I’m on vacation for three weeks. While I’m gone, please enjoy the top 15 posts from 2023 based on total number of page views and podcast plays. Cheers!

“Will your idle talk reduce others to silence?
Will no one rebuke you when you mock?
You say to God, ‘My beliefs are flawless
    and I am pure in your sight.'”
Job 11:4-5 (NIV)

Much of my career has been spent in the analysis of conversations between the employees of our clients and the customers who call them. I have analyzed conversations ranging from a receptionist getting a caller to the right department to a collections specialist trying to recover money from a customer who literally owes them millions of dollars. I can tell you with certainty that virtually every customer service problem can be traced back to a breakdown in communication: the message that was given, the message that was heard, the information that wasn’t provided, the information that wasn’t received, and the assumptions that were made. Add human emotion, temperament, and attitude on both sides of the conversation and you’ve mixed yourself quite a cocktail.

In today’s chapter we meet the third of the trio of friends sitting with the suffering Job. Zophar, whom I will refer to simply as Z, is as blunt as Bill was in his response to Job. As with Eli and Bill, Z is contends that Job must somehow deserve the suffering he finds himself experiencing; There must be sins that lie at the root of what’s happened to him. Z even says that God has forgotten some of Job’s sins, implying that if all Job’s sins were taken into account, he deserves worse than what he’s experiencing.

What I found fascinating about Z’s discourse is that he opens with an accusation that Job is mocking God and claiming that he is flawless and pure. In both cases, Z has heard what Job never said. Job has questioned whether God has acted justly in his circumstances and whether God really cares about him and his suffering, but that’s not mocking God. Job has not cursed God as Satan expected him to, even if he has emotionally questioned what he as assumed to be God’s actions. Likewise, Job has never claimed sinlessness or moral purity. In fact, just the opposite. Job has owned up to being less than perfect. He said he was “blameless” (9:21) of anything deserving the level of suffering he’s experienced.

Ironically, Job’s claim of being “blameless” is the same Hebrew word that God used when telling Satan that Job was “blameless” (1:8).

In the quiet this morning, I am mindful that my observations about what lies at the root of the customer service conflicts I examine and analyze in my vocation also applies to virtually every human conflict and misunderstanding. In what is said and unsaid, done and not done, lies a breakdown in what is being communicated between two parties and what is being received. On top of this is a layer of misunderstanding and assumption between the two parties regarding motives and intentions. By its very nature, relationship is built on the quality of communication between two parties.

Of course we get this in terms of two human beings, but I believe it is equally true of myself and God. My friend, Matthew, has observed in his daily vocation as a therapist: “Everyone is having a conversation with Life.” God says that He is constantly communicating with me through creation (Rom 1:20) and a host of other ways. His stated desire throughout the Great Story is to be in a relationship with me. That relationship, or lack thereof, is also built on the quality of communication between me and God.

Chapter to read for tomorrow’s Best of 2023: Job 17

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.