I was recently at a busi­ness func­tion at a local swim­ming pool; the same that I used to swim in as a child. While there I took notice of the div­ing boards that I remem­bered jump­ing off of. There are two div­ing boards, a low one and a high one. Back then the “high dive” absolutely ter­ri­fied me. I dis­tinctly remem­ber the fear I used to have jump­ing off of that div­ing board; so much so that I prayed to God each time I climbed that lad­der and walked to the edge of the board. “Please,” I asked, “see me through this.”

While I still have issues with heights I have to admit look­ing at that “high” div­ing board at present didn’t nec­es­sar­ily impress me all that much. Inside I shook my head in dis­be­lief at the child who thought it was so big a deal that his very sur­vival depended on pray­ing each time.

In our per­sonal lives some­times Jesus brings us to the cross road. The place where we need to change course and walk in faith. I’m going through that right now and I can admit that it can be scary. I have been pray­ing, “Please, see me through this.”

I’ve been think­ing about that div­ing board and feel­ing that, twenty-five years from now, I’ll look back and shake my head at the man I am now and say, “why were you so wor­ried over some­thing as lit­tle as that?”

This year brings us the cold­est win­ter in twenty-five years and along with it, a new Akai album, The Cold­est Hour is Just Before the Dawn. As their pre­vi­ous album Pretty Songs About Ugly Things was a favorite I was more than eager to give their newest out­ing a lis­ten. In doing so I found it to be a fas­ci­nat­ing artis­tic state­ment. I hadn’t nec­es­sar­ily planned to review a music CD here but then again it isn’t too oftent that I have so much to say about one. In the case of Akai’s lat­est, repeated lis­tens con­tin­ued to bring cer­tain themes into focus and indi­vid­ual songs opened to reveal an unex­pected look at the mind­set of the Jehovah’s Wit­ness religion.

Before get­ting into the deeper dis­cus­sion it might be best to start on the sur­face with the stan­dard genre pigeon-holing and band com­par­isons.  The Cold­est Hour could be filed under indie-pop.   Musi­cally, it has the char­ac­ter of early Belle & Sebas­t­ian, owing more to the promi­nence of trum­pet and glock­en­spiel with the occa­sional spacey synth to any­thing else.   It terms of song con­struc­tion and vocals it reminded me of a more epic ver­sion of the quaint Twin-Cities band, the Owls.

The first impres­sion of this album is that Akai’s pen­chant for writ­ing “pretty songs about ugly things” car­ries through from their pre­vi­ous album.  Though it lacks the genius pop pro­duc­tion val­ues of its pre­de­ces­sor, The Cold­est Hour still does an admirable job, with a sparkling, melodic pre­sen­ta­tion.   Since the release of the last stu­dio album Akai’s mem­ber­ship has swelled to a eight piece live act.   While still fun­da­men­tally a duo-effort of the husband-wife song­writ­ing team of Hiromi and Rob­bie Mat­sumoto, The Cold­est Hour is more of an ensem­ble piece.  So sup­port­ing instru­ments like the glock­en­spiel and trum­pet are present on the major­ity of the tracks shar­ing ground with the stan­dard drums, bass, and gui­tar.   This cre­ates cohe­sive­ness through­out the entirety of the album, stitch­ing the indi­vid­ual tracks together as a com­pos­ite work; though it often has the unfor­tu­nate side-affect of giv­ing many of the songs a cer­tain degree of sameness.

In my opin­ion, The Cold­est Hour is bet­ter looked at as an art object rather than sim­ply a music album. Artis­ti­cally designed, co-produced and co-written by gifted painter Hiromi, this sec­ond LP release from the Akai is unabashedly a con­cept album. I don’t know too much about eval­u­at­ing art so I hope that I can be excused for any mis­teps in putting together my thoughts in this regard.

The open­ing song begins the descent into evening with other songs fol­low­ing through the night lead­ing to the final song which pro­vides hope­ful glim­mers of the new day emerg­ing on the hori­zon. Promi­nent lyri­cal themes revolve around the night, dark­ness, and cold­ness. To exem­plify these themes the music is often plod­ding with tired and list­less vocals, dis­tant cham­ber cho­ruses, somber brass lines, and the twin­kle of bells to add a touch of winter.

