We are far enough into this meltdown that we are starting to see its effects on individuals, and this of course includes individuals in the church. We are talking about layoffs, losses in retirement accounts, housing investments going south, and all the rest of it. If Christians are called to understand the times they are in, and they are, this would certainly include understanding the hard times they are in. So what about it?
The first thing to do is make some clear distinctions with regard to the possible reasons, at least as far as individuals are concerned. The natural inclination that pious Christians have is to go the route of Job’s comforters. This is happening because you sinned somehow, and God is now chastising you. Who sinned, the disciples asked Jesus, this man or his parents that he was born blind? And Job’s friends were absolutely convinced that he had brought all his troubles on himself.
What lends this view the deep conviction it always tends to carry with us is that, at bottom, it is a hunt for a sacrificial victim. If the gods are adequately propitiated, then the problem will go away. We are trying to fix it ourselves.
But the book of Job represents a fundamental rejection of this emotional need for a scapegoat; the book is about the easy wrongness of the natural explanation we always tend to give. Job was a leader of his people, a great chieftain; when he went bust, it affected everybody. When that happens, the natural thing is to find the guilty party, scapegoat him, and expect everything to return to normal. Job’s friends were officials from Treasury trying to fix the recession. When this kind of thing happens in pagan societies, the victim usually goes along with it all (think Oedipus). Anybody who thinks that Oedipus really did kill his father and marry his mother needs to get out more. The real issue was that Thebes was suffering terribly under the plague and they needed to find a guilty party, and any guilty party would do. Job is all about Job’s refusal to play that game, and the total exasperation of his friends, who needed him to take one for the team. Job’s friends weren’t trying to figure out why — they knew why, but they were wrong.
So we need to take the right lesson from Job and apply it to our own troubles. Our troubles might have nothing whatever to do with punishment of heaven for our poor investment choices. At the same time, we have to remember that there are two reasons why the scapegoating impulse is so strong. The first is what I have just mentioned — the emotional need to propitiate those powerful forces that are at work in ruining us. But the second reason is that this sort of thing does happen in the world, and that a man can reap what he sows, and that what goes around comes around, and it was all summed up in that old blues song — “ain’t no one to blame but myself.”
The fact that the book of Job is in the Bible does not mean that a man can plant wheat and harvest barley. Proverbs teaches us that lots of poverty in the world does come from laziness. Cirrhosis of the liver comes from heavy drinking. Reckless driving while drunk leads to life in a wheelchair. And riding a housing bubble to thirty thousand feet with hat and spurs on can have its deleterious consequences also, especially if the riders were in hot pursuit of free money. Never ride bubbles with spurs on.
So if you got into a bunch of financial monkeyshines, and all the older, wiser Christians you knew were trying to caution you about it, and your pastor preached a three-part sermon series entitled “Look Before You Leap,” and seemed to be looking at your pew a lot, and your wife told you about seventeen times that she didn’t have a peace about it, but you just lowered your shiny bronze forehead and proceeded anyway because this was a “sure thing,” then God has a lesson from James 4:13-15 for you. Job should not have listened to his friends, but you perhaps need to listen to them. And if you come honestly to that conclusion, then simply confess the sin (1 Jn. 1:9), receive God’s free forgiveness, straighten up as though you have been forgiven, and walk honorably. Communicate honestly with all your creditors, looking them all in the eye, and be a stand up guy, starting now.
There is another litmus test on this that can be valuable. When idols start to topple, their devotees always set up a great clamor, demanding “solutions for the American people.” If you are looking to the federal government for your little part of the bailout, and “all will be well” because the printing presses are still operational, then you are a sunshine capitalist, and a real contributor to our cultural problem. You want complete freedom to make money, and total security against losing any, which is to say, you want to live in an alternative universe, the kind God didn’t make for anybody. If you look at your last IRA report, and it is going in the wrong direction, and you start demanding retroactive insurance, the kind you didn’t buy, then you are looking for free grace salvation from the wrong quarter. Only the triune God offers free grace — and the Church does the same in His name.
In the months and years to come, a cascading torrent of so-called stimulus money is going to be running majestically to that great sea of red ink that we used to call the Pacific Ocean. If you are in the middle of the teeming crowds that will most certainly be on the banks of that river, yelling, shoving, and waving your bucket, then this shakedown of our financial system has a lesson in it directed at you. God removes the things that can be shaken, so that what cannot be shaken may remain (Heb. 12:27).
But if you belong to the Lord and know it, you along with all your flocks and herds, and you really believe that everything He has given you was a trust given to a steward, then you can genuinely rejoice if He takes it back for a time. All that we “possess” should always be held up before Him on open palms. If we clench our possessions in our tight little fists, God can still take it all from us with no more effort involved, but our fingers will be busted in the process. This is the lesson to take from Job. The Lord gives, the Lord takes away, and blessed be the name of the Lord.
So stating our responsibilities positively, we need to remember that we must be simply stewards of all we possess (Lk. 14:33); we need to avoid borrowing troubles from the future as though we didn’t have enough already (Matt. 6:34); we need to remember that we are worth more than many sparrows (Matt. 10:29); and we need to know that God will supply us with our daily bread (Matt. 6:11). And Lord willing, there will be more on all this as our troubles continue to unfold.