Job as a Second Adam (with Mike Chu) - Episode 065

Carey Griffel: [00:00:00] Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and today in this episode, I have with me my good friend, Mike Chu. Mike is a previous guest on the podcast. So if you haven't listened to the episode that I had with Mike previously, I really highly suggest you go back and listen to that. Today we are going to be talking about a theme that is really, really interesting to me, and I think something that maybe a lot of people haven't heard about, and that is the idea of Job as an archetype of Adam. Mike is the director of the Awakening School of Theology, which we've talked about before and so for now, I will just say, welcome, Mike. Mike Chu: Thanks, Carey. Thanks for having me back. Carey Griffel: These [00:01:00] conversations are awesome and I know that I grow in my faith every time I'm talking to somebody else who knows something about something that I'm not quite as sure on myself. So I love these kinds of conversations. Mike Chu: I do too. I think, good theological discussions, you know, it's better than just ruminating to yourself and you're hoping that like, I hope I'm not nuts. And so when you get to test the ideas and talk about it with other people, it really kind of helps just get those creative juices moving. So it's always a pleasure. And this is a topic that I do like to talk about because it's still relatively new to me and I'm still kind of just percolating and processing on the idea. Carey Griffel: Yeah. this is what excites me about interpreting the Bible and studying the Bible is doing so with other people, talking about different ideas. And trying to see things in new light because the Bible is, so multi layered and a lot of times, we just want to kind of simplify it into one layer and squish that nice [00:02:00] layered sandwich into one thing. And if we do that, then we're missing out on so much layered beauty. Mike Chu: Yeah, it's basically like taking a, mallet against like a chicken breast and you're just basically pounding it down. Like, it's like, yeah, you could do that, but then , we wonder why sometimes chicken is so dry. Carey Griffel: Yeah, that's a good analogy. And , it's really is when you're taking all of these ideas and you're, looking at the different themes , and this is why I've been talking about biblical theology lately and why I like the idea of biblical theology, because you can take these different themes and look at them throughout scripture. And it's not like some either or. You have to choose one option or another option, but rather you see all these patterns and things that keep showing up in scripture. And I think this really fits a lot of that. Mike Chu: I agree. And I think, you know, especially as just like a guy who likes the Protestant Reformation and the values of it, at least the initial values, right, [00:03:00] of always wanting to take in the new data and new content and, a better understanding. And if it does mean we have to reform, if we have to revise some previous ideas. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I get why people are fascinated to just always want to explore the 16th century theologians of the Reformation. But we have to remember that they came to their conclusions and they even did what they did was because they gathered new data, which was especially from the Greek manuscripts that were flooding into Europe because of the fall of Constantinople. Of just like all these, you know, orthodox Greek scholars who are running for their lives, running into Europe to escape the destruction of that Byzantine Empire, and they're bringing what they could. And that was essentially how the Reformation started. It was because people started reading the actual New Testament Greek manuscripts and realized, holy cow, there's some word choice [00:04:00] differences here versus the Latin Vulgate. Why? , and they were just asking simple questions that led to very interesting conclusions. And so, I always find it that we should always be willing to be able to explore and not necessarily just jump on the latest fad, but we have to take in the data, and we have to really kind of mull and chew over it, because We have to be willing to acknowledge that maybe the previous scholars were wrong. I mean, so much scholarship has changed ever since the Dead Sea Scrolls popped up. And it's harder to read now materials that are dating back to the 1800s, because they obviously did not have access to that data. Carey Griffel: Yeah, and it's the new learning and these new ideas. And when we say new ideas, it's not like we're being innovative in some sense, But as time passes, and as ideas build up, and they kind of change over time, You have to have new ideas when that happens, because either your [00:05:00] thinking and the way that you're processing things is slightly different than the way people were processing things in the past, or else you have new data to work with. And so some of the older interpretations or original readings of the text, they get lost over time when you have things like, Empire collapses, and when you have a pastoral issues that they're addressing primarily rather than, you know, textual varients and all of these other kinds of ideas. And so they start thinking along paths that are a little bit different because they're dealing with real things that happen. In their real situations. And so, their context is just, it's not going to be the original context. It's not going to be our context. Every time that somebody interprets the Bible, it's slightly different, because we're in a different context. Mike Chu: And I think also just to reassure, You know our listeners [00:06:00] who may be also like, wait, wait, you're going too far. You know, like, this is not to say that the spirit does not also help with the interpretation. And, you know, I've mentioned this to you, Carey, before. One of the major papers that I did when I was going into my MDiv with Gordon was studying Acts 15, and especially Jerusalem council. And I initially went in assuming I already knew the answer. Obviously, the council's whole entire discussion was all about table fellowship, or in other words, how to get Jews and Gentiles to eat at the same table together. And that's what basically that I had assumed that those prohibitions in the council's decision was all related to food. And then it turns out, as I was doing my research, that if I went with that proposal, my professor would have totally just stripped me down, like down to the bones, because it's just like, it's such a weak [00:07:00] argument. And the irony was, scholars like Augustine actually held to that idea. And he even explained away that we don't follow , the Jerusalem Council's decision anymore, because now there aren't really any Jews left in the church. So we don't even have to bother listening to this. Carey Griffel: Yeah. Mike Chu: But ironically, in my study, I came to a different conclusion, especially thanks to the work of Ben Withington. But What I found even funnier, and I mentioned it in my paper, was that the real conclusion that I think the Council was actually trying to address, Augustine himself actually addressed the same problem, but through a different context, through a different scripture, and because he was addressing a problem within his church. And so, to me, it's like, it's interesting that the idea is still there. And so just because we may misunderstand a particular scripture at a particular time does not prevent the Spirit from still actually [00:08:00] speaking to the church about the subject matter that has to be dealt with. And in this particular case with Augustine, it was pretty much about, we are in the world, but do we need to act like we're of the world? And he had a New Year's day sermon that pretty much was correcting and rebuking his congregation on the practices that you guys used to do as Gentile pagans. You're Christians now, why are you still doing that? And ironically, you know, he didn't realize that the Jerusalem council was essentially addressing that same question not about what food you eat, but about the practices and the religious worship and the heart attitudes of the Gentile Christians. And they wanted to ensure, will you forsake those things? And here are the prohibitions that will really make it clear. You're going to be forsaking practices that were so associated with Gentile pagan worship. And so [00:09:00] anyways, I just thought that was a comfort when I realized like, huh, Agustine hit the same idea. He just used the Psalm and he was addressing his congregation because they were all partying on New Year's Eve. And so that I find interesting that the Spirit still directed Augustine to addressing the same kind of issue, but not necessarily with the Scripture that would have actually spoken directly to the problem. Carey Griffel: Because the theme in Scripture is there. It's, so embedded into it. And so when we're reading and delving into that Scripture and we're being part of the body of Christ and interacting with people and working through those pastoral questions, When you look at the Bible, it's like, the Bible's very hard to read in some places. It's really hard to understand in some ways. But it's also really not that hard. If you're reading through the scriptures, you can see what it's saying. You can see the story of God and God's people and how God wants to interact with his people and [00:10:00] how he has all of that love for them and how he wants us to all be working together as that fellowship today in Christ, and so it's not like it's hard to get that because like you said, when we have that reading of scripture, when we have the spirit working within the body of Christ, then we all end up in that same page on some level, even if we have a whole bunch of little nitpicky details we might get a little bit differently than other people. Mike Chu: Recently in a sermon series that we had been doing in my church, one of the things that I kind of challenged the congregation was that we have to stop looking at the Bible as a phone book, where we turn to the pages, you know, we have a certain issue, we need to look up something and to just treat it as though it's just a repository of data. And instead to realize it's actually a family history book. That contains the memories and the stories of our past family members, and that it is our story [00:11:00] as well. And I think when you start looking at it in that latter form, you start seeing patterns and allusions, you start picking up hints, you get reminders of things that may not be directly quoted word for word, but the pattern is there. But I think that is a way for us to look when we go into the scriptures to realize there is a commonality that we have as well with the people of scriptures. And sometimes people want to make the cultural differences so extreme that there's no way we can ever comprehend each other. And yet I, I doubt that. I think if it really just actually is more of a matter of taking time on reflection and thinking of if I was in this kind of circumstance. Knowing what I understand now of the culture and background, what would I have done? Would I have done any better? And I think, I think that's a question that we don't like to ask. Because it would possibly put us into a place where we actually could empathize with the circumstances and the words and the [00:12:00] conclusions that the writers came to. Carey Griffel: Well, especially when we read our Bibles and we think, oh, those silly people in the Bible, they did this and they thought that, and, you know, why would they turn away from Yahweh? Why would they do all of these things when we're really just not all that different? But it's those deep connections that you're talking about, I think, that is what we need to be seeing and seeing the similarities. Well, the important differences are , very much something that we need to latch onto in order to see those connections. It's not an either they're the same or they're completely alien to us. It's in understanding those differences, noticing and seeing them and then saying, what does that mean for who they were. And how does that still map onto my experience and the way that we see the world today? Because there's absolutely correlation there. It's just going to look different on the surface.