Mov­ing for­ward from these sur­face impres­sions we begin to unravel the piece to see what mean­ing the artist has inter­wo­ven within the musi­cal tapes­try. With con­ven­tional modern-art the artist might dis­till their work to a suc­cinct tagline. In this way Akai describes The Cold­est Hour as,

A dynamic jour­ney through the hours between dusk and dawn, ‘The Cold­est Hour’ echos a mélange of reac­tions to a dark spot in human his­tory with melody and metaphor.

This leaves the viewer, or in this case lis­tener, with the job of expand­ing on the mean­ing the artist is attempt­ing to con­vey, an effort that is often clouded by his own expe­ri­ence, back­ground, and emo­tion.  Review­ing art is a very sub­jec­tive effort.

In this par­tic­u­lar case it is help­ful that I share the same back­ground of the artists, hav­ing been raised within the Jehovah’s Wit­ness religion.   While it is true that the band makes no out­ward pro­mo­tion of their reli­gion, their beliefs have made an indeli­ble mark on the album.   From my per­spec­tive, The Cold­est Hour is best under­stood as an artis­tic, reli­gious state­ment, some­thing that may not be grasped by other listeners.

When I lis­tened to their first album, Pretty Songs About Ugly Things, I thought that it reminded me of the Bible book of Eccle­si­astes.   It seemed to express the futil­ity of the human endeavor (“every­thing is van­ity”) though not with­out some degree of hope.    The Cold­est Hour ampli­fies the pes­simism to eleven while ton­ing down the hope con­sid­er­ably.  It presents a dis­mal view of life prac­ti­cally void of any joy and warmth.

In the artists’ view we are in a cold, dark spot in human his­tory; a time period  that Jehovah’s Wit­nesses believe to be “the last days”.   The gen­eral ici­ness of the songs might be attrib­uted to spend­ing a freez­ing Min­nesota win­ter in a poorly heated home but it is more aptly a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of how Jehovah’s Wit­nesses view the world around them and their place within.     In that view the only good exists within the reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion, every­thing out­side is viewed with sus­pi­cion, pes­simism, and occa­sion­ally disdain.

In con­sid­er­ing the The Cold­est Hour from this per­spec­tive it would be ben­e­fi­cial to first con­sider the track, “Morn­ing Fol­lows The Night”. Com­ing in halfway through the record­ing, it acts as the cen­tral the­sis for the album proper, mak­ing a direct the­o­log­i­cal state­ment about the album’s con­cept. Using some­what muted, reli­gious metaphor the lyrics fol­low the fall of man into dark­ness, a tran­si­tion from day to night. It looks long­ingly toward a time of edenic renewal where they’ll “replace the old with some­thing new”. Such a tran­si­tion comes at the destruc­tion of present. “We’ll tear it down / we’ll burn it up / we’ll use the fire to light the world”. The themes of the fall and redemp­tion of mankind are not with­out Bib­li­cal basis, how­ever the response of the Wit­nesses to all of this, reveals a lack of under­stand­ing to what Jesus has to offer in the imme­di­ate present.

Whereas the Bible has light enter­ing the world with Jesus, those in the Jehovah’s Wit­ness reli­gion are still hemmed in by the dark­ness; the cho­rus repeats the imper­cep­tion that, “dark cir­cles our lives.”  This can be con­trasted with Paul’s words to Chris­tians, “For you were once dark­ness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as Chil­dren of the Light”.   (Eph­esians 5:7,8)  To uphold the power of the dark­ness is in con­tra­dic­tion to the truth spo­ken in Scrip­ture that “the light shines on in the dark­ness, and dark­ness has never put it out.” (John 1:5)  Fur­ther, it is a tragic mis­step to not give con­sid­er­a­tion to Jesus’ com­pelling state­ment, “I am the light of the world.  The one who fol­lows me will never walk in dark­ness.”  (John 8:12)

