Steve Brown, Etc.

Narrator: With friends like these, who needs enemies? Let's talk about Job and his buddies with author and theologian Larry Dixon on Steve Brown, Etc.

Steve Brown: We're so glad you're here. You always have a place at our table and we consider it a gift that you would give us an hour of your day. It's also a gift that we give you an hour of our day for this. So it's a copacetic relationship, one which is honored and used in amazing ways in changing lives. If you believe any of that, you probably also believe that.

In case you're wondering, I'm Steve, the aforementioned old white guy. Matthew Porter is our executive producer. He's here. Matthew is such a good friend. He once donated a kidney to his buddy and that was kind of awkward because he didn't want it and didn't need it.

Matthew Porter: Forgive me for being a giving person.

Steve Brown: Yeah, and you get points with Jesus for that. And our producer Jeremy's in the little glass booth. Jeremy just did a music gig in Miami and we thought about it a long time and trust that it was not a bluegrass festival.

Guest (Male): It was not. That's true.

Steve Brown: And our one-man IT department John Myers is in the tech bunker. Hey John, can you help me with Siri? I told her remind me to buy dog food and she said, "Okay, I'll remind you to bite Doug's foot." That's Siri. And I expect you're going to work it out so she can, I mean, I speak clearly. I don't understand.

Dr. George Bingham is the president of Key Life. George says this is St. Patrick's Day and if you happen to find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, we hope you'll remember Key Life with a generous tax-deductible donation.

George Bingham: And it's less than a kidney.

Steve Brown: We accept enchanted gold coins. That's right. And listen, do it if it happens, then I won't have to read these dumb statements at the beginning about everybody. Kathy Wyatt is the soft feminine side of the program. Kathy knew Job's friends were no good. She knew that immediately. Who visits a friend in mourning and doesn't bring a casserole, right?

Kathy Wyatt: I thought you were going to say, because you paused, you said, "Kathy knew Job's friends."

Steve Brown: In high school. They were worthless then too.

Kathy Wyatt: Excuse me.

Matthew Porter: You were just a child.

Steve Brown: We have a great guest for this hour, Dr. Larry Dixon, who's a friend of mine. I spent over a year teaching through the book of Job, so these friends are my friends and I would appreciate it, Larry, if you'd not rag on them too much.

Actually, I didn't do that. If I had read your book before I taught Job, I would have spent a lot more time talking about the friends of Job. Larry, by the way, is an author, a professor, and a theologian. He received his doctorate from Drew University. He's a professor emeritus of theology at Columbia International University and he's written more than a dozen books.

His latest, which I hold in my nicotine-stained fingers, is titled *With Friends Like These: Job's Friends and Religious Foolishness*. Larry, thanks for being... before we do anything else, what do we know definitely about Job and the book that bears his name? Is it a myth? Is it a story that was created by some philosopher somewhere to teach truth or was there a real Job who really had bad stuff happen to him?

Larry Dixon: He's definitely a historical character, at least the Bible presents him as being historical. He's referred to three or four times in the book of Ezekiel and put on the level of a Daniel or a Noah. He's referred to in the New Testament. So I would argue as Noah and Daniel and Jesus are historical, Job is actually historical as well.

Steve Brown: I agree and he became a friend of mine too. One of the things that probably we ought to get clear before we go any further, people are always saying, "I have real problems with the problem of suffering and a good God. And I'm going to Job and get some answers." So before you do that, let me say, don't do it. It's a waste of time. They don't have any answers.

There are a lot of questions. In fact, God asks a lot of those questions. Job is not a book of answers to the problem of suffering. That's a major problem. How can a good God let me have cancer or kill off children or let wars continue? That's for another discussion when we're not talking about Job. It's not about the book of Job. So Larry, you've spent a lot of time in this book and probably a lot of our listeners haven't. Recap the story and tell us what's going on in Job and then we'll spend some time with his friends.