[00:13:00] Mike Chu: Exactly. I think it's just, a matter of people taking the time and just reflecting. . I mean, it doesn't mean you get the answers instantly. It took me a while to slowly admit to myself, like, Oh, goodness gracious. We actually were more alike than anything. Carey Griffel: So when we're reading the Bible, it's like, we come to the book of Job and a lot of us, we don't know what to do with it. Like it seems so different from the rest of the Old Testament. I think that's probably a lot of why people want to put Job as the earliest book, right? Because it doesn't seem to connect with the Israelites. Israelites aren't mentioned and all of these kinds of ideas. It's so different from the rest of the Bible or the Old Testament that we're like, we don't know what to do with this. So we got to fit it chronologically somehow, so let's just shove it over here and you know, I think a lot of times it's really hard for us to see it in that context because it is, such a different book and I think [00:14:00] that there's reasons for that, So what got you into this idea of Job and , the interesting themes and patterns that you see in that book? Mike Chu: So part of the exploration of the book of Job for me was because one of my last Hebrew courses was in Old Testament poetry. It's a course that Gordon Conwell does every so often. It's not every year they will have one. And it just so happened that this year, my favorite Hebrew professor, instead of doing Old Testament Prophets because ironically prophets and poetry are actually, there is a lot of, interconnection. There's a lot of times where the prophets, like Isaiah, would use Hebraic poetry. And so, it covers the same idea, but this time around, we're gonna focus just on the poetic books. especially the wisdom literature that is just Chock full just like everything is pretty much all poetry and poetry scares people because it demands that you take time to [00:15:00] actually read it and to not just assume that the surface reading is actually the real meaning. it also challenges us because the problem is, is that if a, person wrote a poem in a particular language, that means they're using their language's strengths and oddities to make points that may be lost in translation. I was actually just talking about this with my lead pastor yesterday, about how folks don't realize that, you know, the great philosophy thinker, Confucius, for example, his writings, When you speak them out in Mandarin, the dialect of Mandarin, you miss out on the nuances that you would actually pick up on if you were to speak it in the language that he originally spoke, which was actually Cantonese. And so a lot of like subtle layers of meaning are lost because of the translation from one dialect to another. Which is really sad because he obviously [00:16:00] like Great guy and he's like really smart thinker. And he wants people to like, think this over and over again. And you'll start seeing all the things I put down, this beautiful tiramisu, and instead, you know, it gets translated into a work where it's just like one uniform, like chocolate cake. And it's like, sure, you get that one layer, but you miss out on the beauty of the cream and the sweetness and the, of course, the alcohol and the other things that would be in the tiramisu. And so this is where, you know, we went into Old Testament poetry and I decided I'm going to do my paper at the end of the term on Job chapter 3 because Job chapter 3 mentions Leviathan, and because Leviathan just shows up so much in Unseen Realm type of talks and Divine Council discussions, I just figured, I'll just dive into that. And I unknowingly did not realize how soothing and how healing it would be to actually study Job [00:17:00] chapter 3. And I say that and I know that will shock listeners. Because I'm pretty sure most, of the time if people ever read Job, they will read Job chapter 1 and 2, and then they will skip all the way to maybe Job 38 if they're going to actually read anything more beyond Job chapter 2. and I would say, please read through the whole book. Because the reality is, Job chapter 1 and 2 is just the intro. The real meat of the book is everything after that. That's the actual thing that we actually should be paying attention to. So that's why when people get upset, you know, with Dr. Heiser, that the Satan figure or the accuser figure in Job chapter one is not a name, that it's simply a title, a job description that is not necessarily connected to the rebel of Genesis chapter three, the serpent. Or the devil or now what we would say [00:18:00] Satan with, you know, a capital S that it really could just be a good old regular Elohim or divine council member whose job is to accuse who's to prosecute. It could just be that. Now, I have some thoughts on how we could reconcile some of that or, you know, what's going on with this figure. But what most folks don't realize is that the satan figure does not show up ever again after Job chapter two. He's not even mentioned the whole dilemma, the challenge that was going on with him directly doesn't ever get mentioned ever again, not even at the end of the book. And so if he really was super important, then the writer is obviously missing out on some lessons on writing because he doesn't bring up the figure again. He must have made a mistake. I would contend he didn't make a mistake. I would contend that he actually wants his audience to focus on what's going on with Job and with his words and [00:19:00] even as uncomfortable his words may be. And so, yeah, I would love to go into Job chapter 1, 2, and 3, like, we don't have to cover everything within it all, but I would say, let's look at Job chapter 1, verse 1, and we can get right into the, nitty gritty of some of the interesting thoughts I have. Carey, I do appreciate you mentioning that some folks like to put Job at the beginning like, right before Genesis I actually recently had a conversation with a friend where this person was trying to create essentially a chronological graph of when the books of the Bible were written. And Job was placed right before Genesis. And I had to, like, unfortunately break it to my friend that Job technically is actually part of the writings in the Hebrew Bible ordering. It's, kind of towards the end. I understand why folks will say that it's set in the age of the patriarchs. I get it. And I believe the [00:20:00] writer of Job is doing that purposely as well, that it is set in that era. But the setting of the story is different from when the story was actually written down. That's what I would contend. And so anyways, I'm pretty sure that I've already like ticked off half of your audience already. So let's go into it before I get myself into more trouble. Job chapter one, verse one. I'll read this from the NIV 2010 version, which is not my favorite NIV. But anyways, In the land of there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright. He feared God and shunned evil. He had seven sons and three daughters, and he owned 7, 000 sheep, 3, 000 camels, 500 yolk of oxen, and 500 donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East. We can stop [00:21:00] there for a moment. Usually everyone just kind of flies right by this. But here is my contention, and this is partly based on the research and kind of the hypothesis of this Old Testament scholar, particularly a Job scholar, Samuel Ballantine, and he contends that You know, folks get very obsessed with trying to figure out where's, where's the land of Uz? is it Uz or Oz? where exactly is this, is this part of Eden? is this somewhere else? And everyone gets really worked up on trying to figure out the location. But if you notice in just in these three verses, the author is not giving us really a lot of geographical detail. He just simply says, it's the land of Uz. And sure, there may have been an assumption that his audience understood, or they heard of the Land of Uz before, and it's just something that we don't understand now. But he doesn't give us any other details like any rivers, mountains nearby, whatever else. It's just the Land of Uz. And [00:22:00] then, about Job himself, he mentions at the end of verse 3, He was the greatest man among all the people of the East. That's really descriptive, right? Just of the East. And so, so instead of obsessing over where is the location of this whole entire story, Dr. Balatine actually proposes a really innovative idea. Let's not obsess over it. Instead, let's remember, since the Book of Job is majority poetry, Then it's not going to be focused on giving us propositional or factual details to, the greatest detail. It's going to be focused on trying to set up, I want something to be appearing in your mind. I want something in your head right now, as I go into the story, as we go into the poetry, I want you to be thinking, I want you, I want to provoke something that comes back up in your mind. And it doesn't come up for us as moderns because it's not something we do very regularly. But this is what he would say. And this is from [00:23:00] his commentary on Job, chapter one, The book of Job begins with a cryptic, but deaf announcement, a man there was in the land of Uz. [And so he's using a different translation.] The man's name, of course, is Job. The prologue will describe his character and life and experiences in due course. But the first part that is given about this man is his locale. He resides in quote, the land of Uz. To encounter Job, this story suggests one must enter into a world where a place called Uz centers life in particular ways. The precise location of Uz is elusive. On the map, it is somewhere in the east. But for the Jobian story, it is likely that this orientation is more theological, than geographical. And that when I read that had to reread that over of like, wait a minute, this is like the first commentary that I [00:24:00] opened, like, I read already several others, and this was the first time I read a commentary is like, you know, I'm not gonna obsess over the geographical details, which was like, wait, what? Like, this is, okay, this is different. And so he then continues. In Hebraic tradition, the East is the direction that orients the entire cosmos in the ways of its creator. I'll read that again. The East is the direction that orients the entire cosmos in the ways of its creator. primeval Garden of Eden was planted, quote, in the East. Genesis 2, 8. Thus, marking the place on earth where humankind was first introduced to God's cosmic design and charged with the responsibility to till and keep it, Genesis 2. 15. The revelation and the summons came first to Adam and [00:25:00] Eve. The prologue to the book of Job invites the reader to understand that the world of God's with all of its promise and mystery, has now been entrusted to Job and his wife. I won't go into furthermore, like, you know, because he, just expands on this further, but to give you a clear idea for your audience of what Dr. Balentine is getting at, he's pointing out that his hypothesis is that Job is another version of Adam. He's a thought experiment in some sense. Not to say that Job never existed in real life, but that in this story that we have, that we call the book of Job, that Job here is a thought experiment of what if Adam and his wife never disobeyed. If they never disobeyed, would they still have experienced suffering in their world? [00:26:00] His conclusion is the answer is yes. And the reason is not because of their own sin. Would you still experience suffering if you had never done anything wrong? And the answer is yes, because Adam, or in this case, Job and his wife cannot control the actions of other free agents in creation that could also inflict harm upon them. And so that basically kicks us all off, right, into the story of Job, that, we're being given a description of a guy who's living in a very idyllic time. And here are some little clues from the text about that. Verse two in chapter one, the author says, he, Job, had seven sons and three daughters. What is seven plus three? Ten. Ten. Dr. Heiser it's one of the works that I was helping him out with. It was the first time I got introduced to the idea that numbers [00:27:00] have, other, meanings, that there is like a second layer meaning or a double entendre that may be happening. And it just so happens that in a Hebraic, you know, mindset, the number seven and three are considered perfect numbers. they're great numbers. They're perfect. , we know this intuitively about the number seven because of the seven days of creation. But the number three was also considered a nice, perfect number. And then when you add them together, they come out with the number 10, which is also another perfect number. And so let's go further on. Verse 3. Job owned 7, 000 sheep. Well, that's funny. 