Accord­ing to Wit­ness the­ol­ogy will dark­ness always pre­vail?  No, the song expresses a hope that morn­ing will “some­day” come to end the dark, but such a time is elu­sive and the hope, incor­po­real.  In the face ever present dark­ness, the lyrics repeat­edly call for the need to have “a reminder that the morn­ing fol­lows the night”. It well char­ac­ter­izes the gen­eral weari­ness felt by mem­bers of the reli­gion who have lived with the unfilled hope that the present world would soon end and be replaced with a par­adise.  Rather then see them­selves as “chil­dren of the light” per the scrip­tures, the artist uses the term “midnight’s weary chil­dren” to describe those that have grown men­tally drowsy after so many long hours and pass­ing bed­times with no new day in sight. The his­tory of Jehovah’s Wit­nesses has been one of repeated expec­ta­tions for cer­tain dates to bring forth the end of sor­rows of the present and a tran­si­tion into a new world of tomor­row.  This song well high­lights the  increas­ing inse­cu­rity of a reli­gious com­mu­nity that is now near the cen­ten­nial anniver­sary of 1914, the piv­otal date of their prophetic chronol­ogy, with a long interim of failed hopes in between, and now no end in sight. With their eyes always pointed to the uncer­tain future they miss out on the tan­gi­ble real­iza­tion of what Jesus has offered for nearly two-thousand years.

Before mov­ing on to look at how this the­o­log­i­cal con­ven­tion is con­veyed in the other songs we can give atten­tion to the pur­pose­ful album art. The album cover is a hand drawn illus­tra­tion by Akai front man Hiromi and car­ries on the imagery of album depict­ing a stark, win­tery night.  The artists illus­trates the moon (a nod to the night) look­ing down upon a slight anthro­po­mor­phic rein­deer (a nod to the cold).  (As a side note, the moon and the rein­deer, also seem to be a depic­tion of the two Akai leads.)     In the illus­tra­tion the doe is sur­rounded by men­ac­ing wolves, one of which holds a rifle toward her.   Again this must be seen as a par­tic­u­lar reli­gious view point.  Jehovah’s Wit­nesses exhibit a siege men­tal­ity, con­sid­er­ing the entire world out­side of their orga­ni­za­tion as “lying in the power of the wicked one”. They believe it acts as  a con­spir­acy designed to rob them of their faith and lead them with the rest of the world into destruc­tion.  Per­haps more specif­i­cally, mem­bers of the reli­gion are con­di­tioned to see any who are crit­i­cal of the move­ment as rav­en­ous wolves.  In the face of such dis­tress the dis­po­si­tion of the doe  is rather abject.   In regard to the par­tic­u­lar tri­als of the last days Jesus invites his fol­low­ers to “lift up your heads, because your deliv­er­ance is draw­ing near.”  (Luke 21: 28)  While Jehovah’s Wit­nesses believe they are liv­ing in the last days they do not exhibit that con­fi­dence and joy but rather lin­ger­ing doubt, fear, and trep­i­da­tion.   The scene offers no hope of deliv­er­ance for the doe who lan­guishes in despair.

With the cen­tral the­o­log­i­cal state­ment cov­ered we can give con­sid­er­a­tion to how the other songs uphold a dis­tinct Jehovah’s Wit­ness world­view. The Cold­est Hour opens with “When the Sun Goes Down”, it acts to set the stage for the bleak, dis­mal night. When the sun vacates the sky, dark­ness pre­vails, and wicked­ness advances. Pre­sum­ably speak­ing on behalf of those that wel­come the dark­ness, Akai sings “we won’t have to fight, the con­science of light / when the wrongs become right” ; “we don’t have to see the stains of care­free ways / on our hearts and our names”. The song again reflects a semi-veiled hope for the destruc­tion of the present and a time of renewal and res­ur­rec­tion; “when the fires are lit and we burn up the past with it / friends will arise to light up our smiles.” How­ever such a time is elu­sive, a fad­ing camp­fire long­ing, as the pro­gress­ing night brings bit­ter cold, push­ing away any warmth. The destruc­tion of mankind is touched on again as the morn­ing draws near. In this new day the “hun­gry sun­rise”, a con­sum­ing fire, will catch the wicked by sur­prise, lead­ing to their demise. Despite the tragic sub­ject mat­ter, the fall of man and the destruc­tion of the wicked, the song inter­est­ingly ends with an unfeel­ing cho­rus seem­ingly mock­ing the pass­ing of the world, lead­ing to laugh­ter.   I don’t know if this is meant as an expres­sion of joy of the com­ing day or an eerie look at how Jehovah’s Wit­nesses cal­lously, and quite eagerly await the destruc­tion of every­one save for themselves.