Larry Dixon: Job was a historical character and he lived a righteous life declared to be righteous by God himself. God challenges Satan, "Have you seen my servant Job?" Most of us would prefer to stay under God's radar in that sense. I know there are many reasons for that, but that may be one.

It seems to me that Job never is told that he is actually a player in a dramatic showdown between God and the devil. Job throughout the book proclaims his innocence. He's correct about that. Where he's wrong is where he calls God into court and says essentially, "I want God to be the defendant. I want to be the prosecutor because he's made me his target."

So it seems to me, even though you said earlier there's not a lot to learn about suffering from the book of Job, I think negatively there is because his three friends, after they sit with him silent for seven days, the only right thing they did, they began theologizing and basically telling Job, "You're the reason for all of these trials."

He lost his children, he lost his wealth, he lost his cattle. Some would say he lost everything but his life and his wife and he could have done without her because she says to him, "Why don't you just curse God and die?" She's not an example of a godly woman.

Steve Brown: That's grounds for divorce. I don't care what the Bible says about divorce. Man, that would have been it for me.

Larry Dixon: In fact, the picture on the cover of my book is really fascinating, I think, because it has Job sitting on an ash heap. His wife is to his right sitting there with him, covering her bosom and probably whispering in his ear, "Why don't you just curse God and die?" To his left are his three friends, not only pointing fingers at him, but using both arms to point both fingers at him. So it's obvious that they think he's at fault. He gets spiritually mugged by his friends for about 20 chapters and responds to their mugging.

Steve Brown: You said they didn't do anything right except be quiet. But they did another thing right. They were there. I mean, nobody else was there. So that's good. If they'd just shut up the whole time, you could have used them as an example and not a negative one about friendship.

As you read through Job, you begin to face something that is clear if you're awake, and that is we live in a bad world. We live in a very bad world where bad things happen to people who are churchgoers, who tithe, who go on the mission field, who are preachers or elders or even, may God have mercy on us, professors of theology.

When I said you don't find out anything about suffering, I guess you do. We have this cavalier idea that if you do religion right, then everything will be right and it's just not true. It's not an accident that God picked this particular man to suffer so deeply because God has a point too. It's not safe. It's not easy. And sometimes suffering is the way we get to God. I sound like I'm preaching. I didn't mean to do that. Larry, I'll let you preach on the other side of the listen. Let me hold the book up so you can see this cover. It is an amazing cover.

And by the way, this is a great book. If you don't have any friends and you want some or if you've got some and you wish you didn't or you want to know how you deal with friends and how you build friendship, this is a handbook that's going to be making a difference. Great book for small group studies in your church. Hey guys, this is hard work and as always we need to have some cookies and milk and rest, but like Jesus, we're coming back.

Steve Brown: Hey, thanks for being with us. We're talking to author, professor, theologian Larry Dixon. His new book is titled *With Friends Like These: Job's Friends and Religious Foolishness*. Larry, before the break, Steve mentioned, "Well, at least Job's friends came. At least they were there." And that's true, they were there. But outside of that one thing, was there anything else that they did that was right or was it pretty much downhill from then on?

Larry Dixon: My perspective is it was pretty much downhill from there. They begin defending their understanding of life and their theology when Job curses the day of his birth and they then marshal their arguments against him and say, "Nobody suffers this badly without deserving it."

I see that with all three friends. It's a bit of an academic question with the fourth friend, Elihu, whether he's speaking on behalf of God or whether he is with those friends. It's a bit of a challenging question there. I think there's truth throughout the book of Job. I think we just need to be careful how we read it.

Guest (Male): We were talking off the air, Larry, and the phrase "divine earthly retribution" came up along with "divine earthly reward." Are those taught in Job? I mean, are they spoken of, I guess, by the friends and are they true?

Larry Dixon: I think divine earthly retribution is a view that thoroughly characterizes those friends. The principle is basically this: if you do evil, you'll be punished for evil in this life. If you do good, you'll be rewarded for your good in this life.