7, 000. 3, 000 camels. That's funny. 3, 000. 3 times 1, 000, which is You start seeing something odd happening here. 500 yoke of oxen. 500 donkeys. Five is also considered a really good, perfect number. Five plus five equals 10 and then a large number of servants. We're not even going to try to count that.[00:28:00] Right, like most of us, we read this and we think this is an accurate, like, this is some sort of like real detailed count of how much he had. But the reality is, is that what the author is trying to convey is he has just the perfect number of flocks. He has the perfect amount of animals. He has the perfect amount of like livestock. It's perfect. He's living in a perfect type of world and just like ridiculous wealth. So much wealth that he could actually employ a whole bunch of servants that they can't even count the number and so you start getting the setup that Job is living in a very ideal environment and that he was the greatest man among all the people of the East. If Ballantine is correct, and I think he is, then the author is trying to set us up as the reader to have reminders of, Job kind of sounds like what I would imagine Adam, if he was living in my day and time, if, if he had access to the same kind of like culture and time, like I would imagine this is [00:29:00] how Adam would look like, that he would have immense wealth, he would have immense flocks, he would have lots and lots of servants, and he would be living in luxury, but also in, in good harmony with creation. And so that was just in the first three verses. It's the setup of like, this Job is a really cool dude. He's rad. Like, he's blameless. He's upright. He's doing the right stuff. He's fearing God, which is a great sign of a good, pious man. Like, Job, Job is the guy. He is the guy you want to look up to. And that's the setup that's happening here in chapter one. So any thoughts, questions, Kerry? I would love to like, just let's talk. Carey Griffel: So if you have the idea of the Genesis narrative with Adam and Eve in the garden in your head, and you read this, this is going to start giving all of these light bulb moments to you. Maybe we'll say it's parallel to that story of Genesis. Mike Chu: [00:30:00] Yes. , the way that Balintine would even say it is that he would propose that so he says later, This theological orientation suggests that the Book of Job functions somewhat like a sequel to the Book of Genesis. In contemporary terms, we might think of it as quote, the creation story part deus or part two, really. That's what he says. The question the sequel will explore is quote, how will Job's life in the garden of Uz be different from life in the paradise of Eden? Carey Griffel: And so well it says that Job was blameless and upright. He feared God and he turned away from evil. Does that mean he never sinned? Does that mean that he never did anything wrong? Are we supposed to see this Job character as somebody who, he just never did anything wrong? Is that how we should be viewing Job here? Mike Chu: I think, you know, there's that temptation to bring in some of, again, the [00:31:00] baggage from the, Protestant Reformation, always assuming just the slightest slight is a, is a sin, and, and so then, you know, like. You're doomed. I think what it is, like, how was, for example, Abraham counted righteous? How was he considered justified and blameless? It was his loyalty, his hesed, his allegiance ultimately to God, to Yahweh. And I believe that that is what's going on with Job here, because why would it mention that he's blameless and then also mention, by the way, he also fears God. Those things are connected. To fear God. and some people get really worked up about the word fear. And I addressed it actually in the Job series that we did at my church. And I explored the concept of numinous. It was this idea that was created by a scholar in the 19th century who was trying to explain that what happens when people experience and encounter God in the scriptures and also in more [00:32:00] contemporary life, that when they have an experience of the Holy, that yes, there is this initial experience of fear, of trembling, of like, Oh no, I am going to die. But then it then changes from the fear, to the love. it like you feel the fear, but all of a sudden it transforms into, I am so drawn to you. I am so attracted to you yet you are so fearsome and yet you are so beautiful. It is, in many ways, the ways to describe it is the fearsome love, or the fear and love, or the terror and love . it's so contradictory to our modern way of thinking that fear and love cannot coexist and yet The experience of the fear of God from especially Hebrew poetry the conveyingness of what's going on here Is that there is yes the fear of the Lord because it also [00:33:00] means that there is a deep drawn Attraction and I must know this God Carey Griffel: It sounds like you're connecting fear with the concept of, like, awe, that we would use that term of something that's awe inspiring. That if something is so great that it's beyond us, then there's that sense that you want to reach out to it, right? You want to be part of that thing that's much greater than yourself. And you know, for us mortal humans, a lot of times that's jealousy. Like I wish I was that good. I wish I could do, you know, but when we're talking about our relationship with the creator, that's going to be different than our relationship to some lower type of entity. But there's that level of we're here and God is up there and that's just going to provoke a response from you. Like, But the same [00:34:00] kind of response that you would have in some great artwork, for instance, that really touches your soul, you want to be part of it. And it's hard to describe that kind of reaction, I think, this awe that you have of something where you love it, where you want to be part of it, but you can sense that it is way beyond you. Mike Chu: I normally would also like to use the word awe and I've tried to use it less mainly because of just as I did my study, I realized, you know, we immediately just say fear of the Lord is awe. So it's cause we want to get away from the idea of terror and fear, but you cannot have the awe without this, trembling that happens within you and the trembling that many of the authors that say the phrase of fear of the Lord, they experienced genuine, like, I am going to die kind of fear and then they would realize like, wait a minute, I'm still alive and like, I'm, [00:35:00] I'm still here and when that, initial reaction of fear, like just kind of fades away, what fills the vacuum is the love, the draw. And so I think that's why it's hard for us to understand because we just get so wrapped up in , the fear and we don't even like wait long enough for the fear to pass. And to realize like, I'm, I'm still here. How is this possible? I'm still here. And so, Carey Griffel: So if we take the word fear and just replace it with awe, we're missing a little bit of that. We're not really cluing into that incredible nature of what that is. Mike Chu: would say if one wants to use the word awe, that's fine. But make it very clear in the communication, there's the fear first. You got to experience the fear. because that was what the biblical writers of folks like Isaiah as in Isaiah 6. [00:36:00] And he sees the holiness of God and he knows, I have a potty mouth. Oh, oh, I'm going to be destroyed. And he's still there. And so. The fact that he's still there meant that there was mercy, that somehow he is, prevented from being destroyed in the holiness of God, yet he is seeing it and he fears the ramifications and thus, you know, then we get a whole narrative of the coal to the mouth and you've been cleansed. Don't worry. now pay attention because there's a message that you have to hear. Don't get too consumed with the fear. But let's not pass over it. Sometimes, you know, we, as you know, especially pastors and teachers, we like to just like skip right over that part of the fear and we go right into just the awe word because we want to not let our audience be distracted by fear. But I think we do a disservice when we do that. And so that's just my challenge, because I've had to say it several times, and just [00:37:00] because I have to say it several times doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It just means, you know, it's an idea that is so unfamiliar, we have to say it over and over again. And if people ask more questions, try to answer. Carey Griffel: Right, because we have certain types of meanings that are associated with these words. Like, fear is bad. Sadness is bad. Lament is bad. Complaint is bad. We have this list of things. These are bad. And then over here, these are the good things. Whereas the Bible kind of presents things in a very different way than our little categorizations of we don't ever want to be fearful. We don't ever want to be sad. We don't ever want to struggle. All of those things are in the category of bad things that happen, and they shouldn't happen to us, and we want to avoid them at all costs, all possible costs. And when you look at the book of Job, all of these things are kind of bundled together into one thing. And really all of the poetic narratives of the [00:38:00] Bible, it's like you see real people engaging with God in these deep, deep ways, and we don't like that. A lot of times it's uncomfortable to us. We don't want to lament. We don't want to complain. We don't want to be fearful. We just want our nice little sunshiny lives of happiness and flowers. And that's what goodness is to us. Mike Chu: And I think, you know, when we, in the church do kind of present , this triumphalism as though it's the triumphalism is supposed to be 24, seven all the time, every day we do really disservice , to our people. Jesus never promised us that we would have suffering free lives. And he even promised that actually the thing that he did promise ultimately was that we would suffer, especially for his name. And so I think those who preach a gospel that tries to minimize suffering or the importance of what going through the process and the experience of suffering is, they are ill [00:39:00] equipping their people, their congregation, and doing a lot more spiritual harm than saving their people from feeling uncomfortable with the scriptures. Because if you don't want to ever hear the phrase fear of the Lord, then you pretty much have to avoid all of the Hebrew poetry. And then also large portions of the Old Testament. Because the irony to me, as I was thinking, is that a lot of times the people who got punished, who actually received real punishment, they were ironically the people who were not fearing the Lord. it's kind of interesting to me that , the scariest moments of judgment that we read in the Old Testament at times, like a guy being swallowed up when the earth opens up and swallows them whole. At that moment, right before it happened, he wasn't trembling before the Lord. He wasn't fearing the Lord. He was being stubborn and he was rebelling and he was challenging the leadership of Moses. And, voom, he's gone. And it's, it's kind of like an interesting thing, it's like, So, he wasn't fearing the Lord at that moment. He was assuming, like, oh, [00:40:00] this is, nothing bad's gonna happen to me. And, I wonder, at times, that maybe if that might be a sign that, you know, if you're fearing the Lord, and you're wondering, like, oh, is God pleased with me or not, like, okay, I think at least if you're fearing the Lord and you're feeling that initial trembling, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Stay in there for a moment. And I believe if you do, you will actually experience it fades away and something fills that vacuum. But so many times we run away from it and we don't give the process a chance to work