Denial is “refusing to admit into awareness that which comes from one’s environment—e.g., what others say or do.” Job did this in Job 3. Repression is “the exclusion from awareness of troubling psychic contents.” Both definitions are from C.W. McLemore. Denial shuts out the outside; repression, what comes from within. Our fellow griever, Job, resorted to all defenses and later exposed an outward armor, in the face of God Himself.
“Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breasts, that I should nurse? I call Job’s lament, “the exaltation of futility.” “For then I would have lain down and been quiet; I would have slept; then I would have been at rest.” Job 3:13-15
What was happening with Job? Every unconscious mechanism for the preservation of life seemed to effect its cover-up all at once, including a tough exteriored religious-duty filled response; but Job’s true colors shown brighter in the ongoing. Outrage, shock, embarrassment, self-justification, resentment and even hatred could not hide their hideous display. The cover-up program was wearing off.
Oh, but all of his children were dead, one might argue, his livelihood wiped out, his health touched hopelessly. Yes, and personal death invited itself daily for the repose of his soul, for the peace of raucous frantic, quell of grating gruff. Hell itself thrived in the psyche of the Job man; strident, disorderly, riotous, full of noise.
In every man resides a fire-fight with heaven, it must be revealed to that man. In men are tactics of enmity, abhorrence of their Maker, Proverbs 8:36 teaches “all they that hate wisdom love death.” The love of death, the glorification of it, press in on the bashed and battered, the squashed and deeply shaken. These still embrace the abject “unfairness” of life, their wounds carry the tune of “injustice.”
It’s the curse on mankind, the death that passes on all men, the consequence of sin-rankled genetics, that stymies man’s understanding. The very idea of final death, and after that the judgment, is not digestible without a Savior. Though unpalatable, many try to live a civil existence without God. Devils lurk for that man’s day of vengeance toward God, and his inner torment latently grows.
But, Savior, He can move a mountain, Our God is mighty to save! How? He takes advantage of the hypnotic state of bashing debris and draws us to a saving alteration. His kindness, understanding, explanatory perspective and compelling compassion un-secret a prior-unknown escape. It’s through a death-door too, but one that He endured for us. It’s an entrance-way into true bliss, with God’s reality supporting, justice and judgment concur with it.
It’s the cross which Paul “died daily,” the death certificate of the old misery-bent, depravity-monging, hatred spewing, repugnater. The enmity is destroyed between God and man. Thankfully, we have owned our loathing, but now it dies in our acknowledgment.
Why did we have to see it and own it? Perhaps this is the meaning of “Job’s” book. The under-cover, covert man of blind-spotted “unreality,” must now take center stage. Said in secret now shouts from mountaintops. We were living the life of “out of sight, out of mind.”
Finally, we face sovereignty, God’s. “Gird up thy loins now like a man: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. Hast thou an arm like God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like him? Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.”
Sovereignty, Oh it is precious! My soul shall then live in the unbelievable re-establishment of shattered parts. The self-sovereign demon in me eradicated, my right mind re-found, I surrender in rest. I embrace the new identity, my will is restored. His Sovereignty controls all and exposes any impotent self-control. My future peace is secured by Him. I could never have done a thing by myself. Love ya
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