This post is part of my ongoing series of writing down my thoughts on the Bible passages I read each day. Some days I hope to have great insight that the Lord gives me, and many days, I will likely struggle through the text and not know what to write down based on what I read. My hope and prayer is that as I make this a habit, just as I did daily writing for so long, that I will improve on my ability to read and understand the passages I’m reading. Please keep in mind that many of these posts may be published late at night or with little time studying and simply be my first thoughts after reading. This is in no way a commentary that one should use to discern the Bible, but my own personal thoughts.
As I read through Job 22 in particular, I was struck with a feeling that I was not expecting, and it was a feeling that I often feel when I am watching people who are having injustices committed upon them.
The most recent example of when I experienced this was when I watched the movie Changeling. The movie centers around a mother from L.A. in the late 1920s whose son goes missing after she leaves him at home for a few hours. The story made nation-wide headlines, and the whole city was rooting for her son to be found. Partway through the story, the police believe that they’ve found the boy initially, and then realize that it’s not the same boy, but they’ve already published that they’ve found him and told the mother.
Instead of fessing up and telling everyone early on that they made a mistake, they don’t want to ruin the publicity for themselves, so they continue acting like this boy is the boy that went missing from this mother in L.A.. When the boy arrives on the train, the mother is eagerly waiting for her boy. He steps off the train, and the mother’s excitement completely vanishes as she tells the police officer nearby that it’s not her boy.
A ridiculous turn of events then happens when the L.A. police department tries to convince this woman that this is her son, he’s just changed a lot in the 4 months that he went missing. They convince the mother to take the boy home, and she does and figures out based on height and what he likes to eat that this is clearly not her boy. Anyone with a normal head would realize that a mother wouldn’t forget what her child looks like anyway,
The police at any time could have said that they messed up, but instead of taking the bad publicity, they decide that it’s better for them if they simply shut this woman up and continue to try and convince her that this IS actually her son even though she proves that he’s not.
The entire story, you feel so helpless for this woman. Here she is trying to argue her case from all logical points of view, and yet because she was a woman, the police were basically able to get away with whatever they wanted so they dismissed her objections and told her the boy was hers and she couldn’t just get rid of him.
It gets to the point that she goes to confront the police via Captain J.J. Jones, and Jones knows that she’s about to go to the radio with this, so he there on the spot gives her a sentence to a hospital for the insane. At this point in the story, my blood was boiling. Seeing this woman taken so much advantage of, feeling so helpless, not able to do anything, and now to be taken so far that they actually commit her to an insane asylum.
That is a long back story, but as I was reading through chapter 22, as Job’s friend Eliphaz is speaking, I was getting more and more upset. He is speaking ill of this man who really isn’t at fault, and yet Job has no way to silence him. God doesn’t give Job an easy out.
It makes me realize that even if we are “sinless” (which we aren’t. None of us are. But even if we were), there are going to be people who slander us and say all kinds of evil about us, and there’s not really much we can do about it. The more we may try to defend ourselves, the more they may use that against us.
The Christian walk is far from an easy stroll in the park.