Because Job was suffering so terribly, they drew the logical conclusion based on their presupposition that Job must have sinned greatly. They begin marshaling all their arguments to prove him of that, to beg him to repent. That seems to me that marks the entire book.

I think Job also shares that same view because he believes God's made him his target, that God's made a mistake in bringing so much trouble in his life. Job actually says to his friends, "You think the wicked get punished in this life? You need to get out more. You need to go travel. You'll find out that the wicked die on beds of comfort and the righteous take it on the chin until they die."

Steve Brown: Everybody quotes Job as saying, "Though he slay me, yet I will still trust him." And then we make him into a saint. Be careful because that was the last spiritual thing he said. After that, Job proved to be making an obscene gesture at God and that's not a cool thing to do.

Guest (Male): I heard a pastor talk about this. Satan never goes, "Hey God, can I take out his wife?" Never, not once. God's like, "Have you considered Job's wife?" He's like, "No, no, no, she's... don't worry about that. I got part of the plan." Does that mean anything? What do we take away from that? He killed the children. He never lays a glove on the wife. I think he had plans for her or she was part of the torment.

Larry Dixon: An early church scholar by the name of Chrysostom said that Satan turns to his old weapon, the woman. I think that's kind of an unfortunate statement, although we do have the bad example of Eve and we have this bad example of Mrs. Job. I mean, there are plenty of examples of godly women, but I think we need to remind ourselves that she's gone through all of this agony too.

She's lost everything, the worst being losing her ten children. The fact that Job is on the ash heap scraping these boils, she's drawn the same conclusion. "You're at fault for this. If you just curse God and die, then maybe these trials will stop." I don't think we commend her, but we ought to sympathize with her somewhat. Job's response to her is, "You're talking like a foolish woman," because she was saying exactly what Satan wanted Job to do and that is to curse God.

Guest (Male): I think she's trying to reset the game. She's like, "I've lost everything. You're cursed. If I could take you off the board, I can start again fresh." Lady with a plan. They're smart if nothing else, as long as they hadn't heard the story.

Matthew Porter: Taking a step back, I've heard discussion about deductive reasoning that Job may have been the first book ever written historically. What are your thoughts on that and what is the basis of that assertion?

Larry Dixon: That's not an area I really pursued. It's a great question and I have read that some think Job is the oldest book. Both Job and his friends, I think, draw conclusions based on what they see. They make deductions. To me, the real question is what are their underlying beliefs?

I think that's where this issue of divine earthly retribution fits in, thinking that the wicked will get it in this life and the good will get it, I guess, after death or whatever. I think that's part of the problem.

Steve Brown: There's a view on the other side of that issue that believers go through hell to get to heaven and pagans go through heaven to get to hell. I don't subscribe to that necessarily, but it's not a bad point. Okay, the reason you wrote the book is because we're not always the best of friends to each other and I think you're trying to be helpful. So address that and we'll get into specifics in the next segment.

Larry Dixon: I've worked on Job for probably 20 years as many of us have read it over and over again. I was just impressed with the lessons to be learned about being a godly friend and being careful in the advice that we give.

One of the friends actually says, "Job, I had a vision at night and it says you're trying to be more righteous than God." How many of us haven't had a Christian say, "I've had a vision or dream about you and here's what God said." We need to be very careful when people say things like that.

Steve Brown: I get four letters a day from people who say that and they're always critical. "God said shut up."

Larry Dixon: And one of the friends even says, "I know why your ten children died, why that house fell on them, because they sinned against God." He had no evidence for that. In fact, Job offered sacrifices for his ten children every day. They probably had multiple birthday parties and he feared the mere possibility that they would curse God in their celebration.

