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.