Job 42:7-8
After GOD had finished addressing Job, he turned to Eliphaz the Temanite and said, “I’ve had it with you and your two friends. I'M FED UP! You haven’t been HONEST either with me or about me — not the way my friend JOB has. So here’s what you must do. Take seven bulls and seven rams, and go to my friend Job. Sacrifice a burnt offering on your own behalf. My friend Job will pray for you, and I will accept HIS prayer. He will ask me not to treat you as you deserve for talking nonsense about me, and for not being honest with me, as he has.” (The Message)
God was so angry God insisted on reparations. God would accept their seven bulls as a sacrifice, but God didn’t want to take their bull any more.
Some day, white America, we need to tend to our bull too. We need to sit in silence and listen to the effect of our own words and actions … and inaction … on race. Own it. As something our ancestors created. And we perpetuate. Instead of blaming somebody else.
Our centuries of horrible Caucasian-centered theology and self-serving economic policies have helped create a tremendous imbalance of power and wealth in all of Western society. Our companies and governments and churches combined forces to create a system that was not only blatantly unfair. It was horrifically brutal, demeaning, and dehumanizing to many. And still can be. So for centuries we have also created religious, philosophical, political and economic systems that defend and justify our ongoing sin. And we still believe the resulting rhetoric so completely that we often still can’t see the sin.
And the sin isn’t just the bull we offer through our words. There is an evil, inherent in the system, that we could see, if we were ever courageous enough to look at it honestly. A terrible inhumanity to other humans. That started centuries ago. And got worse and worse and worse. And still isn’t even close to being fixed. And instead of silently listening to Job and Job's family. Instead of empathizing and taking responsibility for changing the systems, we defend the imbalanced systems and regurgitate more bull. More blame. On somebody else. On those who are suffering. On Job.
Job 2:13 says that Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar sat in silence with Job while he suffered for seven days.
And if they had never opened their mouths, that might have been a noble thing. But eventually they opened their mouths. And when they did ... they blamed the victim. They blamed Job.
We do that in our society all the time. Blame the victim. Blame the survivor. Blame the person suffering. Blame the homeless. Blame the unemployed. Blame the refugee. Blame the poor. Blame the sick. Blame the hungry. Blame the opposing party. Blame the other country or community or culture or race. And maybe there is a good reason. And then, again, maybe not. With Job, God said, definitely not.
We do it and hear it so much, it almost makes a perverse sense to us. If they are suffering then they must have done something wrong to be in that difficult situation. That, in essence was the tripartite argument presented by the triumvirate of Bildad, Zophar, and Eliphaz. They blamed Job for his trials and tribulations. It was his fault.
We think it and say it, almost without thinking, because it helps distance ourselves from the suffering. It helps us think we are good. And they are not. So the suffering they are going through won’t happen to us. Can’t happen to us. Because we are categorically in different spots. They deserve it. We do not.
It doesn’t just happen in relation to race. It happens according to our abilities. It happens according to our economic status. It happens according to our gender identity and religious preferences. It happens according to our levels of vulnerability and confidence. It happens according to our immigration status and family affiliations.
But it seems to happen a lot in relation to race. And not just lately. Unfortunately no race on earth has been more diligent and persistent in shoveling this bull than the race that invented race in 1779. Blumenbach from Germany was not the first to offer the concept of race, only the first to offer a dubious taxonomy. Many, many, many followed. And we did it in the name of colonization, justifying the enslavement of one “race”. And the systematic simultaneous genocide of at least one other “race”.
We created the concept of “race” so that we could blame “them” for the senseless conditions unto which we were subjecting them. There is most certainly a pernicious evil that is required to sell other human beings, especially on that scale and under those conditions. To callously pass laws and permit business practices that killed other races by the thousands. And we invented the word “race” to whitewash our evil.
And, God help us, we still do.
The systems, institutions and organizations we created, our “race” created, cause others to suffer and we echo Zophar, Bildad, and Eliphaz:
“Sorry, Job, this systemic condition is all your fault. Just confess your sin to God and God will deliver you.”
Ugh. As if today we have no responsibility in perpetuating the systems.
Let me be clear. As guilty as God proclaims Eliphaz, Zophar and Bildad in this book, not all of us who are white are as “innocent” as they.
Some of us have been, and still are, the “satan” in Chapters 1 and 2. The Hebrew word, “satan” has no clear capital letter. It simply means the “accuser”, the “adversary” of Job. The satan is a destroyer of families, a dispenser of destruction, a procreator of chaos. We humans often can’t see it when we are being the “satan”. When we have been and still are actively involved in undermining and even suppressing and oppressing Job and Job’s family.
It is embedded into our American history, this suppression and oppression. Look up the mortality rates in the First Passage, Middle Passage, and Final Passage of the slave trade, especially from 1570-1808. Look up "An Act Concerning Servants and Slaves," passed by the Virginia General Assembly in its October session of 1705 or its predecessor, the "Barbados Slave Code of 1661". Look up the racial devestation of Black Wall Street in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921. Watch “Birth of a Nation” and look up the violent way Old Jim Crow laws were enforced after the Reconstruction in the 1880’s and again in the 1920’s … and then the violent ways incarceration has created a new Modern Jim Crow through our prison systems, after the success of the 1960's Civil Rights Movements. Just like with Job, it isn't just one event that causes the suffering. The events are repeated and compounded. Generation after generation. Almost with endless persistence.
