gushee's upcoming book by that name, and it's a deconstruction-focused look at the biblical book of Job and some huge questions that are asked in this book. And today's episode is called New Eyes, Old Blind Spots
I've never shared this with anybody publicly If this was SportsCenter, that would be like such a hot take. Skip Bayless would have no idea. Stephen A. Smith would have no idea what to say if you drop that down. That is so good. The joke I always say is like, "How'd you learn so much?" Gotta drink a lot.
Resistance to change is [00:04:00] hurting the church. I'm not in the camp that God has a penis or a vagina or a body at all. I'm in the camp that God is a universe spirit. This is the strangest podcast that I have been on. I don't even know what to do. I'm kind of geeked up about this wine. So this is my second glass, and it delivers a little more of a punch than I expected.
So if I get a little loopy, it's your fault. You told me to drink on this show. I will also say as a confession, I am a lightweight. So I've had like three sips of this wine and I'm already feeling it, so this is fun. You've uncovered the mystery. You've exposed the formula. You've just duct-taped together a number of things that aren't normally hanging out together, and I'm here for it.
We're gonna sit down at table, we're gonna have a glass of wine and some food, and we're gonna talk about the beauty of Jesus. Thanks for what you're doing with this podcast, and for the creative way you're doing it, and the beautiful, positive spirit in which you're doing it. I really appreciate this venue, what you're doing.
It is fun, and yet you dig into the deep stuff. I've heard about your [00:05:00] podcast for a long time, and I love that you're a pastor and that you explore the world of faith through wine. That's very unique. I never thought of church history in terms of wine drinkers. I love this question. You had me with herbaceous notes, I want you to know.
I'm ready to just stay here and live in the wine tour. I will never forget the first time I bought a bottle of wine by myself, which was yesterday. If you're familiar with Drunk History, I thought it's like drunk theology. So I, oh. I got a little spicy there. It's the peach wine. Apparently the wine is... But here we are.
Queer we are. Beer we are. No, it's wine, Jeremy. I'm an emotional guy. Paired with a half a glass of wine, I'm beet red, sweating, and about to cry. By the way, drinking this Pinot Grigio at 3:00 in the afternoon is making me even more direct in my communication than I normally would be. I know why you have your guests drink wine.
It makes sense now. Yeah, I get it. A little bit of liquid courage here to unleash the beast. I think you've got a good [00:06:00] podcast. Th- throwing the wine bit in there, that's nice. Cabernet and pray, yeah.
Jeremy: As we get into today's episode, I wanna let you know about what I'm drinking. I am drinking a 2023 Patricia's Cuvee from Dobbes Winery, and this is a young, fruit-forward wine. So 2023, not super old yet. So I'm getting cranberry notes. I'm getting... I don't know if you remember those little, like, strawberry candies that your, your grandmother probably gave you.
Like, I've never seen these sold in a store. I don't know if they just appear in moms' and grandmas' purses. Like, I don't know how these things regenerate or where you get these from, but, but I'm getting notes of that, like, that, the, the finish of that, and it's very pleasant. And so this is a very fruit-forward pinot noir, and I'm enjoying it.
It's from Oregon. This is actually named after the, the guy that founded this was Joe Dobbes. Joe Dobbes went on to make a number of [00:07:00] different, uh, brands and, and lines, and he has sold this off, so he's not involved with this anymore, even though it has his name literally on the bottle and it's named after family members.
And yet what's really cool is that in our upcoming whiskey and wine trip for the fellas, we're going to be doing a tasting with Joe Dobbes. And Joe Dobbes is one of the leaders of the Oregon wine scene, has been around for a long time, been doing it for a long time, has had a ton of success, and so he's one of the reasons a lot of other people know about Oregon wine, and so we're gonna get to do a tasting with him and the wines that he's making these days, which are different wines.
And so that's gonna be super cool to do that. But I do wanna invite you to pour a glass with me if you're able. The oldest thing that the church does together is share a cup, and somewhere along the way, we turned that tradition into a checkpoint. But I want to remind you that this is [00:08:00] a table without a fence around it, and so you are welcome to bring your questions and bring your doubts.
You are welcome here. Cheers.
Well, today we are going to look at Job chapter three. We're asking this question throughout this series. The question is, what is the Book of Job attempting to teach us? 'Cause there's lots of things going on, and it's a book that defies any single interpretation you might wanna give it. It's, it's not a book that fits well into those categories, and so we're, we're letting it breathe.
And we tackled Job part two, uh, in episode 79. So if you go back a couple episodes, you can see that. That is where Job and his friends sat in silence for a week, and they're grieving what has happened to Job. They're just processing this together for a week in [00:09:00] silence. By the time you get to chapter three, which is what we're looking at today, things change dramatically from what we saw last time.
