The light that Failed - Chambers, Oswald

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; in feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best. Life is but a means unto an end that end, beginning, mean, and end to all things god.

Philip James bailey 8

It is not what a man does that is of final importance, but what he is in what he does. The atmosphere produced by a man, much more than his activities, has the lasting influence.

1. The premise of precedent ( job 4:16)

Eliphaz is the first of the friends to emerge from their dumbfounded silence, and he starts out with the premise that god will never act any differently from the way he has always acted, and that man must not expect he will. The opening verses are a stately introduction to his theme

behold, thou hast instructed many, and thou hast strengthened the weak hands. Thy words have up holden him that was falling, and thou hast strengthened the feeble knees. But now it is come upon thee, and thou faintest; it toucheth thee, and thou art troubled. ( job 4:35)

The precedent from which Eliphaz argues is that although job has instructed many and been an upholder of the weak, now that he himself is going through such terrific suffering he must be wrong somewhere. Eliphaz reasons on the ground that job is experiencing the same kind of trouble as those whom he had previously comforted. This is not true. Job is suffering because god and Satan have made a battleground of his soul, without giving him any warning or any explanation. It is an easy thing to argue from precedent because it makes everything simple, but it is a risky thing to do. Give god elbow room; let him come into his universe as he pleases. If we confine god in his working to religious people or to certain ways, we place ourselves on an equality with god. Jobs suffering is not according to precedent; the thing that has struck job had struck none of those whom he had instructed and comforted. It is a good thing to be careful in our judgement of other men. A man may utter apparently blasphemous things against god and we say, how appalling; but if we look further we find that the man is in pain, he is maddened and hurt by something. The mood he is talking in is a passing one and out of his suffering will come a totally different relationship to things. Remember, that in the end god said that the friends had not spoken the truth about him, whilst job had. We are in danger of doing the same thing as eliphaz; we say that a man is not right with god unless he acts on the line of the precedent we have established. We must drop our measuring-rods for god and for our fellow men. All we can know about god is that his character is what Jesus Christ has manifested; and all we know about our fellow men presents an enigma which precludes the possibility of the final judgement being with us.

2. The presentation of preconception ( job 4:721)

Eliphaz goes on to reason on a preconception, viz. That god blesses the good man, but does not bless the bad man.

Remember, i pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent? Or where were the righteous cut off ? Even as i have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same. ( job 4:78

Eliphaz takes his argument from nature: for what- soever a man soweth, that shall he also reap that god does not punish the upright, and that the innocent do not perish. That simply is not true, and it is this preconception which distorted eliphaz point of view. Preconceptions exist in our own head; if we start out with the preconception that god will never allow the innocent to perish and then we see a righteous man perishing, we will have to say, you cannot be a righteous man, because my preconception tells me that if you were, god would never allow you to suffer; therefore you are proved to be a bad man. When Jesus Christ came on the scene the preconception of the historic people of god was thiswe are the constitution of god, Judaism is gods ordination, therefore you cannot be, and they crucified him. Our lord said that his church would be so completely taken up with its precedents and preconceptions that when he came it would be as a thief in the night; they would not see him because they were taken up with another point of view. There are people who can silence you with their logic while all the time you know, although you can- not prove it, that they are wrong. This is because the basis of things is not logical, but tragic. Logic and reasoning are only methods of dealing with things as they are; they give no explanation of things as they are.

3. The preaching from prejudice ( job 5:116)

Prejudice means a judgement passed without sufficiently weighing the evidence. We are all prejudiced, and we can only see along the line of our prejudices. The way a prejudice works is seen clearly in eliphaz: he knows god, and he knows how he will work god will never allow the righteous to suffer, consequently when he sees the disasters in jobs life he passes judgement right off on job and says he is not righteous. There is a saying of bacons to the effect that if prosperity is the blessing of the old testa- ment, adversity is the blessing of the new;9 and the apostle Paul says that all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution (2 timothy 3:12).

In every life there is one place where god must have elbow room. We must not pass judgement on others, nor must we make a principle of judging out of our own experience. It is impossible for a man to know the views of almighty god. Preaching from prejudice is dangerous, it makes a man dogmatic and certain that he is right. The question for each of us to ask ourselves is this: would i recognise god if he came in a way i was not prepared for if he came in the bustle of a marriage feast, or as a carpenter? That is how Jesus

Christ appeared to the prejudices of the pharisees, and they said he was mad. To-day we are trying to work up a religious revival while god has visited the world in a moral revival, and the majority of us have not begun to recognise it. The characteristics that are manifested when god is at work are self-effacement, self-suppression, abandonment to something or some- one other than myself, and surely there has never been more evidence of these characteristics than on the part of the men engaged in this war.

4. The pedagogue of priggishness ( job 5:1727)

Eliphaz is not only certain what god will do, but he asserts that what job is going through is chastisement at the hand of god

behold, happy is the man whom god correcteth: there- fore despise not thou the chastening of the almighty: for he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole.

Whereas chastisement is a much slighter thing than the real problem of jobs life. The chief ingredient in chastening is that it is meant to develop us, and is a means of expression. The greatest element in the suffering of job was not chastisement, but the super- natural preface to his story of which he knew nothing. If eliphaz is right his evidence would prove that job was a hypocrite; his attitude is that of a pedagogue of priggishness. Beware of priggishness as you would of poison. The danger of pseudo-evangelism is that it makes the preacher a superior person, not that he is necessarily a prig, but the attitude is produced by the way he has been taught. When our lord said to the disciples, follow me, and i will make you fishers of men, his reference was not to the skilled angler, but to those who use the dragnetsome- thing which requires practically no skill; the point being that you have not to watch your fish, but to do the simple thing and god will do the rest. The pseudo-evangelical line is that you must be on the watch all the time and lose no opportunity of speaking to people, and this attitude is apt to produce the superior person. It may be a noble enough point of view, but it produces the wrong kind of character. It does not produce a disciple of Jesus, but too often the kind of person who smells of gunpowder and people are afraid of meeting him. According to Jesus Christ, what we have to do is to watch the source and he will look after the outflow: he that believeth on me, . . . Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water (john 7:38). Who are the people who have really benefited you? They are never the ones who think they do, but those who are like the stars or the lilies, no notion Of the prig about them. It was this form of pseudo- evangelism, so unlike the new testament evangelism, that made huxley10 sayi object to Christians: they know too much about god. Eliphaz can tell job everything about god, but when we come to the facts of the case we find that the man who is criticising job is not fit to sit down beside him. Eliphaz was in a much better condition at the beginning when he did not open his mouth, then he was not a prig, but a man facing facts which had no explanation as yet. If the study of the book of job is making us reverent with what we dont understand, we are gaining insight. There is suffering before which you cannot say a word; you cannot preach the gospel of temperament; all you can do is to remain dumb and leave room for god to come in as he likes. The point for us isdo i believe in god apart from my reasoning about him? Theology is a great thing, so is a mans creed; but god is greater than either, and the next greatest thing is my relationship to him.