231 – Mind Your Own Morals

Neither Job nor his friends had much Bible background to go on. Based on what little knowledge the Book of Job demonstrates about God, Job’s main source of information about God was the Book of Enoch, where he heard about God in the heavens with the “hearing of the ears”, but had never seen God Himself. Abraham likely learned “righteousness” from Job’s example.

Job knew what it meant to be a “righteous man” and he sought to be “righteous” himself. But, until Elihu rebuked Job and his friends, and until God showed up, neither Job nor his friends understood from personal encounter. Throughout most of the book, Job and his friends develop their own self-made ideas about why God does what He does and, of course they accuse Job. Job’s error was his indignation. Job’s friends’ error was their accusation against Job, becoming “accusing satans” themselves. The truth they all missed was their need for guidance from above.

People may try to impose their self-made moral code onto you—partially dismissing morals from above, partially imposing their contrived morals, always accusing you of both intolerance and immorality. Don’t join them. Don’t help them. Speak up, represent yourself, don’t quietly agree to be agreeable.

If others want a moral code for themselves, that’s their business, their choice, their results, and their prerogative; but so is your choice of a moral code.

One of the most shameless impositions of proven-to-fail, man-made morals is the outlawing of basic spanking to discipline children, yet at the same time spending public funds on government programs to help children behave better when they grow up. Another imposition is the social taboo of being naked for simple bathing purposes in public bathhouses, but encouraging evermore sexual encounters with multiple people under the mask of “liberation”. Spanking is not abuse and being naked with like kind is not strange, but as societies confuse and reverse these, crime increases, immorality and related diseases spread, and birthrates decline.

You don’t need to criticize the evident results of self-made morals, but you don’t need to hail them either. Job prayed for his friends who criticized him with their self-made standards. Follow his example as Abraham did.