a surprise crop

Week 26  Job 32

Yesterday I read what frustrated Eliphaz Bildad & Zophar (EBZ) about Job: he was righteous in his own eyes. That’s the gist of the Job vs. EBZ debate – they thought Job was wrong because he was righteous in his own eyes.
The EBZ Rule was: a bad person experiences negative consequences. Things were going badly for Job therefore Job had to have done something bad. Bad things don’t happen to good people. They happen to bad people.
I got to thinking about the upshots of my life inputs. If I whittle it down to pretty simple terms I can practice either a) good life inputs or b) bad life inputs. And the results will be either a) good upshots or b) bad upshots.
Working with those four factors I end up with four basic combinations:
1. Good upshots can happen to people with good inputs
2. Bad upshots can happen to people with bad inputs
3. Good upshots can happen to people with bad inputs
4. Bad upshots can happen to people with good inputs.
EBZ were operating on a two-option model:
1. Good upshots happen to people with good inputs
2. Bad upshots can happen to people with bad inputs
Even though EBZ never got a chance to read Galatians they knew very well that a man reaps what he sows.
What they didn’t read and didn’t realize was that sometimes a man also reaps what he doesn’t sow.

Note: quotes from Job 32:1 & Galatians 6:7 (NIV)