I am unde­cided if the song “Satel­lite” should be viewed as a self-assessment on the part of the artist or yet another exam­ple of the writer adopt­ing the first-person per­spec­tive of those out­side of the reli­gion, a com­mon song­writ­ing tool used by Akai.  It is per­haps both.  The songs speaks of judg­ment, but not so much inter­nal con­vic­tion, but that which comes from the out­side.   The lyri­cal image con­veyed is of an orbit­ing satel­lite cap­tur­ing “the best and worst of life”.  As a source of ever present, ex-terrestrial judg­ment, the satel­lite might be seen as a stand-in for the Wit­ness con­cept of Jeho­vah God.  As the “satel­lite” snaps pic­tures of the singer, he won­ders what the ver­dict will be. He is con­cerned if he will he be viewed as a “loved or hated man”.

The singer intro­spec­tively gives the descrip­tion of him­self as pos­sess­ing a “dark side” which he wor­ries about being exposed.  The end of the song offers a cyn­i­cal expec­ta­tion for the state of the man; he will grow older and his sins will become more appar­ent, but he looks for­ward to the morn­ing when he will expe­ri­ence a renewal of the 0ld man within.   This is illus­tra­tive of how Jehovah’s Wit­nesses often view them­selves in the face of con­tin­ual divine judge­ment.  They are aware of the dark­ness around them and of their own repeated fail­ings to live up to the ten­ants of their reli­gion but have no idea how to over­come.   They feel resigned that they will have to wait for a future par­adise, where they will be cleansed of their sin and be made new. This is con­trary to the good news preached by early Chris­tians. Speak­ing of the cur­rent state of those who have Jesus, Paul writes, “There­fore, if any­one is in Christ, he is a new cre­ation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Cor 5:17)  Because they have no appre­ci­a­tion of the right­eous stand­ing offered by Jesus they live in a con­tin­ued state of fear of adverse judg­ment.   Their stand­ing before God is ten­u­ous, where they feel that they can eas­ily slip from being a man “loved” by God, to one who is “hated”, ready to be con­sumed by the fires of ever­last­ing judgment.

In the song “Drifted” the artists par­tic­u­larly tip their hand to their Jehovah’s Wit­ness reli­gious dis­po­si­tion   This marks the third time a ver­sion of this song (pre­vi­ously called Adrift) has appeared on an Akai release if you count their 0.5 EP.  The song opens with the lines,

“I’ve lost all faith in your once friendly smile / now that we’ve been away for awhile. / I’ve heard rumours of your inde­pen­dent thoughts / though we’ve never fought my mind’s spinning.”

The Orwellian con­no­ta­tions of the term, “inde­pen­dent thoughts”, are not lost on any­one who has had an expe­ri­ence with the strict con­for­mity of think­ing demanded of by Watch­tower lead­er­ship.  Within the reli­gion, “inde­pen­dent think­ing”, is loaded cult-speak specif­i­cally used to describe any ideas out­side of the expressed dogma of the Wit­ness leadership.   Even if you don’t express such inde­pen­dent thoughts, mentally hold­ing them can be grounds for dis­fel­low­ship­ping or expul­sion from the reli­gion thereby sev­er­ing all con­tact with Jehovah’s Wit­ness friends and fam­ily  through orga­ni­za­tion­ally enforced shunning.

This lyrics of “Drifted” tell about a for­mer friend of the band who went “drift­ing away” with “inde­pen­dent thoughts” lead­ing to a severe, even harsh, per­sonal rejec­tion by the artist.   When Rob­bie sings “I used to call you my friend” it speaks vol­umes of the way that per­sonal rela­tion­ships within the reli­gion, no mat­ter how close, can be instantly and totally sev­ered by the wit­ness.   Whereas the pre­vi­ous incar­na­tion of this song was pre­sented with a twinge of sad­ness at the state of the rela­tion­ship, the new heavy-handed ver­sion comes across as angry and scathing.  Vit­ri­olic vocals are under­scored by a dron­ing drum beat and a wash of dis­torted elec­tric gui­tar. In the end the song is petty and full of hatred, emo­tions  stand­ing squarely against Jesus instruc­tion to “love your ene­mies.” (Matthew 5:44)

A scene from a Jehovah’s Wit­ness book for chil­dren illus­trat­ing Armaged­don. The ground opens to con­sume non-Jehovah’s Wit­nesses includ­ing a small child.

