An Old Explanation Is Not Automatically a Fair One

Enquire, I pray thee, of the former age.

Job 8:8

Read Job 8. Focus on verses 3 through 10. Bildad appeals to earlier generations. Human lives are short, he says, so people should learn from those who came before them. There is wisdom in acknowledging that we are not the first to think about suffering or justice. But he has already made a terrible claim. He suggests that Job's children were handed over because of their transgression. An appeal to inherited understanding follows an accusation about dead people whose conduct Bildad has not established. The problem is not that everything old must be rejected. The problem is that age does not turn an unsupported application into knowledge. A familiar explanation can still be false when attached to a particular life. This matters because inherited sayings often reach us with affection attached. A grandparent said it. A respected pastor repeated it. Everyone in the family knows the phrase. Questioning its use can feel like questioning the people whose voices gave it warmth and authority. We can honor a person without treating every explanation they passed along as beyond examination. Loving memories do not require repeating a sentence that wounds someone unfairly. A tradition is better served by careful judgment than by thoughtless preservation. Consider a family saying that people always bring trouble on themselves, that a good home prevents every later struggle, or that a person who remains sad is refusing gratitude. Such claims may have been repeated for years. Their familiarity cannot tell us whether they describe the person currently sitting before us. Ask how the saying works when applied to an actual case. What does it assume? What evidence would it need? What part of a person's experience does it force us to ignore? If the phrase cannot survive those questions, repetition will not make it wiser. Bildad wants the authority of generations behind his answer. Job needs an answer that takes his actual life seriously. Those needs should not be treated as enemies, but inherited language must be examined before it is allowed to judge. There is no disloyalty in saying, “Someone I loved used that expression, but I do not think it fairly describes what happened here.” You can preserve gratitude while revising a judgment. The people who taught us are human. So are we. One way to honor the gift of learning is to keep learning, including when wisdom requires retiring a sentence that has been in the family longer than anyone remembers. Put It into Practice Examine that saying against Scripture and the facts of a real situation. Decide whether to keep it, qualify it, or stop using it, without turning the decision into contempt for the person who taught it.

Which familiar saying receives a free pass from you because someone you loved used to say it?

God of wisdom through every generation, help me receive inherited teaching with gratitude and discernment. Keep affection from making an unfair saying unquestionable. Give me words that honor people without repeating every conclusion they reached. Amen.