“Gird up you loins like a man, and I will ask you, and you instruct Me!”Job 38:3

Poor Job! Not only was he impoverished in a day, but he lost his family, and his health! And to make matters even worse, he was trying to understand what had happened to him with a mistaken point of view — which the rest of the world of his (and ours) often holds. His mistaken paradigm was “I’m good and should be rewarded; only the bad get punished.” To make matters even worse, his friends came to call on him to repent of stuff he didn’t do — because “The good are rewarded and the bad are punished.” Up until this verse quoted above Job had vigorously professed his innocence and begun to call on God to correct His mistake.

The problem was, of course, that Job was wrong and God was right.

It’s a common problem even today, and I’m not just talking about the question of why bad things happen to good people! We live in a world that has some very strong opinions about what is right and wrong, about what is correct and incorrect, what God should be approving of and what He should not be approving of. The issues range from questions of morality, what is true, true religion in general, what political party God must belong to (really?), and even about spiritual reality like Heaven and Hell. And in many a mind, the assumption is that prior teachings, found in the Bible itself (the very word of God), must be wrong and what we currently think must be right.

In the book of Job, God calls Job’s call for correction of His will on the carpet, “Gird up you loins like a man, and I will ask you, and you instruct Me!” God calling on Job to compare his abilities to God’s, his knowledge to God’s, his power to God’s, his wisdom to God’s. After a fashion, He was challenging Job to see if Job could “measure up”.
The same questions really should be asked of self-important, modern men and women today. Will we really ask God to check His work? Reconsider right and wrong? Withdraw His commands about sexuality, gender, roles, church, worship, priorities, and morality? Will we really try to play the teacher and “bleed all over” the Bible with our little red pens? We must be really smart to “school” the Creator of the Universe; the One who ordered the stars and planets; and the One who made man, woman, marriage, and family. We must be super-extra smart to know better about the changes that “must” happen with modern culture than the One who has foreseen things to the end of time. Yep, God needs to sky-write “Gird up you loins like a man, and I will ask you, and you instruct Me!”

After God helped Job to realize how weak, foolish, ignorant, and limited he was as a human being with an awesome tour-de-force of God’s infinite power, wisdom, and knowledge; all Job could say was, “I have declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did know know. Hear now and I will speak — I will ask You, and You instruct me.” (Job 42:3,4).

The solutions to the world’s problems, the solution to religion’s problems, the solution to the church’s problems boil down to the epiphany, in which we finally admit, “I have declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me…I will ask You, and You instruct me.” It’s the best teaching anyone could ever have, and the best prayer anyone could ever pray.