He was an outstanding godly man, greatly misunderstood by his friends. So I want to be a friend who, first of all, practices the ministry of presence, being there when people are suffering, grieving with them and then very carefully helping them with good theology, good biblical truth, in order that it might advance their healing in a situation where they're experiencing a great deal of pain.

Steve Brown: Hey, we're hanging out with author, professor, and theologian Larry Dixon. You, by the way, ought to write this down, can keep up with Larry at larrydixon.wordpress.com. Larry, we were talking off the air about when Job's friends finally... you know, when you read the book of Job, you can't help but wonder why do they get to keep going after him and God doesn't step in and say, "Okay, we're done" or "You're done." But he does. Quite frankly, I would have liked to have seen that a little sooner, but anyway, talk about that a little bit.

Larry Dixon: I think the Lord treats us the same way in terms of sometimes we try to give our best advice to a hurting friend and we're wrong and God lets it play out so that we can learn from that experience even though it might hurt our friend.

But I too was surprised that God waits so long to call Eliphaz and his two buddies on the carpet. He does that in Job 42:7 where he says to Eliphaz, "I'm angry with you and your two friends because you've not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has. Now you go to him and ask him to pray for you." Then God says, "And I will not deal with you according to your folly."

Man, that must have hit Eliphaz right in the heart to think all these chapters of debating with Job, God calls foolishness. Where have we gone wrong? What I really find amazing is Job does sacrifice for his friends and does pray for them. If that had been me, I'd say, "Get lost, buddy. I'm not going to pray for you."

Steve Brown: Well, God didn't bless Job until he prayed for his friends, so there may be some divine earthly reward in that you don't know. It's really interesting.

Guest (Male): It's interesting to me the friends come to the most logical possible conclusion based on a flawed premise. They have a wrong understanding of God. They're smart, but that's to their detriment and to Job's detriment because they have a misunderstanding of God's character and where they land is logical based on where they start. They just start in the wrong place.

So in the end, talk to us about how it fleshes out with God and Job in the end and what does that tell us about God's character beyond what's on the paper?

Larry Dixon: That's a great question. I mention in the book a good friend and her husband served the Navajo Indians for 30 years. When he passed away from cancer a year or two ago, her friends blamed her and said, "If you'd only prayed this prayer or claimed his healing, he would not have died."

So the idea of blaming each other for the trials that come into our lives, it's a time-tested habit that we Christians are really good at. I don't think it means that we're to never raise that issue. If I'm dealing with somebody who's going through a really hard time, I might need to ask, "Have you done something to really get God angry at you because God does discipline his children?" But that's the first thing his friends turn to and so they blame him.

The fact that God holds Eliphaz accountable and wants him to be restored through Job's prayer and sacrifice says a great deal about God. God's patience throughout the book to hold off until the last couple of chapters to speak is really an amazing feature of the book.

Steve Brown: It really is. You said the advice we give needs to be proper and theologically and biblically accurate and I agree with that. But so many times, and you know, I've been a pastor more than most of our listeners and viewers have been alive, and so often I've said to people when they had legitimate questions, "There are some answers that will help you, but your heart's broken.

Your life is in shambles and you're in a dark place and that isn't time to have an intellectual discussion on the problem of suffering. So once your mourning period is better and the sun is shining again, we'll sit down and we'll talk about it." It's surprising the reaction of people to that kind of statement. They're satisfied because they think to themselves, "There is an answer even if I don't have it right now and that's enough for me right now."

Larry Dixon: One of the side issues that I try to deal with in the book very briefly is that in the West, we have a very poor theology of suffering. We need to get back to what scripture says. You think of the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12 with his thorn in the flesh praying three times that God would take it away and God says, "No, my grace is sufficient for you."

With all the things that he goes through, he recognizes that in his weakness God is strong and it's one of the techniques God uses to display his strength and his glory.

Steve Brown: That's good. That'll work. I've often thought that when I read the Bible, but I didn't want to say it because it'll disappoint people and if they get disappointed it affects your salary and then all kinds of bad things begin to happen. So you become a liar and you tickle ears. But I've repented of that a long time ago.

