7”Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed? 8As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it.
“You get what you deserve.” “You reap what you sow.” This is as deep as some people’s theology goes. Their concept of God is a vending machine that gives back whatever you have put into it. If you put good things in, you get good things out. And all this is evident in this life! The only scale used to measure whether the bad things happening are a result of bad things done is this life. There is not accounting or consideration for eternity. If something bad has happened, you must have done something to deserve it. Karma! Those who believe in reincarnation would say that bad things get carried over from a previous life. If you did bad things in that previous life, you come back a few notches down in the cosmic lottery game. We teach this concept to our children at Christmas time. We sing about Santa knowing if we’ve been naughty or nice, and that determines what kind of presents we will get. Job’s friend is stuck in this kind of theological absurdity. Bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people. Justice does not happen in this life. Job’s friend listens to a demonic whisper (verse 16) and takes that as truth. Our demonic whispers are more likely to happen by WiFi rather than in a dream. Our cultures screams lies at us every day, lies about God and lies about us. If we don’t know the Word of God, we will certainly end up with some very strange theology. We will start to believe that because bad things aren’t happening to us right now, that our sinful behavior must not be so bad after all.
The Arnold Journey 