So we see in Job 3:1 says, "At last, Job spoke, and he cursed the day of his birth." He's been quiet for a week. No one knows what he's thinking, what he's gonna say, and then finally, he breaks the silence, and he curses the day of his birth. So much for this pious version of Job that Christians love to quote from chapters one and two.
By the time you get to three, we don't have that version of Job anymore. Job's got some things to say now, yeah, and he's ready to say 'em, and that's what we get into in chapter three. But I want you to notice he's not really saying these things to anyone in particular. Like [00:10:00] we might ask as we get into this, who is he talking to?
Who is all this addressed to, 'cause it doesn't appear that he's talking to his friends directly at this point of the book, and he's not directly addressing it to God either at this part of the book. And so it seems like at this, you know, after a period of silence, this is just Job's way of articulating his suffering.
He's not really aiming it at anyone yet. That will come. But right now, as he's grieving, as he's processing, he's just venting it. He's just getting these words out. And so we get to Job 3:2. Job said, "Let the day of my birth be erased, and the night I was conceived, let that day be turned to darkness. Let it be lost even to God on high and let no light shine on it.
Let the darkness and utter gloom claim that day for its own. [00:11:00] Let a black cloud overshadow it and let the darkness terrify it. Let that night be blotted off the calendar, never again to be counted among the days of the year, never again to appear among the months. Let that night be childless. Let it have no joy."
W- we're getting dramatic here. I mean, this is like, we're... I, I, I'm so mad that I was born that I want that day that I was born to suffer. I want it to be childless. I want to rob everything from that day. I mean, it's a, it's an extreme way of expressing the inner grief going on. And he's making a statement here that a lot of people make when they get to really hard times in life.
It's this idea that I wish I was never born. Maybe that has been something you've said before. Maybe you feel [00:12:00] that right now. Maybe you've heard a loved one say that to you, "I wish I was never born." I want you to notice that Job's not threatening to take his own life here, and he doesn't do that anywhere in the book.
But just shy of threatening that, we might think of this as the ultimate declaration of depression. I mean, this, this just conclusion of, "I wish I were never born. I wish none of this had happened. There's, there's nothing to redeem here. There's no lingering good here that would outweigh any of this suffering."
And there's almost a poetical nature, right, to how Job is saying this. Like in verse 4, "Let that day be turned to darkness. Let it be lost even to God on high, and let no light shine on it." So it's almost this poetic language that he's, he's returning back in light of what he has, has lost [00:13:00] and what he's grieving.
Dr. Gushee says that Job offers a lament that almost amounts to a negation of the Hebrew Bible's story of creation So it's not just I, I wish I was never born, but almost I wish none of this had happened. I wish I could undo the act of creation that led us here. Now, this is not the only time that Job is gonna challenge a biblical text or a motif, and this is something we're gonna see as he processes all of his feelings.
Now, this is an interesting insight because as we noted in week one, the events of the Book of Job take place in what's considered primeval time, meaning that none of the characters in the story of Job are Jews because there are no Jews yet, right? This is like a story that exists kind of outside of that or before that, which means that in Job's world, there is no Hebrew Bible.
There's, there's [00:14:00] nothing being referenced there either. But you have a Jewish writer telling the story, and the Jewish writer as, as he tells the story or she, is interacting with Jewish scriptures and traditions. So you have something a little bit interesting going on here where Job seems to exist without all of that, and yet we know this is written within the Jewish tradition.
So Dr. Gushee says Job is a critic of the canon from within the canon, right? He's, he's critiquing these ideas from within the very thing he's critiquing. So he's not just challenging the creation narrative, he's also challenging the God who created, the God who creates, right? Job is, is taking issue with all of this.
And so another way of looking at this in, in the Book of Job, especially as we begin to look at chapter three, is that we can think of this as the Bible challenging the [00:15:00] Bible, right? Like within the Bible it is challenging ideas in other parts of the Bible, which then creates some interesting questions for you and I today.
What freedom does this give us, those of us who are following God? What freedom does this give us as we interact with this same God? Are we able to openly challenge the Bible? Are we able to openly challenge God? Those are questions that we're gonna explore more in the weeks to come. What I wanna land on today is that something significant happens to Job in chapter three, and that's that his own suffering allows him to have a greater awareness, or maybe for the first time, an awareness of the suffering of others around him So his own suffering is allowing him to see the suffering in the world in ways that it doesn't seem he's, he's seen it before.[00:16:00]
In Job 3 verse 16 it says, "Why wasn't I buried like a stillborn child, like a baby who never lives to see the light? For in death the wicked cause no trouble, and the weary are at rest. Even captives are at ease in death, with no guards to curse them. Rich and poor are both there, and the slave is free from his master."
