Sunday, February 8, 2009

seeking to understand...dreams 2

In the quest to understand the "unusual" and how dreams help inform our insights, here is a time when a friend of Job, who is bereft of family, fortune and covered with weeping sores, comes to help Job 'come to his senses'.
Job 4:12ff Eliphaz recalls a whisper, a dream, a vision, a form that had physical effects on him to make his hair stand on end. The form spoke to him to crystallize an important question "Can a mortal man be more righteous than God?, Can a man be more pure than his maker?. If God places no trust in his servants, if he charges his angels with error, how much more those who live in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who are crushed more readily than a moth"!

Job is not charged with wrongdoing to bring about the distress he is undergoing, but his three friends are determined that the righteous don't suffer and that Job has hidden sin and guilt; something worthy of God's negative attention.

There must be a perception that right standing before the Holy One is reflected in unblemished living as proof of God's favor. It is obvious that its not necessarily the case but its interesting the lengths we can go to, to validate our perceptions with visions and dreams. The book of Job, known to be the oldest book in the Bible, begins with a friends discourse looking to the paranormal to explain the 'normal'.

(Psalm 8:5/Heb2:8-10)If we examine the questions raised by the "form" we can see that as man is a little lower than the angels, we are lower in rank and as the "vision" infers, high in the risk of wrongdoing.
Jude 5-6 "And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day".

It would seem that the "form" had inside knowledge of the fallen status of angels. The "form" may have originated from the pit of Hell itself, calling into question the human form who readily attracts destruction.
Can a "form" give the insight we look for? Do we look to the paranormal to give us light for our path, and help us make sense of our world.

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