Reference links:
Old Testament
I am starting to get bored of Job. This happens every time I read it. It starts out super interesting and exciting, transitions to repetitive, and finishes off with me ready to move on. Fortunately, the end approaches quickly.
Elihu continues to drone on about how weather phenomena show God’s might. His concluding point seems to be that nature and God contain so much incomprehensible power that Job must be wrong.
After that God speaks. Sadly, the words that the author of Job attributes to God seem to continue on Elihu’s latest line of thought. God speaks of all the wonders of nature, asking if Job can equal them. Obviously, Job cannot, so God’s continues on and on just to brag, as far as I can tell.
We will see if God’s argument improves tomorrow, but so far, I am not buying it. Both the end of Elihu’s speech and God’s speech seem to imply that because God, as presented in nature, is so powerful, Job’s objections possess no value. However, this seems fundamentally wrong (even if you ignore that we have an understanding of nature these days which steal the impotence from these arguments).
Power alone does not justify ignoring the weak. Might does not make right. Yet that seems to be the crux of these arguments: in the face of God’s power, Job’s lamentations and questions are meaningless. Yet questions from those who are weak or outside the system can provide the catalyst for shifts in thought that increase understanding by leaps and bounds.
New Testament
Mostly about earthly and heavenly bodies, bodies dying and spirits being renewed.
Psalms and Proverbs
Fear of risk has always held people back:
The lazy person claims, “There’s a lion out there!
If I go outside, I might be killed!”