through. Carey Griffel: Oh, and it's interesting as I'm thinking of Adam and we're reading this and I'm looking at the text and thinking about all of these things, Adam is never described as having the fear of God. It's like, I mean, that doesn't mean he didn't have it. It doesn't have to describe it that way necessarily. That's an interesting distinction [00:41:00] that it brings that out specifically here. Like if, they're thinking about Adam, they're thinking about the garden, they're thinking about what should have gone down in the garden, perhaps, then this is what should have been. Adam should have had the fear of God. If he did or did not, we don't know, it doesn't say explicitly, but he should have. you know, another question for our modern brains might be, well, you know, If Job was doing right, then why should he fear God? But your explanation of what fear is and how that is how we should rightly approach God and have this attitude and that there's nothing inherently wrong with this type of fear itself, that perhaps it actually benefits us in a certain way because it will lead us down the correct path of Relationship with God in the right way and it's not just that we need to be fearful of God because he's going to punish us it's not what this fear is[00:42:00] Mike Chu: two thoughts right like one is that... Confession, I have never read C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, right? The only reason I'm even mentioning this is because I have read a lot of Christian authors who have, and because they have, they keep on mentioning him. And so I only know this because of how often this quoted, but apparently one of the characters was asking, about Aslan, who is, you know, a lion who is supposed to represent Jesus, I suppose. And she asked the question, Oh, is he safe? And the answer from the family is, Oh, no, definitely not. He's not safe at all. He's a lion, , but he's good. That's why you can trust them. That that's not in the line. Ultimately it's like, right. It's like the ultimate person that you're following, is he safe? Absolutely not safe, super dangerous, but he is [00:43:00] good. Meaning, the power and the might and all the other things that is going on with him, including my fax machine right now, is that the goodness of this leader will be what directs the use of his fearsome power, right? And so that's one thought. The second thought is, is that You know, Adam did experience fear, but unfortunately, he experienced the fear apparently afterwards, right? After eating the fruit, after disobeying, and then especially when he heard God walking in the garden, which is a very interesting kind of thought because the way that the Hebrew, verb there indicates this idea of a repeated pattern. That this is not something that God just came particularly just for like, Oh, I just caught you. I knew this was going to happen. But that it's at this time, I take a walk and I would actually be walking in the garden. And so I think it's probably [00:44:00] both. It's a, it's an interesting thing. It's just like, so happens to be at that time, which also indicates some sense of judgment, but that it's not like he was trying to catch them in the act. And so. I would say Adam did experience the fear, but he experienced the fear a little late. And what's interesting is that the part of the whole thrust of the fear of the Lord, especially as is used in Hebrew poetry from the Hebraic thinking, is that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And so if only Adam had feared the Lord before eating the fruit, ironically, he would have gained wisdom. And he wouldn't probably have needed to eat from the fruit of knowledge. So that, anyways, , that's a rabbit hole. We can go into one other episode at another time, but. Carey Griffel: Does seem to me that Adam's fear, it didn't lead him to trust because he hid. Mike Chu: Yeah, I went into this in a with another podcast interview. I think the whole entire [00:45:00] of them being naked and then ashamed is interesting. But we won't go into that right now, but it's just an interesting thought when you look at some of the Hebrew wordage. Carey Griffel: So, you say that the Book of Job, it's wisdom literature, it's poetry, and here we have these three things. We have, three or four, depending on how you're going to parse it all out. Blameless and upright fearing God, turning away from evil. Are those parallel in, like, are they kind of reflective of one another? Mike Chu: I have to look again back at how it's originally written. Let's see, Job chapter 1, because what's going on in Job chapter 1, it's narrative. Carey Griffel: It's right now in the Hebrew, the way that the text is formatted, it's formatted as how you would describe narrative. And so the ways of how you would interpret would also differ once you get into poetry I cannot say for now because Logos does not actually show me [00:46:00] way that the Hebrew is actually formatted. I really wish it did. That's actually one of my like feature requests that I've made. This is actually why I keep a physical copy of the MT texts, because like, Oh, I'm gonna have to actually crack this open and every so often just see, how is it lined up? For now, I will simply say, I think they are descriptions, they are one after the other. Carey Griffel: You could say there is a parallelism that's happening with Blameless and Upright, but I Don't quote me on that, don't make a complete, like, 100 percent guarantee. I wouldn't be surprised though, that they are, they're repeating the same idea. Or, you know, with parallelism, you have the progression of thought too. It's not just an idea and then the same idea. It's an idea, and then we're going to build on that idea and we're going to keep building on that idea. And so even if this isn't poetry, we can still look at these ideas and look at how they're connected. Because even if one flows just directly from the other in a series pattern instead of a parallel [00:47:00] pattern, these things are all related to the character of Job and who he is and how he lives his life. And they're going to have very specific meaning. We don't yet have the word righteous, but it is applied to Job. Is it not? It's he's called righteous, or is it just blameless? Mike Chu: It is. It is blameless. And the Hebrew behind that is Tom, perfect, healthy, whole. And so it's not necessarily righteous. And, you know, it is an interesting kind of a question and debate is that And Middleton, in his book, Abraham's Silence, he mentioned that Job and Abraham are seen almost sometimes by the rabbis, by rabbinic commentary, as they were rivals. And there was this kind of contention in some sense of like, who was more righteous? Or who's better than the other? Is Job? But Job is a Gentile! And he's righteous, it seems. And [00:48:00] that, that of course through some of the, rabbinic commenters into like a tizzy as they're trying to figure out what to do with Job. And you know, of course, in the end, a lot of them concluded, no, no, no, Abraham's better. I won't say why, but you know, like, we're just gonna say Abraham's better. And so, but it is an interesting thing when you look at them, that there is, huh, There's, you have a righteous gentile like Job, it looks like we have here. And the reason Middleton brings it up is because he does take the idea that Job is actually a corrective of an episode of Abraham's life. That he would contend and he would build out his case in Abraham's silence that Job is the corrective to , where Abraham failed. especially regarding the sacrifice or the command to sacrifice Isaac. And so I would highly recommend it to your audience. If they have not read Middleton's Abraham's Silence book, you got to read it.[00:49:00] it's an amazing work of exegetical study. It's kind of one of those things. It's like, my gosh, if I could ever write it at this level one day but anyways, it really was just amazing as he's just going through the history and he's just going right into it. And yeah, he makes a really compelling argument. That's all I will say now. I don't want to ruin it for folks, but you should totally check it out if you haven't read his book. Carey Griffel: So we have Job, and we're like, what do we do with this book, and we're just going to shove it to the beginning of Genesis and just leave it there, but what we're seeing actually is how this is very deeply embedded into the themes of scripture, where if he's connected to Adam, he's connected at least at some point in time, in thought, to the character of Abraham, And what Abraham did, and you know that it makes a lot of sense, especially when you're looking at the way that the Tanakh itself is ordered because of where the book of Job comes in the ordering. And if you're reading it in the [00:50:00] synagogues or you're reading it, you know, in study like that, you're going to come forward with other ideas before you come to the book of Job. And so you're going to have all of that percolating in your head. Or at least you should. Mike Chu: , another allusion, if folks are wondering about Adam and Job, right? We can skip all the way to like Job chapter 2 and we get to Job chapter 2 verse 3 to 5. And this is, of course, after the initial, you know, round of suffering that Job is inflicted with by the accuser. here's one commentary note I will mention about the accuser, right? When the accuser is granted permission by Yahweh to go ahead and do with Job as he sees fit, notice that God didn't command the accuser to, like, you know, dial it all the way to 11, right? Like, just, just, just do everything you possibly can. He just basically, alright, you have the power. But [00:51:00] this is a free agent. This is a divine being who has the, You know, ability to discern or decide how far do I want to take it? Do I just kill off maybe half of his sheep? Half of his flocks? You know, maybe kill some of his servants? No. this divine being decides, I'm just going to wipe out everything. And in just the most dramatic and most like flamboyant or just explosive way possible. And so like, you know, while I don't necessarily personally believe that the accuser figure is the rebel from Genesis 3, I do understand why some folks may think he is. Because like, holy cow, Mr. Accuser, you're totally just kind of like, took that and just ran with that command. Ran with that power. And it's almost as though it was a little bit of a malicious intent on it. It's like you're causing suffering, really at an extreme [00:52:00] level. And so like, it does cause me to pause. I don't think there's no way for anyone to not pause to see something of that. Carey Griffel: Okay, so this is actually a really, really good point for this discussion about the satan and how he is seen or not seen in the book of Job. So if this is the narrative that is parallel to the narrative in the garden and we're supposed to see Job as a second Adam of sorts, then why would we not see the Satan as Mike Chu: I mean, I think you can make an argument, you can make, you know, sort of like these parallels and make a connection that maybe this is the serpent. What I would contend is that part of , what's going on with the garden in Genesis 2 and 3, right? We always typically think it's the fall of humanity. And it definitely is. It definitely has that. That's the main centerpiece. [00:53:00] But let's also not forget that there was another party that was part of that rebellion. And it's part of the reason why in my wordage, in the way I now describe that figure, I would say the rebel of Genesis 3. And the reason is because I actually, I personally believe this is actually the first moment that this creature, this Nakash, this serpent actually rebelled. That what we witness in Genesis three is not just the fall of Adam and his wife, or the rebellion of Adam and his wife, but also the first act of rebellion of the serpent, of this divine being of this devil figure of the Satan as however people like to call him. But that's how I would see it, because it's in the garden. The woman is not at all, like, surprised that all of a sudden she's speaking with a snake. I mean, like, all these things are supposed to, like, just bring up questions in your mind of, like, Why aren't you surprised, lady? [00:54:00] Like, this does not normally happen. Snakes don't normally open their mouths and talk. At most, they stick their tongue out at you. They don't talk. So what in the world is going on here? And so, the fact that she doesn't react out of surprise, and the fact that the serpent is there in the garden, and not banished, I mean, like, it just is supposed to bring up these questions. And so, like, I take after a little bit of, Dr. Heiser's also personal approach was that this was also the first time that the Satan figure or that the accuser that we now think of as the dragon from Revelation 12, and by the way, not China is actually the same being. But I would contend that the figure that we see in Job is another divine being. But similar, and almost like, maybe like a parallel. Not the rebel from Genesis 3, but possibly another rebel that's just harboring feelings that are finally now coming out in the open.