The name of the book is *With Friends Like These: Job's Friends and Religious Foolishness*. This is a good book to study because friendship is an art that we have sometimes lost and this book will help you to regain it and to become the kind of friend that your brother or your sister or your family member needs. Don't go away.

Steve Brown: Hey, thanks for spending time with us. By the way, if you use the YouVersion Bible study app, we have a new Key Life devotional you can check out there. It's called *No More Mr. Nice Guy* and you can get the details by going to keylife.org/devotional.

Larry, I've been kind of curious whether the friends, do they kind of address different perspectives categorically? Do they represent different perspectives? Also we were kind of relating that to the idea of does this, in a negative way, provide any insight into that intersection of counseling and theology that we've mentioned before?

Larry Dixon: My experience in studying the book is they share one common philosophical underpinning and that's that divine earthly retribution. I don't hear other perspectives being pushed as they're talking about it. They all are saying the same thing and Job is debating each of them on the various points and subpoints of their argument.

Part of my experience, if you don't mind me sharing this, is that before I retired, I got to teach a course or co-teach a course called "The Integration of Theology and Psychology." So I would start the class laying the theological basis for doctrine of sin or the doctrine of the church or whatever, and my co-teacher who was the head of the pastoral counseling department would stand up and say, "So what? What difference does all this theology make?"

He would begin to kind of unpack that as to how these counseling students could learn to help people. I had more fun with them because I said to them, "I thank God for all of you because I'm getting all the free counseling that I could ever use. But the problem is none of you know what you're talking about. You're students and so I'm coming out worse than before."

But I do believe all truth is God's truth and it's important, especially when we seek counseling or recommend people to counselors, that we check out their worldview. We find out what their theology is because that's going to impact the kind of advice they give.

Steve Brown: It really is. And it's amazing the accuracy of biblical theology in terms of "so what?" I mean, if I start all sociological, educational, political views are challenged by one of two principles. Either people are basically good with a proclivity for evil or they're basically evil with a proclivity for good.

The Bible is not very positive on human nature and once you get that, it explains a whole lot. Okay, tell us, get down and I've got somebody that I'm going to try to be their friend. What should I watch for and what should I do and what did Job's friends teach us in a "so what" way?

Again, the ministry of presence: being with that friend, grieving with that friend. What strikes me is they treated Job as they were lecturers rather than students. They weren't asking Job, "What are you learning from God?" They just came with their ammunition. When Job began raising hard theological questions, they got upset because they thought he was challenging the goodness of God.

So we all bring a whole lot of assumptions with us when we try to help others. I think we need to be very careful and be as biblical as we can and also be gentle. Gentleness goes a long way when we're dealing with people that are sitting on an ash heap scraping the boils, the metaphorical boils, off their skin.

So I think those are a couple of lessons that we have there. Get our theology right, know what scripture says, but don't hurt each other with what a friend of mine calls "Bible bullets." We sometimes do that by quoting verses out of context. Though I'm not a counselor or the son of a counselor, I think I can recognize good counseling when I see it.

Steve Brown: You know, I've had more people than you can imagine who were hurt by their friends quoting Romans 8:28. And we all go there because we find that helpful. But sometimes it's not helpful when your heart's broken.

Guest (Male): It's almost like the friends are swinging in and they're like, "It's on me to take care of this." They're not even factoring in that God comforts, that God heals. They're like, "Okay, let's load up. Let's take care of this." And I think maybe that's the application for us. It's like, "I've got to fix it."

It's like your role in fixing your friend is probably a lot less than you think. Maybe you can at best maybe not get in the way of what God is doing. And it's like their friends just said, "Nope, it's on me. I got this. Let's just hammer this out like you're a project."

Steve Brown: And that applies not just to suffering, but to sin, wrong decisions. We're not fixers. God's a fixer. And we can bring insights when they're welcome, but if they're not welcome, a presence is maybe just enough as long as they don't assume that we agree with their false theology.