“An End Deserv­ing” brings a vin­dic­tive view of a degen­er­ate world ready to be destroyed.  The imagery con­veyed by the lyrics, while some­what veiled, paint a typ­i­cal Armaged­don scene from the Wit­ness pub­li­ca­tions.   The Wit­nesses live with the expec­ta­tion that the end of the world is com­ing and will bring with it the destruc­tion of all those who have rejected them and their message.

The cal­lous­ness by which the Wit­nesses view the world around them are typ­i­fied in the lyrics of the song that speak to a recip­i­ent of the com­ing judgment.

Like a sui­ci­dal plane, / Falling from the sky again, / Sec­ond thoughts won’t stop the tailspin.

Once the judg­ment begins there will be no oppor­tu­nity for repen­tance; destruc­tion is imminent.

And as the ground starts clos­ing in, / You start to lose your solid grin, / As you reminisce.

On the sur­face these lyrics con­tinue the imagery of a crash­ing plane headed toward the ground.  Per­haps on a less overt level it calls to mind a visual motif in a Wit­ness Armaged­don illus­tra­tion of the ground open­ing up and swal­low­ing non-Witnesses.   In this vin­dic­tive mind­set those who are fac­ing their end will lose their con­fi­dence and think back to the mes­sage they rejected.  They will feel regret but it is too late to stop their death.  Again, this end is expected for every­one who doesn’t accept the mes­sage of Jehovah’s Wit­nesses and join their religion. What is the reac­tion to the death of their neigh­bors, work­mates, and acquain­tances on the part of the Wit­nesses?  They con­clude it to be “an end deserving”.

The final track on the album, “As Long as it’s Tomor­row”  is a depar­ture in tone and in style.    An older song writ­ten and sung by Akai drum­mer Reed Sut­ter it seems selected for it’s suit­able chrono­log­i­cal set­ting rather then the mes­sage which is some­what dis­cor­dant from the other songs.

The song is set dur­ing an all-night road trip just before day­break.   Just as the album begins with the sun­set it now ends with the sun­rise.   In this way it car­ries over the cen­tral state­ment of the album that there is a morn­ing that fol­lows the dark night, a new tomor­row.  Dur­ing this drive the singer describes catch­ing sight of a city on the hori­zon that is “hope­ful”, yet “hazy”.  Again this cap­tures the uncer­tain hope that Wit­nesses man­i­fest toward future.

Oth­er­wise, the approach to the sub­ject mat­ter is quite dif­fer­ent.   With the Hiromi/Robbie songs there is a cer­tain detach­ment to the world around them as they paint rough car­i­ca­tures, often falling into deri­sion and mock­ery of human­ity out­side of their reli­gion.   Theirs is more of an accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of how the Jehovah’s Wit­ness com­mu­nity views out­siders, approach­ing them with a cer­tain level of dis­in­ter­est, save for attempts to con­tact them for poten­tial con­ver­sion into the reli­gion. On a sur­face level their man­ner and appear­ance is care­fully con­structed to “give a wit­ness”.  They may appear kind and well man­nered to out­siders but it is super­fi­cial to the extent that  Jehovah’s Wit­nesses are dis­cour­aged from cul­ti­vat­ing any close rela­tion­ships out­side their reli­gion.  Out­siders, no mat­ter what their back­ground or dis­po­si­tion, even those who believe in Jesus and live moral lives, are branded as “worldly” or “bad asso­ci­a­tion” to be avoided.

To the con­trary the final song on the album pro­vides a more empa­thetic view of those who are trav­el­ing down the same road as the singer/narrator.   Dur­ing the sec­ond stanza he describes catch­ing sight of a Cana­dian fam­ily trav­el­ing along side him.  He expresses a cer­tain curios­ity and empa­thy for this fam­ily as he “wonder[s] what’s their story.”  He is curi­ous if “they love each other”. He won­ders if the sleep­ing chil­dren have just expe­ri­enced “their great­est day”.   He won­ders if the par­ents have been fight­ing, before empa­thet­i­cally offer­ing his hope that they all will be okay.

