Refusing to Lie to Keep the Peace (The Book of Job Pt. 5) | Ep. 83
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Jeremy: [00:00:00] I got grounded on my very first date with my wife.
Now, you m- might wanna know that we were high school sweethearts or the story doesn't make a lot of sense. But as high schoolers, I got grounded after my first date. The details of this story make it even funnier. It was a double date, and we were with another, of our friends, and they weren't serious, we weren't serious.
It was the first date. We, I think, were 16. We went to a park, and we grilled hamburgers at a park. Then we drove back from the park, and another fun moment, I got pulled over for the first time on the way home. The guy thought I was drunk just because we were having fun. And I guess I was swerving, right?
Was not drinking. We get home, and, you know, I'm like, "It's already been eventful." And then, as any good Christian teenage boy, I, I played the movie The Prince of Egypt. [00:01:00] If, if you grew up like me, in... deep in Christian culture, you remember that was where, you know, Val Kilmer is, is famously, I think he was Moses and God in that movie, and just awesome.
You know, the, the, the story of Moses put to cartoon. And I felt like, yeah, this is a solid first date. But here's where things went wrong. We were watching it. We had turned the lights out. Again, it's all four of us sitting on the couch watching The Prince of Egypt. And the movie ends, and so, you know, the TV goes black, and it's kinda dark in the room, and we had just sat there for a moment, and we're kind of talking, debriefing it, and my parents walk in.
From their vantage point, evidently looked like something shady was going down, and i- it was, you know, kind of an awkward, like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, this isn't what you think," or, "This isn't what it looks like." And yeah, I, I got grounded over that. And that's funny to look back on now, many years later, to the [00:02:00] woman that I'm married to, and, you know, we have teenage children of our own.
But that was something I remember. I was grounded for how it looked, not for what I had done. Well, today we're continuing our series called Job in Exile. It's an exploration of a book from Dr. David Gushee by that title, and it's a deconstruction-focused look at the biblical Book of Job. These huge questions that emerge from this book, and so many parallels to those of us on some type of a deconstruction journey, and we're looking at that as we unpack this story.
Today's episode is called Refusing to Lie to Keep the Peace.
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 [00:03:00] so good. The joke I always say is like, "How'd you learn so much?" Gotta drink a lot.
Resistance to change is 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 [00:04:00] 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 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 here. 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.[00:05:00]
It makes sense now. Yeah. I get it. A little bit of liquid courage here to really unleash the beast. I think you've got a good podcast. Th- throwing the wine bit in there, that's nice. Cabernet and pray, yeah.
Jeremy: I want to let you know what I'm drinking in today's episode. I have got a two thousand twenty-three. This is a Mischievous Zinfandel from Macchia. This is from California. I love Zinfandel. I don't drink enough of it. But this is just a beautiful wine that I'm enjoying. It's got blueberry notes, vanilla, some sweet tobacco in there.
Really a delightful pour that is in my glass. And I felt like the name Mischievous was a... It was an appropriate name for who we're gonna look at today, this reaction we're gonna see in Job, because this is, like, the nicest thing that Job's community could probably label him. Like, he's [00:06:00] mischievous, right?
They ha- probably have a bunch of other words, stronger words that they would use. But I want to show you why I'm so drawn to the character of Job and why I think this story has so much to show us today. Now, also, as I am enjoying my glass, I want to invite you to pour a glass of your own. The oldest thing that the church does is to share a cup together, and somewhere along the way, we turn that into a checkpoint.
But this is a table with no fence around it, and so you can bring your questions, and you can bring your doubts because you are welcome here. Cheers.
Well, today I wanna look at Job's reaction to his three friends. So last week we saw at length his friends have turned into accusers. They are, they're [00:07:00] going full at Job, and we explored that in part four of the series. Today we're gonna see Job's response to this. What does he say about what his friends are saying?
In particular, we're gonna look at chapters 19 and 27, and we're gonna ask the same question we've been asking each week of this series, what is the Book of Job attempting to teach us? What is the point of a story like this, a very quirky, strangely beautiful story like this? And if you've been with me already, you know this is a story that defies any single easy interpretation.
