Firm Opinions

3 Surely you have instructed many, And you have strengthened weak hands. 4 Your words have upheld him who was stumbling, And you have strengthened the feeble knees; 5 But now it comes upon you, and you are weary; It touches you, and you are troubled.(Job 4:3-5)

A common modern concept is that in order for one to be reasonable one must not hold any opinion firmly. All three of Job's counselors take this opinion and have this perspective in one form or another. The idea that is fundamental, that forms the bedrock of their opinion of Job, is that one who has done well will be rewarded by God. Similarly, if there is "punishment" in your life, that is, if evil exists in your life, it is there because God is punishing you for some reason or another. They see Job's assertion that he is innocent, and that he has done nothing to deserve the evil that is present in his life, as a failure to confess that evil. The problem that they pursued with Job is not so much that he had done evil and deserved chastening, (they, as all men, recognized that everyone commits sin; at times very grievous sin) but that he refused to confess that sin before God. What they were talking him to task for was what they saw as a continual hardness and refusal to repent and admit his sin in light of what they believed was a continual and obvious call for repentance from God.

But throughout the book, Job holds firmly to his conviction that no wickedness on his part prompted the suffering that he underwent. Of course, being privy to the conversations in heaven between Satan and God, we know this to be so. In fact, we know that the exact opposite is the case! The suffering that Job bore, he bore, not because he was wicked or because of any ungodliness; but rather precise because he was a godly man and God wish to hold him up as an example for all to see and consider! Job's failing was that he held this conviction too tenaciously. He held it to the point of charging God with evil, exalting himself over his Maker. And so we see, at the end of the book, God call him to account for that failing but none other.

This refusal to take sure stand is a common failing in many men; but particularly, it seems, in modern man. The Scripture says that we are, at root level, pleasers of other men. We desire to be at peace with them, rather than in conflict with them. Surely there are those around that and enjoy the "Art of war", liking conflict and basking in the glory of overcoming others. But by and large, men simply want to get along with other men and they will get what's needful to accomplish that end.

In the modern church, modern theologians seem to think that it is an evil thing to hold firm opinions. Sadly, this position seems to apply to doctrine as well. It has come to be that we are not allowed to believe anything for certain anymore either. The flip side of this is that anyone is allowed to believe anything and everything has become acceptable within the context of the church these days. Anyone can believe anything these days and still be a Christian. It is astonishing simply to flip the TV channels around these days and hear what the different preachers are saying about who Jesus is, where (and when!) He came from, and what he paid (or did not pay) for on the cross.

Whatever our position, we're not allowed to hold it firmly, we must allow for other positions. The only position were allowed to hold firmly and grasp with all our might is that no one is allowed to have any position for sure.

The root problem here is a disrespect for the Word of God coupled with too high a respect for the reasoning capability of the mind of man and his ability to interpret that which goes on around him.

As has been man's problem all along, our pride has seized control of how we think of ourselves and now, sadly, of how we think of our ability to interact with our God. At the fall man lost his ability to understand and communicate with his Maker. Man has labored under that disability from that point onward. The problem has been that he has had an increasing denial on that inability ever since.