If the dri­ver is singing from a Jehovah’s Wit­ness per­spec­tive this offers a more cau­tious, curi­ous look at those shar­ing the road of life, rep­re­sented by the Cana­dian fam­ily, those for­eign to him.  It is inter­est­ing that he pic­tures them dri­ving toward that same hope­ful city on the hori­zon, whereas the other Akai songs would more likely have the car crash­ing and burn­ing.    He also offers his per­sonal hope that the fam­ily is happy, lov­ing, and doing okay which stands against the pes­simistic view of a human­ity with­out any good which is on dis­play in the rest of the Akai cat­a­log.  Through­out the song there is a per­cep­ti­ble qual­ity of warmth which is much appre­ci­ated after being drug through eleven songs of a very cold, bleak view of humanity.

In the end, The Cold­est Hour pro­vides a rare glimpse of the under­ly­ing psy­che of Jehovah’s Wit­nesses.   They have not come to embrace the light offered by Jesus, and exist in the same dark­ness they see the world embed­ded in.  Their response to this “cold­est hour” is to fear­fully with­draw, pull down the shades, hud­dle by the fire and wait for the morn­ing to come and remove the rest of human­ity so the Wit­nesses can live hap­pily ever after on a par­adise earth.   But as the night drags on, and the cold becomes over­whelm­ing, they strug­gle to stay awake, and fear that their faith will not hold out and they will be swept away along with the rest of the world.

As the album con­cludes it holds out hope but maybe not nec­es­sar­ily in the way intended by the Jehovah’s Wit­ness artists.  While cold, high con­trol reli­gious groups can sti­fle the flame of com­pas­sion, joy, love, and peace within their adher­ents there will be some who are still able to shine brightly and sin­cerely touch the lives of oth­ers.   This brings to mind Jesus who eschewed the reli­gious of his day and warmly embrace those that were con­sid­ered as sin­ners and dirt by the proudly pious.   The best evan­ge­lism tool is still sin­cere love and com­pas­sion, qual­i­ties that are often inhib­ited within Jehovah’s Witnesses. While the album as a whole is rather depress­ing the end encour­ages me that just as the dark­ness has never over­come the light there will be those whose true hearts will not always be bound up with the chains of false religion.

On a per­sonal note I have a debt of grat­i­tude to one mem­ber of Akai who dur­ing a dark spot in my life shined the light of love so brightly that it touched me and changed my life for the bet­ter.   Now that I know the source of that light it pains me that indi­vid­u­als like this are con­fined and are con­strained from truly walk­ing in it.  Yet I end this with hope, that for these ones the dawn will soon come and the day star will rise in their hearts.     I love you and look for­ward to the time when we can be see each other again.

It’s bound to hap­pen. Some­one, some­day is going to falsely accuse you of some­thing. No doubt it has already hap­pened; prob­a­bly more than once. One of the chal­lenges that Chris­tians face is how to react in such a cir­cum­stance; when we are being ver­bally attacked, accused, or just straight up put-down. The nat­ural reac­tion is to defend our­selves and make quick jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of our actions, nature, or char­ac­ter. Of course as we find in many instances the nat­ural reac­tion is not nec­es­sar­ily the Chris­t­ian reaction.

When I say the Chris­t­ian reac­tion, I mean the reac­tion of Jesus, because “Chris­t­ian” should mean “like Christ”. So then what would Jesus do? In his Ser­mon on the Mount Jesus taught, “But I tell you not to resist an evil per­son. But who­ever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.” (Matthew 5:39) I think it is mis­take sim­ply to take this verse and apply it to a phys­i­cal assault and con­clude it has no rel­e­vance to a ver­bal attack. In the same dis­course, Jesus takes the Old Tes­ta­ment law of “do not mur­der” and extends it to include speak­ing abu­sively of another. (Matt 5:21–22) If this is true, that Jesus’ words do apply to all forms of con­flict, then when­ever we are spo­ken against we should not seize the oppor­tu­nity to mount a defense but rather to turn the other cheek. This was the exam­ple Jesus him­self set. Note what was writ­ten about Jesus in the face of accusation:

“And while He was being accused by the chief priests and elders, He answered noth­ing. Then Pilate said to Him, “Do You not hear how many things they tes­tify against You?” But He answered him not one word, so that the gov­er­nor mar­veled greatly.” — Matthew 27:12–14