[00:55:00] Who knows? Because I do find it interesting that in the council meetings of Job 1 and 2, that God does go out of his way to point out Job. It's as though, like, yeah, is anyone going to test Job? But like, why would you want to do that if you already know Job is blameless and righteous. What's what's going on here? And so this is just my own personal speculation. So it is just speculation. Don't take it as like Mike chapter 3 verse 5 I Personally kind of my own theological thinking and thoughts and exercising around this is that this was also a chance, a test of Weeding out within his counsel Those who might be rebellious Carey Griffel: Yeah, I'd say that's possible Mike Chu: Because like the way that he acts in given this power. It's like whoa I asked Dr. Heiser like what does he think about the fact that the Satan figure doesn't show up ever again after Job chapter 2 It's like is there maybe is [00:56:00] this like a silence argument that this divine being was punished afterwards of like, haha, now I know your real motives or was this divine being ,it's like, all right, I guess I was wrong. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna go back to the back room now and just sit here with my coffee and just sulk. And Dr Heiser, you know, pointed out. , , it's, it's speculation. We don't know what happened to him. We don't know. Apparently he's not important enough to be mentioned. Carey Griffel: Well, it strikes me as very glaring, because most other times when you have a rebellious spiritual being, they're punished. you see the judgment, you see mention of it, you see something about it, and there's just nothing here. And, you know, it's really interesting when you're looking at this mapped onto the, garden narrative. Like, you have all of these similarities, and you're supposed to be recalling things. But that doesn't mean that everything is going to be the same. Like, that doesn't mean that Hasatan [00:57:00] here, the accuser, is the same being as the serpent in the garden, especially when you already know that the serpent has been cast down to the earth or the underworld, whichever. So if you already have this idea of, the serpents already dealt with, Are you gonna think, this is the same guy? Maybe, maybe you'll think that, but maybe you'll just be like, no, it's not the same guy, but we have the same pattern going on, or the same kind of thing going on, but there's clearly also a twist here. Because, as you said, God points Job out. The satan doesn't come up and go, Hey, God, you know what? You see this guy over here? I don't like him very much. Can we do something about him? Because I just think that he's this goody two shoes. The satan is not pointing him out. God is pointing him out. And so that's a massive, [00:58:00] massive difference. God didn't send the serpent over to talk to Eve. We don't have God directing him in the garden. We do have God directing the satan here, though. And so I think when we're mapping the stories onto one another, you've got to see the similarities. And once you start looking, it's very glaring, but the differences matter. They matter a big deal, especially when you're supposed to be looking at this from a slightly different angle. Like, you know, you might see the garden narrative as being this narrative that is wrapped up so much about human rebellion. But obviously we have this spiritual being who's also rebellious and here it's kind of the same thing where there's testing going on, we might say I don't know what kind of word you want to use testing temptation, whatever, trial... that's going on here just like it went on in the garden, but there [00:59:00] are Definite differences here. So to just say oh look it's the same and we're just gonna conflate the two, I think you've got to have really subtle thinking there and you've really got to think maybe that's the case, but maybe not , because of the differences that are going on here. they're very vast differences. Mike Chu: And, for your audience to understand, like, you know, what Carey and I are doing. We're not trying to create a new theological framework and , thus forth, you must interpret it this way. We're just simply exploring and showing what happens when you look at the scriptures and you ask questions that may or may not have a complete answer and just let the scriptures be as they are. They do not give us a definite answer for the identity of this Hasatan. And there is no slam dunk ultimately when you see even that word used throughout the rest of the Old Testament. Because if we want to relegate the word Hasatan as though it's a name, then we have to then contend with the problems [01:00:00] such as when the word shows up describing Yahweh. Right? So, so we got a problem with that. If we want to make that clear, we can't. The text does not allow us to. And, like, I honestly don't feel that there is anything lost from just expanding the possibility that the figure here is not the Satan, the devil, the rebel from Genesis 3. It actually solves some problems for me, right? It solves the issue of why would God be still employing the rebel of Genesis three, the person that actually caused the downfall of humanity, why would he still be working? Why would he be allowed to come back into heaven? Why would he be allowed to actually talk with God? Wouldn't his press, like, it's kind of really funny to me . as, you know, a guy who comes from, you know, like a Protestant evangelical tradition. Sometimes, you know, we have this one thought of, well, God can't be close to any sort of sin. [01:01:00] That's why, like, we need Jesus and the cross and atonement and everything. But then somehow we just turn a blind eye to, if this is the Satan from Genesis 3, How in the world is he allowed to come into the presence of God in the Book of Job before the, the cross even? How's that even po Why is that allowed? And we don't wanna ask that question because then that kind of ruins the previous theology that we just had about like, oh God can't be close to any sort of sin. It would just be destroyed. But obviously this ha satan is not. And so we just have this very interesting kind of interesting dilemma, and I would say it solves a lot of issues that we would have if we just realized that this is a different figure. Carey Griffel: so you were going to read a couple of verses in Job chapter 2, and I think there's some interesting things that we could talk about here. Mike Chu: So as I was mentioning, you know, if folks are wondering about, again, these allusions back to [01:02:00] Genesis, and is Job almost like another version of Adam, or a version 2. 0, or 3. 0? I don't know. Like, there are folks, if you are just even just wondering about the concept of Adam showing up as like an archetype, just look at the story of Noah. And just tell me, is there anything that's familiar, especially after the flood, when God is giving a promise back to Noah, is there something that God says that reminds you of Genesis 1 to chapter 3? That's all I'll say. I think Job is just following and whoever is the writer of the book of Job is following in that same tradition that there are folks that are types that are supposed to remind you of Adam and of the garden. And so here in Job chapter 2, this is after the whole entire, you know, first set of, you know, sufferings that the Hasatan, the Satan or accuser figure does. And so God, you know, basically says almost a repeat from chapter one. Then the Lord, or Yahweh[01:03:00] the Satan, Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him. He is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. So, you know, after everything that this, accuser had done. Still the same description. Blameless, upright, fears God, shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity. Though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason. The Satan figure responds back, skin for skin. A man , will give all he has for his own life. But now stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face. I pointed this out towards I think around, it was like the middle of our Job series. That, forget the scholar's name, his first name starts with Peter. But he had an interesting paper that essentially conjectured the idea that in [01:04:00] verse 5, when the satan figure says, But now stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones. You know, normally we think, oh, he's talking about, you know, causing Job to get really sick, which is certainly what happens. That's especially what verse 4 is about. Skin for skin. You know, if, your skin is at risk, if your very life is at risk, you would do anything possible to save your life. , that's what the satan figure is going at. But what's interesting is that he goes into the idea of striking Job's flesh and bone. Where have we heard the concept of flesh and bone in a sentence before? When Adam met his wife for the first time and he, Waxes poetically, because again, if you notice, in that whole entire moment when he meets his wife for the first time, the Hebrew switches right into poetry. I don't even have to look that up. I know that just from past study. It formats it right into poetry. He's saying poetry. This is [01:05:00] flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. This is why she shall be called woman for, from man she came out of. This idea of flesh and bone, and so it was a very interesting kind of idea that maybe, maybe what this satan figure is actually asking for is not necessarily to harm or to cause immense health suffering to Job, but to actually take the life of his wife, to actually kill Job's wife. And from an ancient Near Eastern perspective, when you look at it and think about this, right at this point, Job's ten children, all of them, gone. They're dead. He has no heirs. He has no progeny to actually carry on the line of Job now. The only way that can possibly happen, if something were to occur again, is it's going to have to happen through [01:06:00] his wife , through being husband and wife to have more children to somehow repair what was lost in continuing the genealogy of who Job is. But if you take out his wife, you're essentially cutting Job off from ever having descendants. And I find it very interesting that if this proposition is true that the whole entire flesh and bones is a reference to the wife. Then God's response is comforting, because he says in verse 6 back to the satan figure, Very well then, he is in your hands, he being Job, but you must spare his life. If life is a metaphor or an allusion back to the flesh and bones, to the wife. God basically placed the limit on this accuser. You are not going to kill his wife. You can do what you want with him directly, [01:07:00] but you are not going to do this to his wife. When I encountered that thought, when I was doing this paper, and as I was getting ready for the sermon series, I felt anger at just the thought that Job's wife was being targeted. wow, is there any better way to break a man than to target the one that is supposed to be he is one flesh with? So yeah, that, caused me to pause and definitely did cause me to wonder, it's like, you know, I get it. I get why some people might think this is the devil from Genesis three, because if this is true, if the flesh and bones is an allusion, a call back to Genesis two, then that's down and dirty. That's taking it way too far. Carey Griffel: Well, and okay, so then his wife does speak after that, which she doesn't speak in chapter