So that's what we want. We wanna be able to explain it, put it in a box. Job just doesn't fit well into anything, and so as we explore these nuances, we just find so much here to unpack and to reflect upon. As we've already seen so far in this series, there is an ongoing tension that is building in the story of Job, and that's [00:08:00] that the community is waiting for Job to repent, to call it quits, to throw in the towel, to say, "Enough is enough.
I've had it. I can't take this anymore. Fine. I'll, I'll admit that I have messed up." They have watched his entire life completely fall apart publicly. Right? This is not like Job's inner thing. Like, publicly, they have watched him lose everything. Now, Job has concluded from this that God is attacking him unjustly.
That's Job's angle that he's going. His friends are convinced, as we saw last week, that God is punishing him justly. Like, "Job, you did something, and this is the consequence of that." But Dr. Gushee says this line, "There's nothing quite as offensive as being called to repent for sins one has not committed."
And [00:09:00] that's really the situation we have here. They are waiting and waiting and waiting for Job to repent, for Job to admit what he did wrong, and Job isn't doing it. Job is not playing along. Even though this continues to cost him any sense of inclusion in the community, he won't budge. He, he s- is standing his ground here.
In fact, I want to show you the beginning of chapter 19. Job's not holding anything back. He's letting them know. Just as they're being honest with him, he's being honest right back. This is Job 19:1-6. "Then Job spoke again: 'How long will you torture me? How long will you try to crush me with your words? You have already insulted me 10 times.
You should be ashamed of treating me so badly. Even if I have sinned, that is my concern, not [00:10:00] yours. You think you're better than I am, using my humiliation as evidence of my sin.'" Which is exactly... He, he's aware. "'But it is God who has wronged me, capturing me in His net.'" Now, there is a defiance in these words, a defiance in this spirit that his friends and his community cannot tolerate.
Like, they've got no room for this posture and this version of Job. Now, I don't know if you noticed in that section I just read, Job offers an if clause. This is an interesting argument that he adds in here. He does not admit to sin, but he sets up an argument for his friends to consider. Okay? So he says that even if he had sinned, which again, he's not saying he did, but he's saying, "Okay, hypothetically, even if I had sinned," he says, that would be between him [00:11:00] and God, that that sin would not be their concern.
It would be the concern between Job and God, and Job thinks God can handle it So Job is saying, "Look, you're jumping in on this conversation I'm having with God." And he seems to think God has big enough shoulders, broad enough shoulders to withstand the onslaught that Job is bringing, the questions that Job is bringing him, and yet they're jumping in on God's behalf.
They're jumping in to defend God. The author David Dark writes this. He says, "I eventually came to suspect that any God who is nervous, defensive, or angry in the face of questions is a false god. I began to realize that I often ascribe to God the traits of people who are ill at ease, anxious, and occasionally hateful, [00:12:00] and who even presume from time to time to speak on God's behalf."
Now, he's not directly talking about the Book of Job there, but it fits perfectly to what we're seeing, that they are jumping in to defend God, and Job is separate unto, saying, "Look, I can dis- distinguish you from God. You don't look like God here." And so the irony is the people in this story who are a- ill at ease are Job's friends.
It's not Job. Job seems very confident in what he's saying and the questions that he's levering, leveraging. It's not God. It's Job's friends. They're the ones who are bothered. They're the ones who are uncomfortable. And here Job is saying, "I don't need you to be a part of this." Uh, I, I imagine he's like, "I didn't invite you.
You just came," right? "I don't need you here, and I especially don't need you here bringing [00:13:00] what you're bringing with, with all of this drama that you're bringing and how you are now stepping in between me and God as you defend God." Dr. Gushee says this line is a subtle expression of moral agency and dignity on the part of Job.
Job's friends, whom Job did not invite to come see him, whom Job especially did not invite to make moral commentary on his life, have crossed a line related to Job's moral dignity That is the feeling you get, that Job tolerated it for a bit, put up with it for a bit, and now as he reacts, he's drawing a line.
He's creating a boundary to say, "I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not gonna allow you to keep doing what you're doing." Now, what's remarkable about this is that Job is saying all this, and there is an easy fix on the table. [00:14:00] Like, it is right in front of him. There is a get out of jail free card, and he's not taking it.