So you have Job now referencing all these sources of pain and hurt and suffering in the world as if he can understand it now. He can relate with it now. He's aware of people and realities that were previously unknown to him. These were foreign concepts to him. Dr. Gushee notes that some dimensions of moral maturity can only be learned through suffering, including suffering the loss of privilege and place.
So [00:17:00] this unique experience is allowing him to see something he would not have been able to see otherwise. As we talked about in week one of this series, in the setup, Job is the guy that has everything. I mean, literally, that's the way this story begins. He's the greatest of the people living in that area, and then it lists all the things that he has.
He's got it all, which means he probably struggled to be in tune with the suffering of people around him. It, it's hard to be in tune with that when your life is awesome, when you don't relate with the things that they're going through, the challenges that they have, the, the opposition that they face.
When none of those are factors in your life, it's hard to understand what other people are going through.
The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote these words to fellow conspirators against the [00:18:00] Nazis. This was at Christmas 1942. He said this: "It remains an experience of incomparable value that we have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short, from the perspective of the suffering.
We learn indeed that personal suffering is a more useful key, a more fruitful principle than personal happiness for exploring the meaning of the world in contemplation and action." So Bonhoeffer is acknowledging the same idea we're seeing in the Book of Job, that, that when we see from below, when we see from the vantage point of those who suffer, we see more of the world.
We get [00:19:00] a different picture there. And seeing things from a different vantage point is a huge part of the story of the Book of Job. Now, this is something that I write about in my own book, The Edge of the Inside, not specifically referring to Job, but just referring to how we often need to experience something in order to see what we currently can't see.
H- here's what I wrote in the book: "Sometimes it takes something destructive to move us forward. We rarely walk away from the center by our own choice. We often have to be carried, dragged, or evicted." And that's what I have found to be true, that, that when something happens, and it's usually something you wouldn't have chosen, you wouldn't have wanted it to happen, but it happened to you, and then because it happened, you were able to see things differently.
The world didn't look the same to you anymore. The view is different from the center or the [00:20:00] edge or the outside. It looks very different. And so today, one of the ways that I describe my work and what I do is that I help people rebuild their faith after it breaks. It's one of the things that I do. This is not something that I could have done in the center of Christianity, where I spent most of my career.
I, I couldn't have done that work there because I, I couldn't see it. I, I wasn't in tune with it in the way that I am today. It took something destructive to move me there, to give me that kind of vision. And I suspect that this has been true for you as well, that you've been through pain that you would have never chosen, pain that you would not wish on anyone else.
And yet, and yet that pain has allowed you [00:21:00] to see something you would not have seen otherwise. And so there's this little bittersweet reality to this where I would have never wanted to go through what I went through, but I'm very grateful for the perspective it has given me today. And I suspect you can relate with that feeling.
You never would have wanted to go through that painful thing you went through, but now you relate to those people. Now you have a heart for people going through that. Now you see something. You have empathy for something that you would not have had without that experience. But here's something I, I don't want us to miss, and you might need a drink break before we get to this next part
Because there's an uncomfortable reality here. Job likely owned people as slaves. Now, this might be something you're like, "Wait, I've n- never thought about this." [00:22:00] Most English translations intentionally obscure this reality. They often refer to Job's household, or they'll refer to Job's servants, right?
These are intentional ways to mask what the text is indicating. It's likely that Job's immense wealth that we read about in the beginning of the book was built and maintained by slaves That's how Job got to be as wealthy as he is. In, in chapter one, verse three, which we read in week one, notice one of the details here.
He owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred teams of oxen, and five hundred female donkeys. Then this line, "He also had many servants." He was, in fact, the richest person in that entire area. That is something in the text that, again, translators [00:23:00] try to obscure because it's an uncomfortable reality.
But his servants are included in the list of his possessions testifying to how great he was monetarily. The wo- most righteous man in the East ran his righteousness on slave labor. Now, you might be thinking, "Well, that, that verse can mean lots of different things. That's just the word servant. It doesn't mean that."
Well, in Job chapter thirty-one, Job uses words specifically for male and female enslaved persons, like the words that you would use to describe someone who is not a servant but a slave, and a slave not by their choice. Job thirty-one verses thirteen through fifteen, "If I had been unfair to my male or female servants when they brought their complaints to me, how could I face God?
What could I say when he questioned me? For God created [00:24:00] both me and my servants. He created us both in the womb." Now, again, you might hear that and go, "But isn't Job defending his, his servants, his slaves? Isn't he saying that they are equal to him?" I want you to notice that in chapter thirty-one, Job is defending his entire life.
