The Logic of Eliphaz in the name of Jesus

Have you ever gotten help that was not helpful? Has someone ever given you some Bible verse to help you explain what was going on in your life. Like the Bible is a book of collected horoscopes. Do you have a friend who just is not listening to you and just wants to explain to you why you are wrong or that you just need to “look at the bright side”? If you do and your friend’s name is Eliphaz, then your name might be Job. 

Job is going through the most difficult time in his life and rather than just listen and be compassionate to Job, Eliphaz tries to tell Job that the real problem here is Job himself. According to Eliphaz, Job has made a mistake, has sinned and now he is living with the results of his sinful actions.

Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered:
‘If one ventures a word with you, will you be offended?
   But who can keep from speaking?
See, you have instructed many;
   you have strengthened the weak hands.
Your words have supported those who were stumbling,
   and you have made firm the feeble knees.
But now it has come to you, and you are impatient;
   it touches you, and you are dismayed.
Is not your fear of God your confidence,
   and the integrity of your ways your hope?
‘Think now, who that was innocent ever perished?
   Or where were the upright cut off?
As I have seen, those who plough iniquity
   and sow trouble reap the same.

Eliphaz is not too far off our current culture of blaming one another for our own lots. Frankly, it is just easier to blame the person for their lot than to entertain that maybe their lot in life is not the result of their own doing. We do not like the idea of randomness in the world. We like order and the security of cause and effect. 

But we all know that there are things that happen in this world that make your life worse that are of no fault of your own. The kid born into an abusive family did not choose that family. The person who is injured because of a drunk driver. The times we got sick even though we were very, very careful. Things happen. Rather than be the people who seek the false security of blaming the victim or be the people who have no compassion for those who feel like life is against them, we can be different. We can be a people who affirm that sometimes, things happen through the randomness of life and we will be there to weep/yell/mourn with you without any judgement. 

While the world may not have many people named Eliphaz, I am sure we have encountered Eliphaz by a different name. I pray that no one has ever used the logic of Eliphaz while using the name Jesus.

The Ten Commandments - Bottoms Up

Human beings seem to love lists. I would guess that 30-35% of sports talk radio is some form of “list talk”. Questions like “top 5 soccer players” or “who would you have in your starting line up” or “worst quarterback of all time” all are versions of “list talk”.

Like most lists, there is a bias toward #1. It is usually at the top of the list as you work your way up from #10. The “top spot” is reserved for the penultimate of the list talk conversation and the top of the list is also a short hand embodiment of the whole list. It is as though lists “build up” to who is #1 like a triangle with #1 being the peak.

This is bias is important in that it impacts how we read and understand the 10 commandments of Exodus 20.

The bias toward #1 might give the impression that the first commandment (You shall not have any other gods before me), is the most important. And there is nothing wrong with that assumption, frankly that is a really good commandment. However, the power of that commandment is lost when we read it as #1 and the others are slightly “less important” - especially the farther down the list you get.

However, if we read the 10 commandments not as a list of descending commandments, but as a list that builds up to something then we come to a keen insight.

If you read the 10 commandments as building up to the last commandment (you shall not covet) then you may come to see that it is #10 that is the most important commandment - not the least.

If we were a people who did not covet , if we did not desire the desires of others, if we were only desiring the desires of God, then all the other commandments would not be necessary. We have false gods because we covet the power of that god. We do not honor the sabbath because we covet the approval of the market to make money. We would not kill or participate in adulatory if we did not covet our neighbors things or loved ones.

The next time you read the 10 Commandments, consider reading them from ten to one and see how that impacts how you understand them. And then, let us not violate the commandment to covet.

What is the First Sin?

What was the first sin?

For many of us we understand the first sin was when Adam and Even ate from a tree that was “off limits”. This was the first “answer” I was given when I was younger. It makes some sort of logical sense. There was a prohibition and then that prohibition was broken and thus there you have it, the first sin.

This way of thinking about the Bible story in Genesis is good if you are trying to instill into a child that they need to listen to authority figures (parents, teachers, etc.). It is a way of teaching young ones that rules, even rules you may not understand, are put in place in order to protect you and to violate those rules comes at a cost.

As we get older we come to see this is not true. There are plenty of people who violate rules but do not suffer any consequences. There are also a lot of rules that are in place that are unjust and do not make a lot of sense. Then when you drill down into Christianity, you hear that we are saved by grace and not the law, that we are in fact not bound to the law. When we read the Genesis story and are told the “moral of the story” is that we need to abide by the law, but were we not told that Jesus comes to liberate us from the law we scratch our heads. Are we free from the law or are we supposed to follow it so as to not be like Adam and Eve?

The Bible is a set of stories that are full of symbol and depth of meaning. Pay attention that Adam and Eve ate fruit. In other parts of the Bible we learn that fruit is a metaphor for that which comes after something else. For instance, we bear fruits of the spirit, after we receive the Holy Spirit. We will bear fruit after we abide in the vine (Christ). Fruit comes after.

Adam and Eve’s consumption of fruit ought to prompt us to ask, what is the thing that comes before? What is this fruit they are eating? Not what sort of fruit as in apples or pears, but more like is this the fruit of love or the fruit of hate? Even demons bear fruit. Not all fruit is good, but if we act with hatred, we will bear the fruit of hate.

And so if fruit comes after, then eating the fruit cannot be the first sin. The first sin has to happen and the first humans are eating of the fruit of that first sin. And so, what is that first sin?

There are a lot of arguments on what that first sin would be. Perhaps it is worth considering that the first sin is not disobedience or pride, but redirection. Redirecting our desires away from what God desires toward what we desire.

When Adam and Even desired what God desired, then the tree in the center of the garden was not even a blip on the radar of Eve or Adam. It never even bothered them, because their desire was mirroring what God desired and God desired them not to eat from that tree. It was only when they no longer desired what God desired that Adam and Even were able to eat of the fruit.

And thus, the first sin is not a choice of produce but a choice of desiring something other than what God desires.

This Lent, consider the actions that you and I might call “sins”. Chances are these sins are not sins, but evidence (fruit if you will) of the sin that came before. Consider what James 4:1-3 says:

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.

The conflicts and disputes among us are fruit - they come from somewhere. And where do they come from the author asks? They come from our choice to abandon the desires of God and pursue our own desires.

(This is adapted from a sermon delivered on February 28, 2021)