The way he could end all of this drama would be to repent of the wrongs that he hasn't done. So what, Job? Just say you're sorry. Just own it. Just say, "Yeah, I've messed up. Yeah, I, I, I've done something wrong," and everything could go back to the way it was. All he has to do is to go along with their narrative.
He just has to agree with them, "Yep, you guys are right. I deserve it. God's punishing me." That's all he has to do. He can get his friends back, he can get his community back. And I cannot help that, imagine that Job at least entertained the idea. I mean, he at least, like, wrapped his mind around, "Hey, there is this option on the table that would stop all of this reaction that I'm getting."
And you might have been in a similar [00:15:00] position where you felt like you needed to repent for your questions and your doubts, even though you didn't think there was anything wrong with them, and yet your community or your friends made you believe, "Hey, there's something wrong about that. You, you need to repent for that," or maybe you need to repent for deconstructing.
That was viewed as a sinful posture to take, a, a sinful road to walk down. And so your friends look at you and say, "You gotta repent for that." Maybe there is this pressure you felt to accept the narrative of your community. "Hey, you're, you're asking your own questions. You're going along with your own way of thinking.
You need to just let that go and accept the way it works for everyone else." And the beauty of this story is that Job refuses that option.
Now, I wanna read to you one of my favorite sections. This is from chapter [00:16:00] 27, first six verses. This is so powerful. This is Job letting it rip, just venting it, letting it all out, and there's so much power to what he's saying here. And I want you just to consider these words. Job 27:1-6. "Job continued speaking, 'I vow by the living God who has taken away my rights, by the Almighty who has embittered my soul.
As long as I live, while I have breath from God, my lips will speak no evil, and my tongue will speak no lies. I will never concede that you are right. I will defend my integrity [00:17:00] until I die. I will maintain my innocence without wavering. My conscience is clear for as long as I live.'" That is not a man who is unsure of himself No, this is someone that has sat with his thoughts, sat with his feelings, sat with his reality.
He has stared it in the face. He has accepted his part to play, and he's also accepted the unjust nature of this. I did not deserve this. This is not appropriate. This does not make sense in any way, shape, or form. And we know as we begin the book and we've looked at, Job is right. He is blameless. This is the setup to the story in chapter one, [00:18:00] and he's, he's holding to that.
"Hey, I know I didn't do something to create this. I know I didn't do something to warrant this." And so even as his friends lay on all of the pressure that they can, and they ramp it up all the way, this is Job's response. Like, "I will maintain my integrity till I die. I will not speak lies to get you to welcome me back."
Like, Job is not having it, and he's defiantly holding his boundary. Now, Job's refusal to repent here I think mirrors a lot of people's refusal to repent for their doubts today. There's a, a parallel because, again, when you doubt, when you ask big questions, a lot of communities, a lot of church communities can't handle it.
They, they will assume something is wrong with you, and they will try to make you be the source. You're the issue. You're the [00:19:00] thing that needs to change. Now, you might go, "Well, there's a problem with this because Job's innocence is stipulated in the book," right? Uh, that's true. We absolutely know that that is stated.
Our innocence, in the way I'm referring it, which is that questioning and leaving these spaces that are not healthy, that those are not sinful actions, that's often in dispute today, and many a Christian would say this is absolutely sinful behavior. Now, we also go, "Well, Job was vindicated by God." We haven't been, okay?
All fair ways to push back, but I want to offer to that pushback, in case you're feeling it, I, I want to offer you a brief spoiler, a look ahead in, in what we're gonna see in the weeks to come that... I, I want to get to this in a future episode, but I, I just want to touch on it here to make this connection.
God will eventually, by the end of the book, tell the friends of Job that they have [00:20:00] not spoken rightly, but Job has. Okay, that's coming. The book ends with God siding with the honest questioner over the confident theologizers. So just let that breathe for a second. That's who God sides with at the end with all this.
It's not the people who are defending God. All the chapters and chapters and chapters we looked at in part four, that is not who God is siding with. God is siding with the person Job and Job's questions. So Job is going to be vindicated in his posture of honesty over flattery, and that's a promise I believe you and I can take from this story.
