Job 16:10
They open wide their mouths at me,
In scorn, they strike my cheek,
Together they close ranks against me.
At the wedding we went to, they played ‘Simple Man’ by Lynyrd Skynyrd. I do like that song. It reminds me that our lives are over busy in our culture, and I was inspired to make mine simpler. Our youngest is off to camp last week and another this week, so we are experiencing a little down time not taking her all over the place each night. I have ideas about what I want to put as priorities, but I stall there lots of times.
‘Open wide’ was also ‘gape’.
‘In scorn’ was also ‘insolently’, ‘with reproach’, ‘reviling’, ‘to shame’, and ‘in contempt’. ‘Strike’ was also ‘slap’, and ‘smitten’.
‘Close ranks’ was also ‘mass’, ‘gather’, ‘inflame’, and ‘crowd’.
An actress was reportedly shamed by little kids into learning to speak like a mid-western rather than a Londoner. When told, I responded with something like little kids are mean like that. My sisters were both born over there and the older one ‘spoke’ funny when we moved home. She does not speak like that anymore, but I never really wondered if anyone shamed her into doing so. It might have even happened to me for all I remember.
Peer pressure is how our culture imposes its will on everyone. Someone decides to humiliate others for being different and behaviors change. Even those who do not want to, often let the pressure get to them. Even Christians today are afraid to be on fire for Christ at work as they fear for their jobs. While there is a balance between overbearing evangelism and relating to colleagues, God asks us to rely on Him, and not ourselves, for everything, including an income.
As I have struggled all year with my shortcomings, I have seen God protect my time and my psyche. Every time I look back at my childhood, I see how He protected me from myself and my desires. My image is the people moving in to take advantage of Job’s inability to push back and they are trying to bring him down not for what he did to them, but simply because he had more than they did. People haven’t changed as everything under the sun has already happened in people’s relationships and politics. The technology is different, but there were always the haves and have nots.
I want to push back against aspects of the culture that do not align with how God wants the world to be, but I have to remember to only follow God when pushing back and not simply be pushing back to get my own way. As I seek to learn more from God through studying Job, I must remember to stay in my lane unless I am using the blinker.
Written 6/23/25, Posted 8/24/25, Job 384