Persecution

Today's reading isn't the most uplifting or edifying, and not everything in the Bible will be. Job effectively lays out his defense and very specifically asks just what he had done to deserve the chaos and affliction that had been poured on him. I'm not interested in Job as much as how we ourselves act in similar situations today.

Sometime in the past 30 years or so, the term "victim" has entered into our lexicon, but in a manner radically different from prior usage. We've always had victims, but in the good old days, a victim was someone set upon by outside forces beyond their control. Examples included children orphaned by disaster, anyone upon whom a crime was perpetrated, and things along those lines. It was a fairly simple construct--if it was bad and beyond your control, you were a victim. In addition, society might give you some help, but since the very definition of "victim" implied some element of force majeure, the expectation was that YOU had better get over it and get on with your life.

Fast forward to today--we have victims of alcohol abuse (and that would be the abusers, not anyone connected with them), drug abuse, overeating, and any other type of SELF-INDUCED behavior that can be imagined. The simple element of "beyond our control" so important to the definition of a victim has been debased to include "I couldn't help myself." This starts a truly dangerous cascade of events, because once responsibility for a given activity has been shed, any guilt follows soon thereafter, and as such, it's not their fault that anything happened. 

Agree or disagree with what I'm putting forth, but contrast it with Job's appeals in today's readings. Does he claim victimhood? Does he attempt to evade responsibility? Not in the least--he goes out of his way to ask just what he had done to deserve what he received. There will always be victims among us, but before we're tempted to put that mantle on ourselves, we should probably ask ourselves the same questions Job asks and do the same inventory of our actions.

Scott