Th- there's no guarantee for us today that we will ever be publicly validated the way that Job was, but we [00:21:00] can find validation in the posture that Job takes. And so the integrity here is in refusing to fake a conviction you don't hold, right? 'Cause that's the pressure a community can put on you. "Just go along with this.
Just believe this. Just agree to this. Stop asking your questions." And what we're seeing here in Job is an unwillingness to do that. I would say this is one of the ethical spines of deconstruction, that we will not fake our beliefs in order to fit in, even when it would be easier, even when it would cost less, even when it might resolve a tension.
We, we commit to the journey, and we say we will not fake our beliefs in order to fit in. The Russian author Leo Tolstoy [00:22:00] said, "A person can easily grow accustomed to living a lie, especially if he sees everyone around him living in the same way."
Now, I would say that repentance is a good thing. When we're in the wrong, we should be willing to change our minds. I think this is one of the ways the Holy Spirit meets us in real time to do that. But when a system is forcing you to repent for what you have not done wrong, it is now about something else.[00:23:00]
'Cause we know Job has done nothing wrong, and yet the system in which Job lives and operates, the system in which all of these other people make sense of God, they need him to repent. So we can see this is about something else. It's the system and the people that run it that want Job to repent for not playing by their rules.
And I wish there was a more dramatic way to say it, but at the end of the day, that's what it is. That Job is not playing along, and because of that, it's throwing a wrench into the system itself. He is casting doubt on the validity, not just of God to them, not just of what they believe, but of the whole entire system and how it all works.
Job's one defiant act is, is causing doubt into all that they believe. And this is why, in case you're [00:24:00] wondering, so many Christians and churches today demonize people who deconstruct. It's the same exact reaction. Because if you are willing to deconstruct, if you are willing to rethink some of these theologies that we have told you, "This is absolutely the way it works.
This is absolutely the way God works," if you deconstruct that, you are now a threat to the very system because the system relies on these core beliefs. And if you start to pull that cord- All of a sudden, the system doesn't run the same way. As I've written about in my book, it is bad for business when you start to challenge this.
All it takes is one person to be confident in going up against the system. All it takes is one person to say, "I don't think God is like that," or, "I don't think this is the way this works." And the system itself [00:25:00] begins to shudder, begins to have a, a hiccup moment, and that's what we're seeing here. Job is bad for business.
Dr. Gushee writes this: "Job is protecting a space of moral self-direction that his friends and community are trying to annihilate because they consider it both threatening to the community and an affront to God. Job is telling his friends to back off, telling them that this is between himself and his soul and himself and God.
Even though he stands utterly alone, he will not allow his loneliness to weaken his moral resolve." Oof, that last line is a doozy. "Even though he stands utterly alone, he will not allow his loneliness to weaken his moral resolve." [00:26:00] How many of us have allowed loneliness to weaken our moral resolve? We've gone back to the unhealthy friends.
We've gone back to the unhealthy community. Maybe even went back to an unhealthy partner, or maybe you just said, "Hey, I, I will stop asking the questions. I'll stop looking at what I know I've seen. I'll, I'll stop responding to what I've been exposed to and what I've seen for the first time. I'll, I'll just go along with everyone else," because we were allowing loneliness to weaken our resolve.
The emperor and ph- philosopher Marcus Aurelius once said this: "Do not allow yourself to be infected by the mood or spirit of those who abuse you. Do not [00:27:00] step onto their path." And that's what happens when we go back. We go back onto their path, back where they control the rules, they control the narrative, they control the system.
And Job is showing us what it looks like to walk down a different path. And this path obviously brings an element of loneliness with it. And Job shows us what it looks like to walk that lonely path, to say, "I'm not walking this path of my abusers any longer. I'm gonna walk a different path." And it cost him dearly.
And one of the greatest costs he pays is a sense of loneliness in this. There's a Chinese proverb that says, "The way to fame goes through the palaces. The way to happiness goes through the markets. The way to virtue goes through the deserts." It's the path that [00:28:00] you, you pick is going to determine a lot of your journey.
And here we see Job saying, "I'm not walking down this road with you anymore. I'm willing to walk alone if it means that this is the only way I can walk in truth." It's an incredible example for you and I today. Job is offering us a better way forward. Now, Dr. Gushee, in his book, references the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant.
