Job
Job: Wisdom, Teammates, The Good Times
by Keith Wahl
The Book of Job is oldest book in the Bible. It is the first book ever written or shared in the scriptures. This fact feels appropriate as it explores one of the core concerns of mankind, that of suffering. I remember the first time I read and studied the Book of Job in depth. It was in a men’s group and one of the men made an interesting comment as we started our study together. He said, “Well, get ready to go through some hard times.” For him, studying the book on suffering meant that God might allow us to feel what Job was feeling.
Coincidentally, I went through one of the most difficult times of my life during that study of Job. Even today those experiences cause me to hesitate to study this particular text as if it’s some sort of invitation to suffer. As time has passed, I’ve come to love the book and gain a deeper understanding of it. As you prepare to read about some of the connections between the book and the world of baseball, take some time to read Job yourself and watch both the Read Scripture overview of Job and the Bible Project’s teaching about the book in context with the other pieces of wisdom literature.
Due up in the Bottom of the Ninth:
- Wisdom in Baseball
- The Importance of Teammates
- The Good Times
Wisdom in Baseball
I love analytics and the movement it has caused in the game of baseball, but that movement has begged the question, “Have analytics removed wisdom from the game of baseball?” The tipping point of this question happened during game six of the World Series this past year as the Rays chose to pull Blake Snell in spite of a low pitch count. While the Twitter-verse and baseball people across the world debated the move, the real question at hand is simply, “Was it wise to pull a highly-accomplished pitcher from a situation such as that?”
I’m blessed to have friends who have and do work at the highest levels of the game. I love interacting with them as they wrestle with the bigger questions in the game. Analytics are trying to answer one question - how do we win more baseball games in a repeatable fashion? It’s simple a business practice and application to the game. But the people who work in the game live in the creative tension of creating repeatable practices and developing the people in front of them. The best of them hold to the time-honored tradition of loving people well while helping them contribute to the greater whole. It’s really beautiful and should refresh your faith in the game knowing these people are in those places. My hope is that they are able to maintain their positions and influence to balance the modern approach to the game.
The Book of Job is positioned in the books known as “Wisdom Literature” in the Bible. It eliminates the nationality of Job, provides no clear historical setting, and presents no answers to the big questions posed in the book. Why does a man like Job, blameless and upright, suffer? How is Job’s suffering to be explained? The wisdom provided is left as questions posed to the reader. Is God wise and just? Does He run the world according to justice? It’s up to us to answer those questions with wisdom and experiences from our own suffering. Human action (i.e. - our good works) don’t necessarily equate to outcomes we expect or desire. This is the crux of all wisdom. There are things we can control and things we cannot. Suffering is one of the things we cannot control.
So is the result of a game played by human beings with a round ball and a round bat.
The Importance of Teammates
Baseball is such a curious game as a team sport. It’s really an individual team sport. The collective set of individual skills executed largely apart from one another combined into a whole creates a team’s victory. With that being said, anyone who has played the game knows the importance of their teammates. Teammates make or break one’s experience both on and off the field. Great chemistry can help a team rise to the highest heights, and selfish chemistry can cause one to hate going to the ballpark for a season of time.
This is one of the great parts of the Book of Job. It’s the friends, his teammates, who come and offer their insights into Job’s experience that make the book so pertinent and interesting. Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and Elihu represent the best in thinking of the time (even today) about suffering. They come to Job and say Job must have done something to deserve his suffering. God is just and the world is ordered by God’s justice and fairness. It has to be you at fault, Job, come clean and list out your sins so you might earn forgiveness. This is the idea of human action at play again. Wise and good action will equal success and reward, while evil and stupid action will lead to disaster and punishment. Job asserts his innocence and demands an explanation from God. He rejects his teammates and looks to God to explain Himself.
God does answer Job and puts Job in his place. But He does the same to Job’s friends as well. Their wisdom and advice were not accurate in their application to Job’s situation. They didn’t understand God’s plan, his reason for the events, any more than Job did. What we learn here is there is one source of wisdom - God. The best teammates will share wisdom that is in line with His wisdom while simply walking with you through difficult times. This brand of teammate is the most important in a given season and in our lives.
Do we only love God in the 'good times'?
The Book of Job opens with God pointing out Job as a righteous example of man. He’s blameless and he honors God. Satan points out that Job is only good because his life is great. Satan makes a deal to inflict suffering on Job to test his allegiance to God. Would he still praise God after going through everything Satan would put him through?
Job loses everyone and everything he cares about. He deserves none of this. He cruses the day he was born and his wife tells him to “curse God and die.” But he doesn’t. He still praises God. While he does still lift the Lord up, he does reach a point of demanding that God explains why this happened to him.
This represents how most of us react to hard times, a slump, or a series of difficulties on or off the field. We deal with it, fight through it, grit through it, but tend to ask the “why me” question at the same time.
This is why God shows up to Job. He shows Job how grand all of creation is, all of the details, and how He cares for the universe in ways we could never understand. God’s world is good, beautiful and ordered, but it is also imperfect, wild and dangerous. We live in an amazing world that is not designed to prevent suffering. It’s not about learning why we suffer, it’s about being a part of God’s restorative plan for the world. It’s about trusting God and His wisdom in the good times and the bad. While Job receives a ten-fold reward on the other side of his suffering, it’s not about the reward and the good times. It’s about trusting God and bringing everything to Him.