Theological Commentary: Click Here
Discipleship Focus: Approval
- Approval: We all need to feel as though we are accepted. When we seek the approval of God, our Up is in the right place. But when we seek the approval of other people besides God, we open the door to pursuing false gods and risk putting someone or something other than God in our Up position.
I think
the human need for approval is inherently behind Zophar’s words in the opening
part of this chapter. Zophar is offended
by Job’s words and Job’s defiant stance that he hasn’t done anything
wrong. Zophar is offended because Job
refuses to accept a commonly held opinion by human beings: people who live nice
lives must be loved by God because of their righteousness. To put it another way: people who lives
seemingly cursed lives must be despised by God because of their sin.
I think
approval is at the root of this belief.
We all want to live good lives.
We also want to live a life believing that we are good people. How can we justify our dual need to have God’s
approval but still be able to live up a life to our own financial and communal
prosperity? We do it by equating
prosperity with God’s love.
You see,
if I am living a prosperous life and I want it to continue, then I need to
convince myself that God must bless me because I’ve chosen wisely. Therefore, I convince myself that I have God’s
approval.
On the
other hand, if I want to judge people who are living more poorly than I am –
because I want to justify my need to stay at my current level – I can do so by
declaring that God must not love them as much because they aren’t as
blessed. Therefore, it is possible for
human beings to equate fewer resources with a lack of God’s blessing. It’s completely wrong, but we do it all the
time as human beings.
Zophar
doesn’t want to be wrong. Zophar doesn’t
want to change. Zophar doesn’t want to
conceive of the possibility that he might not have as much approval as Job
does. So Zophar equates living a life of
difficulty with living outside of God’s approval. Sin Job seems to be cursed, Zophar can stand
high and mighty in his opinion that he’s right and Job is wrong.
It makes
me wonder what Zophar would have thought of Paul or Jesus. Can we really equate living a life of prosperity
with having God’s approval?
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