Job Chapter 18
So casually cruel in the name of being honest
As a good liberal social media user, I should hate Joel Osteen. I've seen the memes. I know he locked up his church at the worst time. He makes money off of Jesus. Yet, I don't. Not being a Christian, I don't care about Christian hypocrisy. More importantly, the few times I found Osteen sermons on YouTube, I heard “You are loved. You matter. Even if you feel lost and alone, G-d cares.” Of course, he makes money from that feelgood message. His audience pays to hear him say that they matter. If he could sing, he'd be a pop star.
For all his faults, Joel Osteen is no Bildad. Bildad is a pontificating fuckboy, so enamored with righteousness that he spreads misery. Bildad believes that absolute justice rules the world. The innocent thrive and the wicked suffer. That sounds like a nice fantasy. Only he takes it to the logical conclusion, namely Job's travails are well deserved. Job says that he lives in darkness. Bad people live in darkness. Job's family died. Sinners lose their families. “Calamity devours his skin,” chortles Bildad, whilst looking at Job's boils. The West is astonished. The East is horrified. See what happens when you don't know G-d.
Bildad believes that he's righteous and his belief makes him a total asshole. We see Bildad types all over the place. Jerry Falwell celebrated the deaths of thousands due to AIDS and declared 9/11 punishment for America's sins. Noam Chomsky also declared 9/11 punishment for America's sins – namely American intervention in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile, etc. So far so good. Only Chomsky has also spent his lifetime defending monsters like Pol Pot, the Iranian mullahs, and Milosevic. As long as a genocidal dictator annoys Western powers, Chomsky is pro-genocide.
Sadly, the extremists are only the most obvious Bildad types. In truth, we've all been Bildad. Bildad pushes away doubt with platitudes. Bildad lives in that childish place where only the worst people get hurt. Unless you are very lucky or very young, you have memories of hurting someone close to you. Most likely, you felt no doubts at the time. Doesn't matter your justification – personal responsibility, integrity of sports, honesty, blue lives matter – you were awful.
That's not to say that you can never be harsh with friends or loved ones. Sometimes, friends are going down bad paths. They might be drinking too much or becoming enamored with Maoist propaganda. For your personal well-being, you may need to cut them off. You might argue and those exchanges can get vicious. These fights should be painful because you are struggling for a relationship that you care about.
Bildad doesn't care. Why should Bildad care? Life is perfectly fair. Bildad walks past homeless people without a second thought. If Bildad's brother or wife gets cancer, Bildad will lecture them on how they shouldn't have bullied that kid in grade school. If Bildad believed in reincarnation, he'd endorse child abuse.
Believing that life is absolutely fair has rendered Bildad a nasty little shit without a shred of empathy. Bildad is even worse than those “progressive” folks who celebrated rape and murder after October 7. Yet, we've all engaged in Bildad level thinking. When confronted with the nastiness of life, it's very easy to push it away with saccharine platitudes. Maybe we even believe them at the time.
If the Book of Job can be said to have a message, it would be thus – we live in a broken vicious world. Insisting that everything is actually fine only makes it worse.
Next Week: Job pleads for empathy.
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