He brings up his slaves here to defend him, not because he freed them or because he plans on freeing them, but to say that he treated them fairly. He, he's operating within the reality that, of course, he should have slaves, but at least he treated his slaves fairly. This is Job's own Jeep wave that is showing.
Job can only see the thing that he has trained his eyes to see. He cannot see that if that verse were true, if they were created equal, it would make no sense for him to have them as slaves. As Dr. [00:25:00] Gushee points out, "Job saw his servants as equals in God's sight, yet kept them enslaved." It's almost more damning that Job acknowledges that they are equal and then continues to have them in slavery to him.
He's acknowledging this is not the way of God, and yet he's so into the way the world works that this seems very normal to him. Now, I wanna give you a spoiler for a moment. At the end of the Book of Job, uh, Job gets everything back, and he gets it back doubled. And so just as there was a list in the beginning that lists it out all that Job owns, the end is gonna get there as well, and he's gonna get it back doubled, and it's gonna list it, the sheep, the camels, the oxen, the donkeys.
It's gonna list out his kids, seven sons, three daughters. These are not doubled, which I will address when we get there as to why. But here's what I wanna [00:26:00] point out for today's discussion. It never mentions the slaves. Now, it does in chapter 1 when it's acknowledging Job's got lots of servants, but there's no mention of the servants in the end when he gets everything back.
Which leads to some questions like, did Job set them free? Did he have a change of heart throughout this book, or did the writer of the Book of Job stop counting them because they were just overlooked as property along with everything else? The text doesn't say. We are left to draw our own conclusions about that.
But with the view of Job as a slaveholder, we read some of these verses differently. In fact, a verse that I've already read, notice this in light of what we just learned. "For in death the wicked cause no trouble, and the [00:27:00] weary are at rest. Even captives are at ease in death, with no guards to curse them.
Rich and poor are both there, and the slave is free from his master." This is Job three, 17 through 19. So Job can acknowledge this. He can picture that freedom for slaves in death. But we are left to wonder if he realized he was holding the keys to that freedom in life. So he can see in death the slave can become free, but evidently he cannot see that in life he has the ability to grant them that very same freedom, and he should if he's acknowledging they are created equal in the eyes of God.
But as I talk about, it takes that eviction before you start to see things. Job got evicted, too. He got evicted from his old life. He lost [00:28:00] everything. He got dragged to the ash heap, and then he learned to see the poor and the enslaved and the dead for the first time. But he still had a blind spot that he would defend to God's face.
See, moving to the edge gave Job a truer view than he had at the center, but it did not give him a finished view. It did not help him get all the way there. Job is the most righteous man in the East, and he owned people the entire time That's one of those statements we just sit with and try to make sense of.
Now, that's not just a Job problem, that's a human one. This is a problem that you and I can deal with as well because a lot of us, we walked out of the old system [00:29:00] that, that we were certain leaving that system was going to make us a better version of ourselves, right? We were going to be a kinder version of ourself once we left that.
We were gonna be a more loving version of ourself once we left that. We're gonna be more honest versions of ourself after we left that. And that has certainly been the way I feel about my own journey. But here's what we have to keep in mind. Leaving the old system does not necessarily cure you from it.
That just because you leave it doesn't mean you leave all of it behind. I've still got my blind spots. You've still got blind spots, and it's possible for us to see clearly in one direction and yet stay blind in another direction. And so the question I wanna leave us with today is: what are we normalizing on behalf [00:30:00] of others who suffer?
Where is that limit to where we have been evicted, we have been dragged away from things that we used to know, and so now we're seeing things we didn't see before, but where's the limit of that? Where we can only see this far, and we can't see beyond that. Where does our empathy hit a ceiling? Where does it run dry, where it only goes to this point?
Now, I don't have an answer for you. This is not something that someone else can tell you. This is a journey you go on with you and God as you begin to explore, "Hey, God, who are the people around me that I still can't see, that I still can't fully empathize with because even though I've experienced pain in my journey, it hasn't allowed me to see them?"
I encourage you just to sit with that this week. Invite God to show you more than you have seen before. [00:31:00] So that concludes part three of our Job in Exile series. We're gonna have a total of eight weeks through this series on the podcast, ending with an interview with Dr. Gushie about his books. And if you want to dive into these ideas with other people, and these are resonating with you, these are striking a chord with you, and you wanna process this with others, I wanna invite you to our online community.
The link is in the show notes. This is where we do that every single week. And so it's not just a one time, you absorb some content. It's the space where you ask the questions, you learn from others, you get the feedback, you, you get to be in conversation with other people on the journey. And if that's interesting to you and that would be helpful to you, I wanna encourage you to check out our online community.
Otherwise, I'll see you next week on Cabernet and Pray.