Larry Dixon: I heard one preacher put it this way: the Holy Spirit comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. I think he does most of his work mediately, that is through means, through people, not directly. So that means the Holy Spirit wants to work through me to build up other believers, to encourage them.

But again, I think the problem with Job and his friends is they saw suffering primarily as punishment. We're to see suffering as one of God's methods in maturing us in Christ. In some ways, suffering is actually a gift. Paul gives thanks for his thorn, which is an amazing thing, right?

He's thankful for insults and tribulations and all that kind of stuff. That sounds masochistic in some ways. But no, I think it's a better view to see various purposes in suffering, not just God punishing us for sin.

Steve Brown: And God says to him, "My power is made perfect in weakness." I don't like that. I've never agreed with God about that, but he didn't ask for my vote on it. Larry, we're out of time. We've got about 30 seconds. Say something profound in that 30 seconds and I'll say goodbye to you.

Larry Dixon: Oh, thanks for having me on. I hope your listeners will get into the book of Job. Read it carefully. Understand that it's within a context of a certain presupposition about life and the way that God works. But reach out to your friends. Be with them. Encourage them with the word.

Steve Brown: Larry, as always, you done good. This is a good book and it'd be a great book for a small group study in the book of Job. But make sure you read it before you talk about it. It's a big long book, so you've got to devote at least three or four weeks to reading it.

And then you'll be wise the way I am and certainly Larry Dixon is. Larry, you're a gift to the body of Christ. Thank you for spending this hour with us and God bless you. Hey guys, we're going to come back in just a few seconds and we'll tell you who we're going to do this unto next week and you're going to be really surprised. It's our fond hope you join us. And between now and then, don't do anything we wouldn't. That gives you a wide, wide road.

Guest (Male): George and I were just talking and he reminded me of a story of a guy who was the pastor/missionary in a particular country after a major tragedy like a volcano or an earthquake or tornadoes, but it was awful. And his comment was, "I wish I had told them before."

And that's what we've been talking about today. When things fall apart and the boils pop up and you're sitting on an ash heap, that's not the time to get your theology right. The time to get it right is before, is to know what God says and what he promises and what he doesn't promise.

I think you can go in two different directions about that. You can go in the direction that God is a monster, that he doesn't like you and whatever makes you miserable is from God and he rejoices in it. That's crazy. But it's crazy to say that as long as I have the faith principles and I do it right, I will be wealthy and healthy and everybody will like me.

That's just as crazy as the other extreme. But I'll tell you what's not crazy. God's good and he's good all the time and that's immutable. It never changes. Because it never changes, you can trust him. You can trust him when you're having a party because it's from him. When you're laughing and dancing, you can trust him.

But when the world rolls over on top of you and everything is bleak, you can trust him there too. I haven't been to either one of those places a lot, but enough to know, and I'm an old guy, that what I just told you is true. Don't trust anybody else and certainly not Job's friends because they'll mess up your... I mean, there are some Christians that just make it worse to be alive. Don't be one of those. Okay, who's going to be on next week?

Guest (Male): Well, I'm excited about next week because this recommendation came from our friend Justin Holcomb, who said that if we have Mary DeMuth on our program, that she will be a new friend. Her book is titled, which I think is very interesting, is titled *Re-Story Your Life*, not restore your life, but *Re-Story Your Life*. And then the subtitle, how Jesus reframes your past, rewrites your present, and redefines your future.

Steve Brown: Oh my, that ought to be good. Even if she isn't an Episcopalian. Justin, by the way, is the bishop of the Central Florida Diocese of the Episcopal Church who knows everybody in the whole Christian world. He really does. Guys, we've got to go, but like Jesus, we're going to come back next week, same time, same place. It's our fond hope you join us. And between now and then, don't do anything we wouldn't.