You have to do some research to see it. How the satan, the adversary in the story of Job, has heart-wrenching parallels in the story of race in America.
You have to look for it. Because the satan doesn’t want Job … or Bildad or Eliphaz or Zophar to know the bargain that was made with God. If we put them through this, the satan says, if we put Job through this, if we put Job’s family through this. You will see, I will demonstrate. He is not noble, he is not faithful. They are not good. They will fail as we always knew they would.
But you can’t, the satan says, tell the truth to Job … or Zophar or Eliphaz or Bildad.
Why, I often wonder, did God ever agree to this horrid bargain with the satan. In Job's story. And in our own? Why does God ever allow us to perpetuate such evil against a fellow brother or sister?
But, the accuser, the adversary is clever. The satan knows, the blame game doesn’t work if the truth becomes known. Distraction and distortion are employed so the truth cannot be seen clearly.
So we ... so the satan ... so Job's adversaries, cleverly teach Zophar and Bildad and Eliphaz the blame game. How to create a Blame Storm, a whirlwind of lies, deceptions, and half-truths that keeps the system going, and continues to pit one group of humans against another. Why do we do this? God only knows. And, maybe, the satan.
By the way, that’s my phrase for bull, for B.S. these days.
A Blame Storm.
In 2005, Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt embellished his 1986 essay into a full treatise, “On B.S.”. Frankfurt used the full phrase abbreviated by B.S. (and no, not Blame Storm, nor the Bachelor of Science degree I earned at Texas A&M). He defined B.S., or bull, as “speech intended to persuade without regard for the truth”.
A lie cares about the truth and intentionally attempts to distort it.
B.S. doesn’t care if what is said is TRUE or FALSE, but rather only cares whether the listener is PERSUADED. At least we attempt to hide what we know to be lies. BS is designed to be shoveled out, wide open and in public.
The Blame Storm that riled up God’s holy anger at Bildad, Eliphaz and Zophar cannot compare to what we are now able to do on social media. We can see the vicious impact the Blame Storm from his "friends" had on Job. It hurt deeply. Still, his friends persisted. It can sometimes be even harder to see the vicious impact our own Blame Storm has on Job and Job’s family ... today. And stop it.
In January 2013, an Italian programmer, Alberto Brandolini, added his own BS Asymmetry Principle to the discussion. Also known as Brandolini’s Law, he said, “The amount of ENERGY needed to REFUTE B.S. is an order of magnitude bigger than to PRODUCE it.” The satan knows the absolute beauty of B.S:
When you dump B.S. on your adversaries, it takes them more energy to fight it, to resist it, to refute it … than it took you to dump it.
B.S. works. When Adolf Hitler wrote "Mein Kampf" he knew the power of propaganda ... and how blame and "the Big Lie" work so well together as insidious tools of destruction. Like slander and rumor and gossip and innuendo, blame is almost impossible to clean up. And, as it festers, the stench just keeps getting worse. It takes so much work to stop it.
Once upon a time, when I was younger, I was naive enough to name B.S. in the pulpit, not just by abbreviation, but by the full name. Yes, I was foolish enough to say the full word. In church. Like systemic racism, I thought, if you just name it and point it out, everyone will see it and want to change it.
Deep in my heart, I knew better. I knew the incendiary effects of the full word, B.S.. And I knew the equally explosive impact of the word racism. I knew that when I said one, I also meant the other. And I knew that I would get a reaction.
I just wasn’t prepared for the intensity of the reaction.
There are certain words, that, if said in certain contexts, cause us react. To resist. To fight. And to stop listening.
Being told that our BULL is B.S. is one. RACISM, especially systemic racism, is another. The stench associated with both phrases is revolting. We don’t want to be associated with a pile of bull. Not literally. And not figuratively.
But the word “race” was a bunch of “bull” from the very beginning. And the Blame Storm of slavery and genocide that it was designed to justify was. And is. Simply evil.
Until enough of us are willing to sacrifice our seven bulls and ask Job to pray for our forgiveness, I fear we will be dealing with this stench for a long, long time.
But any addiction eventually finds that rock bottom. That “here and no further” place. That “this is the last straw and now I am willing to change” moment. And then recovery can begin. Amends can be made. Reparations can be offered. Sacrifices can be made. Forgiveness can be considered.
What astounds me about this passage in Job, this epilogue, this 42nd chapter, the ninth verse:
9 So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite DID WHAT THE LORD TOLD THEM; and the LORD accepted Job’s prayer.
They actually repented.
Rarely, once we are committed to a path of blame and bull, do we stop to consider that we might be wrong. Very wrong. And contemplate the damage that has been done. But Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar did.
But first, they had to stop. And listen.
I hope, some day, if not in my lifetime, in the lifetime of my children or grandchildren, that finally … enough of us are ready and willing to stop. To humble ourselves and listen to God. And repent. And seek God’s face. And turn from our wicked ways. Both the lynching AND the blame that precedes and follow the lynching.
When we are finally ready to repent, scripture says, Job says, the Lord will accept Job’s prayer.
And heal our land.
But, yes. That’s gonna take a lot of cleaning. A lot of repentance. And a lot of forgiveness.
But if Bildad and Zophar and Eliphaz could finally say it, without apology, I pray one day, so can we.
Say this, along with God ... and Job:
Comments