The early Chris­tians, under the teach­ing of the Holy Spirit, saw this was the ful­fill­ment of what the prophet Isa­iah had writ­ten, “He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaugh­ter, And as a sheep before its shear­ers is silent, So He opened not His mouth.” (Isa­iah 53:7)

This proved true beyond his trial unto his exe­cu­tion, where the Son of God, hung from the cross as a crim­i­nal was mocked, defamed, and insulted by his exe­cu­tion­ers, onlook­ers, and even the crim­i­nals that were hung next to him. Dur­ing this hor­rific trial he spoke nei­ther a word in his defense or against his accusers. Instead he sim­ply prayed for them to be for­given. (Luke 23:24)

In look­ing at this issue of how to respond in the face of unjust accu­sa­tion we have a whole entire book of the Bible that deals with this very thing, the book of Job. Though the basic story might be a famil­iar one with a knowl­edge of the Bible the over­all themes of the book might be over­looked. I know myself that I didn’t grasp some of these though I have known the Bible story from child­hood. For those unfa­mil­iar, the book of Job deals with a right­eous man that falls into hard­ship through no fault of his own. His friends arrive and pro­ceed to falsely accuse him, say­ing that his mis­for­tune was the result of his own unright­eous­ness. Unbe­knownst to Job, their accu­sa­tions against him are sim­ply the charges of his invis­i­ble, pri­mary accuser, Satan.

Though we may be accus­tomed to think of Satan as a name, really it is only a title, which in Hebrew means accuser, just as Devil car­ries a sim­i­lar mean­ing in Greek. This is the pri­mary role that this crea­ture plays. In Rev­e­la­tion he is depicted as a great dragon and is called “the accuser of our broth­ers” (Rev­e­la­tion 12:10) It comes as no sur­prise then to find Satan act­ing in such a func­tion within the open­ing chap­ter of Job, as he charges Job with self­ish­ness and impro­pri­ety in his ser­vice and wor­ship of God.

What is inter­est­ing to me though is not Satan’s charges but what God him­self says about Job. In the very first verse of the book it con­tains this spec­tac­u­lar sum­mary of the him, “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name [was] Job; and that man was per­fect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil” (Job 1:1) When Satan enters before the throne of Heaven to chal­lenge Job, the Sov­er­eign LORD him­self reit­er­ates that Job is “per­fect and upright” (Job 1:8) It is amaz­ing to con­sider that endorse­ment; because I can­not think of a big­ger praise of char­ac­ter than to declare some­one perfect.

So was it true that Job, a mere human, was with­out defect? I have to think that as a fallen man Job made mis­takes; but what this shows is how we see each other or our­selves is not nearly as impor­tant as to how our Heav­enly Father views us. At Romans 4:17 it says that He “calls those things which be not as though they were.” It is com­fort­ing to see how the Father can exer­cise such faith with us and see us not as we are but as we are to be when we are raised in the immutable glory of Jesus.

In the book of Job, Satan is allowed to test Job’s char­ac­ter by bring­ing him into suf­fer­ing. Why does God allow this? Is it sim­ply to prove a point? I don’t believe that. One of my favorite chap­ters in Scrip­ture is Romans chap­ter 8 as I have found it incred­i­bly encour­ag­ing in times of trial, suf­fer­ing, and accu­sa­tion. In verse 28, Paul makes an insight­ful dec­la­ra­tion, writ­ing, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God.” In say­ing “all things” he makes a very broad state­ment. This shows that any­thing we face, be it good or bad, can con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of “those who are the called accord­ing to His pur­pose.” Just as this is true of us it was also true of the author of our faith, Christ Jesus. The book of Hebrews tells how Jesus was “made per­fect” by the things he suf­fered and by the tests he faced. (Hebrews 5:9)

The major­ity of the book of Job is a dia­log between Job and three so-called friends. These men seek to attribute the suf­fer­ing and mis­for­tune that has befallen Job as indi­ca­tor of unright­eous­ness and inad­e­quacy on his part. Job responds, the nat­ural way, by defend­ing him­self against these alle­ga­tions. After the end of the long ver­bal con­flict between the four, a younger man named Elihu finally begins speak­ing with the wis­dom of God. In doing he chas­tises Job for his self-righteousness, self defense, and his claim­ing “I am pure, with­out trans­gres­sion; I am inno­cent, and there is no iniq­uity in me.” (Job 33:9)

