Job's health is destroyed

Job 2- I've heard it said that if you don't have your health, you don't have anything. I think that's true, to an extent, because you can't really do anything. How can you concentrate with a headache, a mind clouded by drugs, or surgeries to worry about?

You can't focus on anything but pain and discomfort. You feel out of control of your own body and your life. If the sickness is permanent, you feel as though your best days are behind you. And, of course, there are the mortality issues. We're wired to want to survive.

That's why it took Job to a super dark place when his health was taken. Satan came for another visit and God said, "Job still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason." It's interesting that God takes credit for the ruin and says he was incited against Job, even though he just took away the protection and Satan did all the actual ruining. He takes full responsibility for things that aren't entirely his fault. It also showed that God had full control of the situation and it only happened because God allowed it.

Satan says, "Skin for skin! A man will give all he has for his own life. Stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face." Satan's theory is that Job stayed quiet so that he would not be killed as well, and that he was fine with losing his family because he was spared. "Skin for skin." He traded his kids for his own security, Satan thinks (and that's probably what Satan would do if he had kids, haha). So, the Lord allows Satan to cover Job with sores from head to foot.

Satan has failed in the emotional/mental attack. He is now going for the flesh. In my teens, I (wrongly) thought it would be fun to see if I could fit the family puppy's whole head in my mouth. I could, but I was in for a shock. I didn't know the puppy would perceive the situation as " I'm being eaten." She did, and she let out a scream such as I've never heard. That's the survival instinct. The instant scream and despair when your body is threatened. All animals fear this. Satan knows we're part animal. He knows a huge part of us is attached to our flesh.

It wasn't just sores either. Later in the book of Job, we find out that he also suffered from bone pain, skin that grew black and fell off, halitosis, itching, fever, and emaciation. Job scrapes himself with a piece of broken pottery, probably to help with the itching.

Job's wife advised him to give up his integrity, curse God, and die. On a shallow reading, it might seem like this woman is a godless villain, but she's just lost her home and kids. She doesn't know it's because she happened to marry Job. She's saying that death would be better than what Job is going through. She doesn't think there is a way up from this. Of course, she's wrong and Satan got her to abandon her integrity, but she's also pretty normal. Job didn't cave to his wife's influence.

Then Job's three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, came to comfort him. When they saw him, they hardly recognized him. They started crying, tore their robes, and sprinkled dust on their heads. They sat on the ground with him for seven days, not saying a word. Later, we find out that these friends are frenemies, but their initial action was cool. If only they had kept their mouths shut, didn't start judging, and just continued to sit quietly, in the same position as Job was. But that's for later.

Job's wife didn't want to see him suffer; it would have been better to join their children in heaven then to live with what she probably assumed as an incurable illness. It's hard to say when someone's health is so bad that they should just go ahead and die. In Job's situation, death would have been the wrong answer, so he held on.

Does that mean euthanasia is the wrong answer, Biblically, for all or most people? Maybe this passage isn't about that at all, but it's interesting evidence for one of the sides that Job stayed, and he's seen to be a good guy with integrity. Either way, it must suck to lose your health. Maybe I'll go for a bike ride today and lay off the Taco Bell....