one, right? Mike Chu: No, she doesn't. Carey Griffel: Yeah. So the fact that she speaks now, that's fascinating. And, of course, the thing she says is [01:08:00] further fascinating in the ESV, , she says, do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die. So wow, that's, if her life was just spared and she just said that, that's, that's kind of interesting. Mike Chu: And, you know, the way that I take it is, is that , she's seeing his immense suffering. I mean, because at that point, you know, he's taking broken pottery and scratching his sores. It's just like, that's, holy cow, that's painful. And what we see is a glimpse of the despair that his wife is experiencing. And in reality, when we go through despair and just trying to react to pain and suffering, we are going to say things that are pretty insane sounding to when we're like calm and rational, but it essentially is like, just, just get it over with. Like this wouldn't dying be easier and in, reality, like in some sense, yeah, it would[01:09:00] like just to end it all. but Job is not doing that. and notice that even in his reply. Yes. In the ESV and in the NIV, they will say things like, you're talking like a foolish woman, but he doesn't curse her. He understands, like, you're having a moment of insanity right now, too, because of this suffering, that, like, just call it out, and we're just gonna move on. , and he even responds back with even more of an interesting rationale. Shall we accept good from God and not trouble? Carey Griffel: Yeah, , he's not blaming the satan. Mike Chu: No, it is one, he doesn't know it's the satan that's doing it from all they can understand from their perspective. All of this is coming from Yahweh. And I say that very clearly because, you know, the name Yahweh is being used. So this is not just a random Elohim. This is like from their perspective, they're thinking this is happening from the one creator God , and Job's reaction is, are we going to accept good from him only? Which, you know, it's like, [01:10:00] what do you say to that? I was like, holy cow, man. That's wise. , it's sombering, but it's wise. Like, whoa. Carey Griffel: Well, and I'll say, so this is super interesting. Again, when we're mapping this story onto the story of Genesis, in the story of Genesis, we have Eve who encounters the serpent herself, and then she takes it over to Adam and says, Hey, come have some fruit. So delicious. And Adam does, just takes the fruit. He doesn't correct her. Whereas here, we have Job's wife. She is also trying to tell Job to curse God. And Job's like, no, listen. that's not the right thing. Let me correct you. Let me guide you to what is the better way of being. How we ought to react to God and what's going on with our lives and how we still are going to be trusting God in all of the things that's going on.[01:11:00] That's not what Adam did, but here we see Job acting in the way that Adam should have acted. Mike Chu: So if folks are interested in exploring more of this, I did look it up of the actual article. The article is called you know, one quote, Strike his Bone and his Flesh: Reading Job from the Beginning. It's written by a scholar named David Shepard of the Institute of Theology, Queens University, Belfast. It's in the Journal for Study of the Old Testament. It's a publication back in 2008. And this is what the study, and this is what I brought up in my own sermon when we were dealing with Job chapter 2 and 3, that I mentioned that he proposes this idea that the connection back to Genesis 2 is the connection back to Genesis 2 of bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, that this is an allusion back to that, which only supports again, this idea, this concept that Job is another version of Adam, or just like, he's following in [01:12:00] the archetype of the type of Adam. And. You know, I have to say, I have commend Job in, in the way that he's being portrayed, yes, he says, you know, you foolish woman, which may sound like, you know, like offensive to our modern ears. But he doesn't curse her. , he's simply acknowledging, like, what you're saying right now. is really dumb. It's, it's, the opposite of wisdom. And instead he shows wisdom by just asking a question, which is just brilliant. If you think about it, right? Cause he doesn't just say a statement. He says it with a question, which gets you to actually answer the question itself. And thus you get a taste of wisdom. Shall we only accept good from God and not trouble? And the reality is, we all know if we have lived any number of years in this life, we cannot just only accept the good. There will be bad that comes. [01:13:00] Can I maybe mention just another little detail? Thanks to also from Ballantine . Right. Joe chapter one and two , there's no way to avoid. There is this idea of a divine council or a divine assembly, however people want to describe it. God is calling a meeting with other spiritual beings to get together and talk. What Ballantyne pointed out about these interesting descriptions of the council meetings is that in the Aramaic translations of Job. And the Aramaic translation of Job is what I would probably say is to our modern sensibilities is like a paraphrase. It's a paraphrase with a little bit of commentary placed in to help flesh out some details. And in the Targum versions of Job, which is the Aramaic translations of Job, when they mention about the council meetings, when the council gathers together, it describes that the meeting is actually happening on New Year's Day. [01:14:00] And unlike us in our Western culture where, you know, New Year's Eve is all about like partying and having a great old time and then New Year's Day is essentially trying to like recover and, you know, eat lots of fatty foods and greasy foods to get over your hangover. New Year's Day from a Jewish perspective was a somber day of reflection. And part of that was because they believe this idea that God was convening his council on New Year's Day to discuss and essentially it's a day of judgment. It's a day of whose name is going to be in God's book of life. Who is righteous? Who's not? and essentially the council members will then present their findings of like, oh, this guy's name should be in there. Or like, oh, no, this guy's definitely name should not be in there. It should be even taken out if it's already in there. And at the end of their discussions, whoever ends up where the council could not come to an agreement on, [01:15:00] of like, should this person's name be in the Book of Life or not, they will then agree to convene again on Yom Kippur. That from New Year's Day to Yom Kippur, they will then evaluate so, how is this guy, like, what is his life like? Does he fear the Lord? Is he actually loyal to Yahweh? They will then evaluate in that between time and use that as their criteria in the second meeting on Yom Kippur. And in that second meeting, they'll then talk about this person again. And whatever the conclusion is, the guy's name will be in the book of life or not in the book of life. That's what was the pattern. And in chapter two, it mentions it again, that when the council meets again, and just before God says his little, you know, quippy words, right to the satan figure of like, Hey, what do you think of Job right now? It mentions they met again on the day of atonement, Yom Kippur. And so it's just interesting commentary that in the mindset of those during the time of [01:16:00] Jesus, that whenever they thought about the book of Job, And they're thinking about like, oh, I'm trying to figure out like, when did this actually happen? Oh, it happened on New Year's Day. And the second judgment was on the Day of Atonement. Which is like, wow, that's, that's interesting. But here's the thing, right? The tradition is supposed to be, after the Day of Atonement, the decision is made. Is the guy going to be in the Book of Life or not? Is he righteous or not? What happens at the end of like, Chapter 2? It's like, very clearly, the satan figure will not back down. He goes like, no, skin for skin, and then basically extends a challenge of let's not just, you know, make a decision right now, let's have a prolonged test of suffering to test Job's character, to test his integrity, to see truly is he a blameless guy. Like, this is all of a sudden introducing the concept of chronic suffering that has no end. [01:17:00] Which is, like, a scary, terrifying idea, especially for those of us again, coming from like Christian triumphantalism, you know, circles. Right? Because, oh, can I endure a little bit of suffering? Like I lost my job. I may have some financial constraints. I have to tighten my belt. But okay, I can deal with that. I have enough emergency fund. I'm following the Dave Ramsey's plan and that kind of thing. Right? Like, we got that down. We're good for six months. What if it's more than six months? What if it extends into a year?. What if you happen to be in the midst of a recession or worse, a depression? What if you got a diagnosis that's a chronic disease that you will never ever be able to cure? That's the kind of suffering that we don't really ever want to think about. And that's essentially what this satan figure is introducing. Why are we keeping the judgment period between New Year's Day and Yom Kippur? Let's extend it. And so like, afterwards, we have no chronological [01:18:00] markers after chapter two. Like, it's just like, the hints we get maybe is that it's months later by the time Job's friends show up and they're just like, what the heck happened to you? And like, but it's a really interesting concept of like, oh, goodness gracious, there is now no end in sight yet of the suffering that Job is going through. Will be enduring and that concept frightens me if I'm honest So anyways, yes, Job chapters one and two It's it's chock full. It just just makes you faint and and like I you know If people just want to camp out on this for months, you totally can but my admonition is Go into chapter three right the way I I You I started off in Job chapter 3 and my sermon was simply about how everyone loves Job of chapter 1 and 2. They love quoting from him. They love mentioning him. there are even songs like, you know, Matt Redman's Blessed Be The Name. You know, like you give and [01:19:00] take away, like that, that's directly from Job. He's quoting from Job. We all love Job from Job chapters one and two. But once we get to Job chapter three, we all of a sudden are like, I don't know this guy. Like Job who? Nope. Nope. I don't want to know who this dude is because once you get to Job chapter three. People wonder like, what happened? What happened to Job chapter 1 and 2? The hero of faith, the guy that was like, you know, saying like, this awesome stuff. Naked, I came into the world. Like he, like, yes, that's the kind of faith we need to have. And then we get to Job chapter 3, and he's basically saying, I wished I was never born. I wish I didn't even exist. Like, like, he's, he's going into something that all of a sudden we get very uncomfortable with. And then we just ignore. I've read too many commentaries from well meaning pastors who've tried to make Job sound more like their theological expression [01:20:00] than really what's in the text. And the irony of that all is that these folks are folks who will say they believe in biblical infallibility or inspiration and authority, but then in their own versions of Job, when they paraphrase Job, they will then try to make Job chapter three sound like he's a, an amazing upstanding dude from the reformation tradition. If you will entertain me for that, I will read from one of these kind of things. Cause I was appalled when I realized that , this particular author that I, you know, had admired and I respect, wrote this to sort of gloss over what actually is said in chapter three. His version of Job chapter three, his paraphrase is, Oh, angel-riven heaven and if I know the signs, it means some cliff is in my way. O God, hold on [01:21:00] to me. I have no strength. This dawn is darkening over me, and I do fear another fall may lie before me in this path of pain. That is nowhere close to what Job chapter 3 even says. . Carey Griffel: Wow. Just wow. . Mike Chu: I like like I, I was just, I was completely appalled and whenever other, you know, well-meaning