This begs the ques­tion, what was so wrong with Job’s state­ment? Wasn’t he sim­ply telling the truth and speak­ing the very thing that God him­self said about him? Yes; how­ever, the truth is that in times of accu­sa­tion it is not up to us to defend our nature but rather it is God who jus­ti­fies us. Con­sider that in the very first verse of the book, before there was ever a charge, Almighty God declared Job right­eous. What could any mere human add to that or what could any other crea­ture take away from that? Noth­ing. To me that is why the rest of the book of Job con­sists of both Elihu and God him­self extolling his Sov­er­eignty and His merit in way that made Job rec­og­nize that he was in con­trast very, very small.

As Rev­e­la­tion 12:10 brings out Satan did not leave off his job of accus­ing the peo­ple of God — he con­tin­ues to make accu­sa­tion and some­times this comes through the mouths of humans, even those near to us. Even the dear apos­tle Peter fell into speak­ing the words of Satan to the Lord Jesus. (Matthew 16:23) This is all part of our own being made per­fect in the image of Jesus. This is where the power of Romans chap­ter 8 is par­tic­u­larly felt. I would like to con­sider just a few of the verses.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? (v. 31)

This verse in itself can sud­denly make any adver­sary seem very, very insignif­i­cant com­pared to the Cre­ator of the Universe.

He who did not spare His own Son, but deliv­ered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? (v. 32)

What then can any­one accuser take away from us if God gives us all things includ­ing his most pre­cious pos­ses­sion, his son Jesus.

Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who jus­ti­fies. (v. 33)

Again we con­sider that is not we who jus­tify our­selves but rather it is God who jus­ti­fies us.

Who is he who con­demns? It is Christ who died, and fur­ther­more is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes inter­ces­sion for us. (v. 34)

The small­ness of any who con­demn and bring a charge against the elect of God is self-evident com­pared to the almighty power of the Most High.

In our con­sid­er­a­tion of Job 1:1 and in Romans 8:31 we saw how God acts as advo­cate on our behalf. Here Paul points out that we have yet another one mak­ing inter­ces­sion for us, Jesus. Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we do not have a High Priest who can­not sym­pa­thize with our weak­nesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet with­out sin.” Jesus, our High Priest, actively defends us in face of our critics.

Ear­lier in Romans 8:26, Paul brings out yet a third-party in our defense, the Holy-Spirit which inter­cedes on our behalf. In his part­ing words to his faith­ful dis­ci­ples recorded in John chap­ters 14 through 16, Jesus promised this pow­er­ful advo­cate would come to be us for­ever. (John 14:16)

We do well to keep in mind that when­ever we face the accuser we then have three pow­er­ful advo­cates on our behalf, our Heav­enly Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Imag­ine if you will, Satan stand­ing before the throne of the Almighty as pic­tured in the book of Job speak­ing some­thing against you. No mat­ter what charge he raises you have the Father, Jesus, and the Holy-Spirit speak­ing in your defense! To me that is such a won­der­ful and thrilling thought!

So what hap­pens now when one of his earthly mouth­pieces brings a charge against us? Again, it does us well to try and imag­ine what we could pos­si­bly speak on our behalf to add to the what is already being voiced in heaven by the Father, Jesus, and the Holy-Spirit. In cases like this it good not to fall into the sin of Job, self-justification, but rather to remain silent and let these three pow­er­ful advo­cates act on our behalf. In doing so we leave it to God to rec­on­cile mat­ters rather than to take mat­ters into our own hands.

So then when we are being spo­ken against even cursed, are we sim­ply to do noth­ing? Well it is true that we should fol­low the exam­ple of Jesus and say noth­ing at all in our per­sonal defense; but, as the oppor­tu­nity presents itself we can take a more con­struc­tive course. How so? Jesus tells us that we should, “bless those that curse you”. (Luke 6:28) In view of this Paul encour­ages Chris­tians to, “Do not be over­come by evil, but over­come evil with good.” (Romans 12:21) Ulti­mately, this serves in the best inter­est of our­selves and those who would accuse us.