Job 21:1-2, 34 (ESV)

Then Job answered and said:

“Keep listening to my words,

and let this be your comfort.”

How then will you comfort me with empty nothings?

There is nothing left of your answers but falsehood.”

In Job’s frustration with what he perceives as injustice, he cries out to his friends, “Keep listening to my words, and let this be your comfort.” He needed friends who would be a non-anxious presence in his life while he wrestled with his pain, and his perception of the inequities of life. Their own anxiety pushed them to defend their theological positions with increasing insensitivity. Job just needed them to listen to him.

Job 21:7-9, 28-30, 34 (ESV)

[7] Why do the wicked live,

reach old age, and grow mighty in power?

[8] Their offspring are established in their presence,

and their descendants before their eyes.

[9] Their houses are safe from fear,

and no rod of God is upon them.

[28] For you say, ‘Where is the house of the prince?

Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?’

[29] Have you not asked those who travel the roads,

and do you not accept their testimony

[30] that the evil man is spared in the day of calamity,

that he is rescued in the day of wrath?

[34] How then will you comfort me with empty nothings?

There is nothing left of your answers but falsehood.”

What do you do when your theology doesn’t fit with your reality? That is the question Job is wrestling with. His theology tells him that the wicked are judged and the righteous prosper. His reality is just the opposite. As a righteous man, he is suffering while he watches the wicked around him prosper. When our theology doesn’t fit our apparent reality we tend to respond in a couple of ways. We reinterpret reality. “They may look like they are prospering, but deep down they are miserable.” We don’t know that, but it feels like an answer that allows us to not think too deeply about life. It makes us feel okay. “I’m miserable, but deep down I have the joy of the Lord somewhere. They look happy, but deep down they are miserable.” Our theology is still intact and we feel like we have provided an answer. All we have really done is reinterpret reality.

Job’s friends reinterpreted their reality. They chose to look no further than a few examples in life that seemed to justify their position. Job challenged them on this. Notice what Job asked his friends in Job 21:29-33. 

Have you not asked those who travel the roads,

and do you not accept their testimony

that the evil man is spared in the day of calamity,

that he is rescued in the day of wrath?

Who declares his way to his face,

and who repays him for what he has done?

When he is carried to the grave,

watch is kept over his tomb.

The clods of the valley are sweet to him;

all mankind follows after him,

and those who go before him are innumerable.

Essentially Job is saying, “Don’t you actually look around and see the world? Do you just create these ideas out of thin air? Don’t you talk to people who have seen more of the world than you have?” Their perception of reality is not real. How often have we decided that things are a certain way simply because that supports our teaching or our theology? We reinterpret reality and sit in smug self-righteousness. All the while people like Job are falling apart around us, and we blame them.

We can reinterpret reality. We can also can refine our theology. Job’s friends did this as well. They tweaked their theology and their understanding of their world by saying, “God stores up their iniquity for their children” (Job 21:19 ESV). So now, instead of saying that bad things happen to bad people, they are saying that bad things happen to bad people’s children. It doesn’t really solve the problem. They have no evidence to support this idea. If they were to look around, they would realize that even the children of bad people are not experiencing God’s judgment. On top of that, Job asks why bad people would care about what happens to their children as long as their own life is comfortable. Their tweaked theology makes them feel justified in their assessment of Job’s condition. It does nothing to help Job.

We do not need to be afraid of people asking hard questions. We do not need to feel anxious and begin defending our theology at all costs when someone challenges us. Much damage has been done because we react to people instead of listening to them. Much damage has been done because we have failed to be honest about the difficult questions in life, settling for canned answers and easy solutions that satisfy only ourselves, but fail to enter into the pain of those around us.

What Job needed was not answers, but someone who cared. He needed friends who would be a non-anxious presence in his life while he wrestled with his pain, and his perception of the inequities of life. Their own anxiety pushed them to defend their theological positions with increasing insensitivity. Job just needed them to listen to him. Jesus did not say, “Always have an answer that readily fixes people.” What he did say was that we should love God and love others. In our anxiety we fail to do either. If we can trust that God is at work in an individual’s life, then we can lay aside our anxiety and love them instead of trying to fix them. To do that we need to be okay with not having all the answers.

Peter wrote that we should “always being prepared to make a defense (or answer) to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” But he went on to qualify that we should, “do it with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet 3:15). He didn’t say that we need to be ready with an answer to every question that people have. Nor did he say that we need to be ready to defend God. He did say that we need to demonstrate gentleness and respect.

We ought to have an answer for the hope that we have in Christ. We do not need to have canned answers for every question people have in life. The reality is that we need to be okay with not having all the answers. We need to be okay with not being God. We need to trust him more than we need to defend him. When we trust him then we can love people even when they ask hard questions for which we have no ready answers. If only Job’s friends had learned that.