pastors, you know, they're like, I'm gonna write a book on job. And of course, they pretty much skip all of the poetry they focus on chapters one, two, and then jump right over to 38 to 40, and one of them even tried to do chapter 3, but it just gave a glib line of, Oh, Job just wished he didn't live. It's like, really? That's what we get from chapter 3? It's like, and so I think it is just evidence though, Carey, that our evangelical culture at times, [01:22:00] We are just so frightened. at the concept or of the idea of meditating on pain. That we just don't know what to do. We just don't know what to do with it. Carey Griffel: Yeah, it's a hard, hard thing. It's just something that we're supposed to just get over to live our merry, happy lives and live our best life today. And this idea of, if you just take care of yourself, then you'll be fine. If you just do all of these self care regimens and everything, then you'll get past that and don't need to worry about it and you shouldn't feel any of that. it's hard, but we need to face it straight on. Mike Chu: And I think one of the things, you know, and the reason I mentioned that you know, I initially went into my study in Job chapter 3. Because I just was like, Oh, cool. The Leviathan. I want to talk about that. You know, like, like, it started out as an intellectual exercise. And then it turned out to be a [01:23:00] very pivotal moment for my own personal healing. Around the start of the time when I started my seminary career at Gordon Conwell, my wife and I discovered that she had ovarian cancer. And in the midst of that, she had to go through the cancer treatments, surgeries, and eventually even one of those treatments caused her to lose some hearing. And so she has now a constant ringing that will never go away. And so thus there is a suffering that has no end. And so, you know, here I am, I'm studying Job chapter 3. And I realize one of the things of why people are so disturbed by Job chapter 3 is that here and onward in the poetry, because it is in chapter 3 where all the poetry begins, that we see a man being portrayed as talking back, or I would even say in common [01:24:00] vernacular, yelling at God. And that concept frightens us. Because we assume to talk back to God just means that we are being impious or sinful or rebellious or offensive. and we start off with that assumption. and the contention oftentimes when we read in more scholarly commentaries about the Book of Job is, did Job sin at all? and most of the time they can't really, they can't pinpoint it. They can't say like, Oh, yes, he absolutely did. But they'll say like, Oh, he got really close to the line. And it's always kind of this assumption and this idea that Job was doing something inappropriate. He was doing something not correct. He was doing something that was just impious and not understand that there is a long well-worn tradition within Hebraic thinking of providing and of giving imprecatory prayers. We have imprecatory [01:25:00] psalms; we have psalms that are essentially cursing psalms. And we in our modern Western sensibilities do not know what to do with that. Because we have bought also into the idea that the only things we could do is we're in God's house. We have to be quiet. We have to be proper. We have to be respectful. We have to only say kind things and proper things to God. And we are so shocked. When we get to Job chapter three, we don't know what to do with him. We just don't know what to do with him. And I have to say, it's again, folks like Ballantine, Habal, Middleton. That helped actually get me past that obstacle, , that barrier that I didn't even realize I had. That there is actually something very right about what Job was doing. He wasn't keeping the pain internally. He wasn't trying to shove it down. He wasn't trying to ignore it. He wasn't trying to excuse it. He wasn't trying to rationalize it. He wasn't trying to just hope that, you know, if I give it six [01:26:00] months, maybe it'll, get better. Instead, he engaged with his emotions, and he just let out what he was feeling. And even the buildup to verse three in chapter three, in the narrative, it basically is supposed to give you the sense of, just read it right from here in Job chapter three. It starts off with after this, which is supposed to make you remember what happened right before. Which was, his friends showed up, they cried with him, they sat in the dust and ashes with him, which by the way, dust and ashes. The scary thought is, like, are the dust and ashes the dust and ashes of his children? Of everything that was destroyed? I'll just leave it as that. That, he's in this terrible state. And they sit together on the ground, in verse 13 of chapter 2, for 7 days and 7 nights. So the narrator, the author, is trying to set you up in this [01:27:00] moment of like, okay, so he's quiet for a whole week. Perfect amount of time. 7 days. Perfect amount of time. Because they saw how great his suffering was. And then in verse one, after this, Job opened his mouth and , you're supposed to have that release of tension. He's quiet. What, what is he going to say? He doesn't say anything to his friends. And then shocker of all things, he curses the day of his birth. He said, verse two, and then right into verse three. And then we don't know what to do with Job. Carey Griffel: you know, it is this idea that we have, that we go from Job, he is described multiple times as blameless, which as you, you said, that word has connotations of perfection or the rightness of what he's doing, you know, he's fearing God, he's turning away from evil. And then we get into [01:28:00] this and we're like, wait, this sounds like he's turning to evil to me. Because we're not supposed to have this kind of language directed to God. Which, he's cursing the day of his birth. And it doesn't say explicitly he's talking to God. But who created Job? He's acknowledging the Creator here and the creator's role in Job's existence. like you said, we don't actually even know if he has any idea about the satan's role in any of this. I think we could probably make some assumptions that he's going to assume that there were spiritual entities behind what was going on, because that was just the way that they framed things back then. If something happened, it was in response to something in the spiritual realm in some way, shape, or form. So what's going on to him, it wasn't just natural happenstance or coincidence or whatever that he knew that there were some [01:29:00] spiritual reasons for it. And yet here he goes complaining about his day of birth and we're like, okay, is he suddenly not blameless anymore? And now he's sinning here is our first instance and maybe, just like with the serpent in the garden, instigates Eve and then Adam into doing something wrong. Is that the same thing that's going on here? Are we supposed to see Job as now being sinful? I think that should be one of the biggest questions on our minds as we're looking at this and we're trying to figure out how this maps onto the the story of the garden, which both of those things, the story of the garden and the story of Job also have to map on to what our lives are like too, and how that impacts us and how we should relate to God. Mike Chu: I think if people are thinking, is Job about to sin, are we seeing the descent of Job? one of the most helpful things. something [01:30:00] that we really have to consider is that when folks are tempted to think that what job is saying here is sin, the ultimate one who can judge that is God. And what do we find of how God feels or, you know, judges Job's speech? By the end of the story of Job, and I'll just simply paraphrase it, he basically said, back to Job's three friends. Interesting, he only talks to the three friends, not to the fourth guy. He simply mentions, With you guys, I am angry with. You're going to have to ask Job to please pray for you, so that I would forgive you, because Job spoke rightly to me. That the words, that, essentially, God's evaluation of everything that Job says, was right to God. The three friends did not think anything that Job said was actually right. I mean, that was, that's the whole entire drama. That's the whole entire [01:31:00] dialogue that's going back and forth. It's dialogue for poetry. it's like a rap battle. It's like you have, like, Job and his three friends, and they would all tag one another of like, okay, you didn't take him down. I'll do it. And they would just go back and forth, back and forth. And Job would just defend himself, push back on their accusations, push them back against the theologies that they are proposing. And they could not take him down. They could not pin him down. And he refused to be pinned down. And in the midst of his whole entire theologizing, with poetry, what we notice is that Job keeps on addressing God. He keeps on saying, I want an audience. I want him to come here before me. I want to talk to him. I want to bring my complaints before Yahweh. He's quite bold about it and his friends are pretty much of like now who dares to do something like that Why would you do that? Stop it? and yet when God finally is done having his [01:32:00] conversation with Job And by the way, let's not overlook the fact that you had Job in pretty much the majority of this book asking, I want God to show up. I want him to show up. I have lots of complaints. I want to bring my, complaints before him. And God actually does. Don't pass over that. He actually does show up. He comes alone. He appears, yes, in the whirlwind, but he actually shows up. So what Job was asking for happens. And of course, Job, like any of us, with something like that were to happen, we're just completely, like, our tongues are tied. We're dumbstruck of like, Oh, it actually happened. God actually spoke. I didn't really expect that to happen, but it did. And at the end of their conversation, God's assessment of Job's words was that it was right to him. And so I think we have to evaluate the goodness or the badness of Job's words in light of what God's own [01:33:00] conclusion about Job is, right? Because that will then help shape us of how we're evaluating what Job says. That has to be what shapes it because what we read with just our modern context might twist it, or we might presume certain things. And we have to be shaped by the fact that God's conclusion at the end of the Book of Job is that, by the way, He spoke rightly to me. The friends spoke about God. They speculated about God's purposes and His ideas and His thinking and His reasons. But they weren't petitioning God to, like, Stop this, they weren't coming and interceeding before God. They weren't bringing stuff about Job to God. They were talking about God. They were speculating about God. They were speculating about why Job was suffering. But they didn't actually talk to God. Which, really on an aside, when we see our friends suffering, our family suffering, we need to do less speculation And more intercession and [01:34:00] speaking to God on their behalf of our friends and family who are enduring great pain and not speculate. The suffering's happening either way. beg for the mercy of God for whatever this is to stop. Really, that should be the focus, not on like, oh no, why did this happen to him? And ultimately what we, you know, what you'll realize as you read through these poems from the other friends is that they're trying to protect their worldview and their understanding of how the world works. And that it's not possible. I cannot let this kind of scenario exist. That a guy could be blameless and upright and still suffer. That's not how my world works. That's not how my world is supposed to work. And so for a guy like Job, if he truly is upright and blameless, and he still suffers, then that means the world can't be based on justice, is it? That means the world is not based on retribution. It's not based on a cause and effect. Because why is he suffering if he didn't do [01:35:00] anything to earn the suffering? It just breaks my world view and I cannot let that happen. And that's really sad. And I think that that was one of the comforts as I kept on studying and meditating on the Book of Job is the realization that, wow, what they are really more concerned about, once Job opened his mouth, was like Job, you're really