Is Eliphaz relevant today?

It’s funny. I never suspected I’d weave Eliphaz, Haiti, Twitter and mud wrestling into a coherent piece of writing. But I think I’ve succeeded.

Earlier in the week, I made a reference to the Old Testament’s Book of Job. What I couldn’t have foreseen was the relevance of that book to events that would unfold later in the week.

Job basically lost everything. In a nutshell, he lost most of his family and possessions in Round One, and he lost most of his health in Round Two.

The bulk of the story takes place in Round Three, and that’s when we meet Job’s buddies. Take Eliphaz, for example. He has a way with words and impeccable timing. Job’s children have just died. Job’s belongings have been pillaged. Job’s wife just mentioned that life isn’t worth living. And as Job is scraping the open sores on his body with a pottery shard, Eliphaz figures it’s as good a time as any to recount a dream he recently had. I wonder what went through Job’s mind as the words, “A spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body stood on end” flowed from Eliphaz’s lips.

I am borrowing liberally from ideas set forth in Ravi Zacharias’s book, Cries of the Heart, in which the author addresses responses to suffering.

A few days removed from a devastating earthquake in Haiti, I read a theological position paper that I thought was fairly long on platitudes and short on compassion. For example, I had to sift through the entire paper, the author’s request for feedback on the paper and a plug for the author’s Twitter site before I finally reached links telling me how I could join the relief effort. The paper proposed answers to questions I wasn’t asking, questions I frankly hadn’t thought to ask. It fell far short of answering my most pressing question: How can I help?

I later gathered that the author wrote the paper in response to boneheaded comments someone made earlier in the week, and I better understood the reason for the paper. The best response I’ve seen to those comments is both helpful and funny – involves a Twitter exchange and mud wrestling to generate funds for relief efforts!