And Kant argues that Job's friends are speaking of things they don't understand, okay? Uh, even worse, they're trying to flatter God in the, in the process. Like, they don't really understand what they're saying. They certainly don't understand what Job is going through, but they're trying to make it sound good, and they're trying to b-boost their own sense of status in the community because they are the ones that they understand, and things make sense, and things work for them, [00:29:00] and they can have explanations even for something like this.
According to Kant, he says this: "Only Job speaks as he thinks and with the courage with which he can well afford. His friends, on the contrary, speak as if they were being secretly listened to by the Mighty One, as if gaining his favor through their judgment were closer to their heart than the truth." Now, I love his phrase, that Job's the only one who speaks as he thinks, 'cause that's the posture we get here.
Job's going, "Look, I'm not gonna lie to you to play your game. I'm not gonna say what I don't believe to get back in. I'm going to hold to what I've seen and to what I know to be true." And this is the tension for anyone who is deconstructing what they believe. Will you hold on to what you've seen? Will you hold on to these new insights that have emerged, [00:30:00] or do you let them go because you're lonely, because you want to get back on that road with everyone else?
Are we able to speak as we think, or are we just saying the things that we know we, we need to say, right? Are we saying what we actually believe or just what we're supposed to say in order to get what we want? Anyone who's been on this journey knows that if you say what you actually believe, it will cost you.
And it most certainly will. I have seen it time and time again. But Job reminds us of an insight that we often overlook, is that once you've paid that price, you can freely use your voice Yeah. I mean, once you've paid the price, you gain [00:31:00] something. After you pay out all of the things that it costs you, after you lose all of the things that you're gonna lose, you then gain something that you would have never had otherwise.
This is why I am so grateful for my own journey today. I had to pay an expensive cost to get to where I am today. It cost me friends, cost me a community, it cost me my dream job and an entire career that I thought I would do for the rest of my life. But now, I have a freedom to use my voice that I never had then Yeah.
So I can look at that and I can accept all of that. I can say, "These are all the things I lost, and yet this is what emerged out of that space, is a freedom to use my voice that [00:32:00] a lot of people who have not paid these costs, they wish they had that kind of freedom. But you don't get that kind of freedom without paying the cost.
And I want the same for you, dear listener. I want you to have that same kind of freedom. I'm sorry for what your journey has cost you already I'm sorry for what your journey will keep costing you in the days to come, but I hope that you find a new level of freedom with your voice. As you take the road of Job and say, "I will hold on to what I have seen.
I will not speak lies in order to fit in," I hope that you experience a deeper freedom to use your voice in ways you never could have imagined it before. You know, I eventually got ungrounded after my first date. We, we talked it through a little bit more with my [00:33:00] parents in the days that followed, and they realized that maybe, in fact, it did just look bad, and there was not anything sinister going on, and it wasn't at all what they had suspected it might have been.
I, I got ungrounded. Yeah, sometimes it just is a journey that takes a bit of time before things are seen in their proper light, and maybe that's what you're going through as well. So that concludes part five of our series through the Book of Job. We're gonna have eight total weeks of this series, with the last week being an interview with Dr.
Gushee himself as we talk about his take on the book, Job in Exile. I wanna invite you, like I do each week, if you want to talk about these ideas with real people in real time, and you wanna meet other people who are on this road with you, check out our online community. There's a link in the show notes.
I [00:34:00] love this space. I love these interactions. I spend a lot of my time on there each and every week. This is, this is how we do it. You can't do this in isolation because, as we've talked about today, it's incredibly lonely when you decide, "I'm not gonna walk this road that everybody else wants me to walk."
But here's what I found. When you go the way of Job, you start finding other people on that road. Yeah, there's not as much. There's not as many of us, but there are people, and that's what I love about the online community is the chance for people to go, "Oh, I'm meeting other people who are on this same journey, who are asking these same questions, and suddenly I realize I don't have to lie to fit in.
I, I can be honest here, and we can talk about these things together." And if that is something that would be life-giving for you, I wanna encourage you to check out our Rebuilding Faith online community. I'll see you next Wednesday on Cabernet and Pray.