disturbing my theology right here. The world is built on justice. I do good, I get good. I do bad, I get bad. People do bad, they get bad, this is how the world works. so, you must have done something bad. Maybe you didn't know about it. Okay, we'll give you a theology that explains suffering on things that you did that you didn't realize were bad. And that's why you're suffering. Oh, that's not convincing. Let me give you a theology that maybe you you did something that you thought was right, but it turns out was bad. And you just didn't know. And that's why you're suffering. They keep on giving different versions of the same kind of system. But ultimately, it is a system of cause and effect. Good receives good, bad receives bad, [01:36:00] and they could not comprehend the concept that a person could actually be righteous, could be upright, could be innocent, and suffer. . And if anything, even if you are not a, God follower, a Christ believer, whatever else, if anything, about the Book of Job, it is so unique in the text of ancient near Eastern meditations because all of a sudden you have this whole entire thing that doesn't even try to give you an answer in the end for why job was suffering. It doesn't give you a worldview of why suffering occurs. It teases the question, but it never actually answers that question. Just leaves it as that. It acknowledges suffering happens. It is what will happen in life. And to think that just because you are upright and blameless means that you're somehow spared from that, that's naive. we won't be spared from that. Carey Griffel: Ah, so much here. And , it's this beautiful question that we don't tend to think is beautiful because we just want the answer. We just want some [01:37:00] little pat thing, just like Job's friends. We want this explanation, and here you go. And I mean, to some extent, we still try and have that explanation, right? It's like, the explanation is that it's God's will, and to some extent, we just have to leave it at that. But that doesn't feel like an explanation to us, even though that's how we still try and package it into this little answer. But, you know, it's really interesting because, In the end, instead of being judged and cast out of Eden, Job is blessed again. And so there's that other difference between the garden narrative and the narrative of Job of, in the end, there is justice, but it's a different kind of justice than Job's friends want to see. It's a different kind of justice than we tend to want to see, of, you know, it's all about punishment. It's all about, if something bad happens, it's because of punishment. Whereas, the ultimate justice is actually, , it's restoration, it's [01:38:00] restitution, it's bringing back things to flourishing life. Mike Chu: And I would contend that if, you know, one wants to travel through and persevere through the suffering. We will have these moments, just like Job in chapter three, you have to go through it. Which is grinds right against that triumphalism type of theology that we often encounter in Western evangelicalism. What happens in Job chapter three is what, In my research, in my paper, it ultimately, I came to the conclusion that what we see here is what I would term a self implication. It's a self curse. He's following in a tradition that's actually a well worn ancient Near Eastern tradition of self cursing poetry and declarations. And it's supposed to indicate to the listener of how deep your pain goes. How do you describe, through poetry, the immense pain of loss of grief [01:39:00] of things that are like, how do you describe losing your entire family? How do you describe the loss of all of your finances, all of your wealth, all of the people that were working under you? How do you describe your complete health being wiped out by some mysterious disease, and the only comfort is by scratching yourself with, like, stone pottery. Like, how do you describe that? And of what you're feeling. And so why Job chapter 3 shouldn't disturb us, as the way as it often seems to do for us as moderns, is that it is helping us understand, this is the well of emotion that Job is going through. that's how, do you convey through written literature, through poetry to your audience, the pain that Job is going through. And I find that the way that the writer of Job does it is brilliant. I know this is a running a little, a little long, so I'm not sure [01:40:00] how we will do this. I don't know if this will be like a part one, part two, Carey Griffel: I think that there's a lot that needs to be said about this idea of lament and how that impacts things and I don't want to rush this and, you know, try and cut everything out. And so I think if we could do another one, that would be amazing. Mike Chu: Absolutely. And then , and finally , I might be able to read out my translation. It's just like already there were just like so much going on in just Job chapter one and two. There was no way you can't avoid that. Carey Griffel: Right. Yeah. And you have to set all of that up and there's probably other questions that are going to lead from Job chapters one and two into Job chapter three as well. But. But yeah, I think maybe just kind of leaving it here for people to ponder and think about the implications of this and maybe take the Book of Job and read it themselves and see these patterns and all of that. And I'm sure if anybody has questions, we could probably also address those at a later time as well. [01:41:00] But yeah, is there anything that you wanted to just end on here? Mike Chu: Well, I would just simply say thank you, Carey, for letting me be able to kind of meditate and think again about Job. There is no set date yet, but this is hopefully going to be one of those introductory courses that I'll actually be helping out at Awakening School on the Book of Job. Obviously, I've fallen in love with this book. I think about it not every day, but , it does come up in thoughts and feelings. And it was a very strange thing that the end of the sermon series, when we did Job last year you know, I mentioned that my sister had passed away last year. When we started the series, it was around the time when she was already in the hospital and we were still hopeful that she would be able to leave and get treatment and you know She'll be able to continue living life and by the end of the series, literally the last Sunday of that series It was the day right after that we had our funeral and so I said to the congregation originally when we [01:42:00] were planning the series, I thought I would give like, you know stories and allusions back to what my wife and I went through when she was going for her cancer treatments and all the ramifications from that and all the things I worked out during the time when I was studying the Book of Job in Hebrew classes. And I had no clue that I would have actually, I needed to have those lessons really well ingrained in me so that in this season of life, last year, that I was well prepared on what I had to do. What I needed to do that. If I was angry, if I was upset, if I was mourning and grieving, I cannot pretend that it's not there. I have to bring it all to God and bring it to God. Not talk about God, not speculate about why did my sister die, but to actually express to and ask him the question, why did my sister die? Why did you take her? and to just be okay with the fact that he may never answer that [01:43:00] question because you know what? Job was fine after all this and he never got the answer for why. Because the answer probably would not have comforted him, and the answer was not going to restore what he lost. But the process of asking the question is all about the whole entire task of maintaining intimacy with God. Of , having honest, genuine, authentic communion with God, and that includes the moments , even when we are angry with Him. Because if we are truly part of God's family, if we are truly his sons and daughters now because of Christ, then we have the awesome privilege of being able to come before him and ask poignantly to the father. Why? And, you know, by his graciousness, he may give us an answer. But we also have to be ready that there are going to be moments and times when he will not. And what will we do when that happens? So that I will, I will leave with the audience. Carey Griffel: [01:44:00] Deep and hard questions. It's so interesting how you can go into things like this with this intellectual curiosity and wondering how does the Bible pattern things? And how is it speaking to the human condition? And how is this part related to that part? And all of these questions, once you dig into it, you start getting into this raw, humanness of it and how that really applies and directs our life. Mike Chu: Yeah, I think the greatest compliment at the end of the series was that our associate pastor mentioned, thanks to a recommendation from one of our congregation members, they bought boxes and boxes of Kleenex to now put throughout the entire sanctuary. And the boxes are still there like to me is like, how will I know if, this series actually had any sort of impact, if like, like, or was this just a intellectual exercise of like talking about a book that it's really not often wanting to be studied and that the, the effect was that people realize I need a [01:45:00] box of Kleenex nearby, just in case that I realized it gave our congregation, especially in the context of everything that our world had gone through for the last, you know, Now I have to say like four years. lot of people did not have a chance to process or grieve or mourn or to yell at God. And in our series, we essentially resoundingly gave them the permission. You can do it in the righteous way that Job did it too. He did not sin. He spoke directly to God. And ironically, the sin or the offense to God was when people speculated about him and about why the suffering was occurring and why Job then had to be the one to like pray and offer sacrifice for the forgiveness of his three friends who were now in trouble with Yahweh. And I find that very fascinating that Job was the one that spoke rightly to God. And if we can model ourselves in the way that Job did it, we find healing in that process too. Carey Griffel: Yeah. [01:46:00] All right. Well, I think we will leave it for that and we will have another conversation about this soon for sure. Thank you, Mike, so much for coming on and talking about this. Mike Chu: Thank you, Carey. Carey Griffel: All right. Well, we've got a bit of a long episode this time, but I hope that you will agree with me that I think it's worth it. This was a great conversation, and I appreciate that Mike came on and talked to me about the Book of Job, but it's not over yet. We also have another conversation that we've had about the Book of Job that I will be releasing soon. Not sure if it will come out next week or the week after, or sometime coming up soon. I'm still working out my actual release schedule for some of these conversations I'm having and interspersing them with other episodes I've got. I can promise you there's a lot of really interesting points that Mike is going to be bringing out with his translation of Job chapter 3. But as I wrap up, I [01:47:00] want to thank you all for listening to this episode and listening to other episodes. I appreciate all of you who share the episodes so that other people can access this content. And thank you to those of you who have rated my podcast wherever you listen or else you've done so on my website maybe. Thank you. I've gotten some new ratings this week, and that is always exciting. And of course, a big shout out and thank you to all of my Patreon and PayPal supporters. You guys are such great blessings to me, and I really appreciate it. For those of you who want to keep up to date with other appearances I have, with the blog posts that I put out, and other things like that, including the fact that I do sell my artwork to help support this podcast. You can sign up for my newsletter at my website at genesismarksthespot. com, which is also where you can leave me some questions if you have any questions for my Q& A episodes, or any comments that you have, or [01:48:00] any ideas for episodes that you'd like to see. At any rate, that is it for the moment, and I wish you all a blessed week, and we will see you later.