I am haphazardly reading through the Bible and have just started the book of Job. I find Job to be a challenging read. Today, I read the first reply of Eliphaz the Temanite, who has the dubious distinction of being the first of Job’s three friends to open his mouth. Despite being with Job for the explicit purpose of comforting him, his words are far from comforting. He implies Job is whining, wonders why Job is having so much trouble dealing with his problems considering that he’s given advice to people in bad positions in the past, suggests that Job must have done something worthy of punishment and deserved what happened to him, and ends by saying if Job simply repents and learns his lesson God will forgive him and bless him more than he did before.
Yeah, no, if you have a friend going through hard times, this would not be the speech to emulate.
However, despite Eliphaz being utterly wrong about things – the narrative has told us repeatedly that Job is a righteous man who has done absolutely nothing to deserve what has happened to him – he says a lot of things that are, at face value, true. For instance, in Job 5:17 he says, “Blessed is the one whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.” This is echoed in Proverbs 3:11: “My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke,” which is itself quoted in Hebrews 12:5.
My dad taught us a saying about proverbs, which is not original to him: “Proverbs are principles, not promises.” Proverbs teach us about how the world works, the principles of how God has set things up. Most of the time, they accurately describe what life is like. Life, however, cannot be reduced to formulas. I think that is intentional. God wants us to live by faith and trust him. He intend for us to manipulate and control our lives through promises that work like magic spells.
While Eliphaz was factually correct in saying God’s discipline is good, and we should welcome it into our lives, he applied this truth wrongly to Job’s life. He demonstrated knowledge of how life works, but not wisdom in applying this knowledge. Jesus does not do this. Solomon may have been the wisest man on earth, but he has nothing on Jesus, who knew Proverbs as well as anyone and also wisely interpreted the Law.
On a broader level, how do we deal with situations where something is true on its own, but made false in context? In the above situation, many of Eliphaz’s statements were true, but they added up to a false argument for Job’s guilt when taken altogether. Would it still be ok to pull out the truths and use them, divorced of their context? I have never read Marx or Nietzsche, but I’ve certainly read a lot of quotes from their works and some of them ring true. Overall, I reject their overall arguments (or, what I understand their arguments to be, never having read them). But is it acceptable to pull out the parts I agree with and say, This is true? To do this, must I include a disclaimer explaining the context? Or is the “truth” irrevocably damaged by the part it plays in their larger arguments?
Stretching the questions a little further, what if the stated truth is untainted by the context of the argument, but rather by the person making the argument? Attacking an argument by attacking the person making it is a logical fallacy, an ad hominem attack. You’re not supposed to do that. And yet, Jesus didn’t allow demons to address him as Lord. Is a shirt that says, “Jesus is Lord – Demon” going to convince anybody? Wouldn’t it do the opposite?
I’ve read a few articles discussing this question, including one from The Gospel Coalition on Jonathan Edwards. Edwards still has a large influence on Protestant Christians today, and he was a slave owner. How does that influence how we interpret his writings? Does it?
Although the context is different, there are similar questions about truth and its context in the medical field. In medical school, we learned about Wegener’s granulomatosis. But we don’t call it that anymore, our professor said, we call it granulomatosis with polyangiitis, because Wegener was a Nazi. On a more serious level, the scientific community didn’t know what to do with the discoveries made by Nazi scientists who experimented on people in concentration camps. Many of these findings cannot be duplicated because they were blatantly evil and unethical. But there have been blatantly unethical experiments run in the United States as well. Sometimes they resulted in knowledge that could improve people’s health. Is it ethical to use knowledge obtained through unethical means?
I don’t have answers to these questions, and I’ve gotten pretty far away from Job’s friend’s words. Well, I’ll end on a piece of good advice. As Thumper’s father said, If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.
SDG