More recent cultural shifts around gender identification and the push for transgender rights represent a profound change in society that has led to battles over medical procedures for minors and public school policy. For example, former President Biden proclaimed that Easter Sunday 2024 was also the 2024 Transgender Day of Visibility. He declared to the transgender community: “You are America, and my entire Administration and I have your back.” That this “Day” also occurred on Easter Sunday provoked outrage and anger—understandably. Arguably quite political in nature, Biden’s proclamation backfired and further eroded the legitimacy of the transgender revolution.

Zophar focuses on God’s omniscience to accuse Job, who responds with a perspective on God that rejects the singular focus of his friends.

In 1958, political theorist, Isaiah Berlin, delivered a lecture entitled “Two Concepts of Liberty,” which established two strands of thought on the concept of freedom.

Jordan Peterson is a cultural phenomenon. He has been called both “the world’s most famous public intellectual” and “the stupid man’s smart person.” His most famous book is 12 Rules for Life, which is an unusual mix of existential philosophy and common sense pronouncements. The Economist reports that an entire Peterson industry has flourished around him: There is a Jordan Peterson newsletter (“Mondays of Meaning”), a “Peterson Academy ($500 a year gets you lectures on a variety of “manly” topics) and a “self-authorizing program.”

Bildad evaluates Job’s condition through God’s justice, Zophar through God’s omniscience but Job sarcastically rebukes their incomplete view of God.

Assisted dying, the current phrase for active euthanasia, has until recently been a debate between the progressive idea of personal autonomy and the Christian idea of public morality. But, today there is less talk about the sanctity of life and the moral injury of suicide and more of a focus on notions of “safeguarding” and “informed consent.” In other words, Christian ethics rooted in the infinite value of human life is rarely a part of the debate. Let’s explore this issue in light of 21st century morality.

Job responds to Eliphaz and Bildad as they champion their retribution theology.

Over 30 years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan published his famous essay, “Defining Deviancy Down.” Bret Stephens summarizes his thesis: “Every society, the senator-scholar from New York argued, could afford to penalize only a certain amount of behavior it deemed ‘deviant.’ As the stock of such behavior increased—whether in the form of out-of-wedlock births, or mentally ill people living outdoors, or violence in urban streets—society would most easily adapt not by cracking down, but instead by normalizing what used to be considered unacceptable, immoral or outrageous.”

Eliphaz proposes the theology of retribution and Job responds.

In the 1930s, the United States pursued a policy of protectionism and isolationism. “No coincidence, World War II soon followed.” Germany’s and Japan’s neighbors were too weak to deter and defeat those fascist dictatorships on their own. They desperately needed American help, and they did not receive it until it was nearly too late. Max Boot argues that “After 1945 in the United States, the greatest generation sought to rectify that mistake by constructing a new world order based on free-trade pacts and security alliances. That approach was staggeringly successful: Democracy and prosperity spread around the world. […]”