The Book of Jobs

I saw this human interest story on TV about a born-again Christian in his 20’s who found a job at a copy center right after he found God. “Jesus helped me get a job,” the kid said, tearfully. (Which employment agency did he go through—Son of Manpower?)

Switching channels, I stumbled across some vapid teen comedy in which one kid was being razzed by his schoolmates for working at his father’s car dealership after school. “Daddy’s Boy,” they called him. The movie had a happy ending, though. His daddy beat up their daddies.

So why is it that when your dad helps you get a job it’s called nepotism, yet when God helps you get a job it’s called faith? Your old man may have connections, but the Lord can work miracles. That’s why “It’s a miracle you got hired” is rarely meant as a compliment.

In 2000, President-elect Bush deflected charges of nepotism by stressing his faith in God: “It weren’t my daddy that helped me become prez-ee-dent,” he said. “No way, José—it was God. G-O-D-D: ‘God’.”

I’m not saying you should brag if Pops pulls some strings for you. I’m saying you shouldn’t brag if God Almighty, Lord and Master of the Entire Freaking Universe pulls some strings for you. Bragging that God got you a job is like bragging that Wolfgang Puck poured the milk for your cereal. Impressive, sure, but why didn’t you just do it yourself?

I was taught that God helps those who help themselves. That’s why “God got me a job” doesn’t impress me. What would have impressed me is if the kid had said, “The Lord has blessed me with a strong body and a healthy mind, so I decided it was time to shut off the X-Box, get off the couch, and find a job!” That way, his parents’ prayers would have been answered instead.

But for me, asking God to take a break from answering prayers in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip just to help you not botch an interview for minimum-wage employment is silly and arrogant. And so what if God got you a job at Kinko’s? He made Justin Bieber a millionaire! (On second thought, that was more likely the work of God’s downstairs neighbor.)

And so what if you have faith in the Lord? You’re supposed to. That’s what good Christians do. Now, how about having a little faith in yourself? Instead of praying you get a certain job, how about working hard, studying hard, paying your dues, writing a knockout resume, preparing for the interview, showing up energized and looking sharp, and then earning the job by proving you’re the best person for the job. Then, after you get the job, you can pray that your boss’s dad didn’t get him his.

Faith in God brings inner peace and happiness to a lot of folks whose lives might otherwise feel empty and hopeless, so I can understand why good Christians are so prone to babbling endlessly about their faith. Whenever I have coffee and beignets at Café du Monde in the French Quarter of New Orleans, you can’t get me to shut up about it. And although I haven’t been to church in a long time, I’m guessing that a caffeine and sugar buzz has nothing on the Holy Spirit.

So although I understand it’s the responsibility of every good Christian to “testify,” what I don’t understand is why anyone with an ounce of self-respect wouldn’t feel ashamed to publicly credit the most powerful being known to man for helping him do things any normal, responsible human being should be able to accomplish on his own. Thanking God for curing your cancer? Check. Thanking God for keeping your children safe? Check. Thanking God that the utility company didn’t shut your lights off? Don’t thank God—thank the US Postal Service for delivering your check on time even though you waited until halfway through your five-day grace period to mail it in. (Then again, if the US Postal Service delivered your payment on time, then that is definitely a miracle—so go ahead and thank God after all.)

Yes, God does want you to find gainful employment so you can take care of yourself and your loved ones. But if you want God’s help finding a job, God has already given it to you: God created the person who created the person who created the person who created the person who created Linked-In. So log on, create an account, upload your résumé, and shut the hell up, for God’s sake!

Although it’s important to have a good relationship with God and have faith in the plan he has mapped out for you, it’s not going to hurt you to fight your own battles every once in a while. If God wanted to be your answer to everything he wouldn’t have created the person who created the person who created the person who created the person who created Google. To draw a comparison, although most of us need and crave the support of our parents and probably wouldn’t be where we are today without that love and support from our parents, there comes a time when we all have to stop having our parents support us, stop having our parents fight our battles for us and stop having our parents bail us out of trouble.

For me, that time will be next year on my 50th birthday.

Faith is not hard to understand. You love your Heavenly Father, your Heavenly Father loves you, and your Heavenly Father can fix anything because he is a master of space and time. That’s easy for me to relate to because I love my earthly father, my earthly father loves me, and my earthly father can fix anything because he has a Craftsman toolbox. And, if I were to get a flat tire and my earthly father offered to change it for me, I would love my earthly father even more, believe in him even more and be even more grateful that he is in my life. What I wouldn’t do is tell everyone I know that I let my 73-year-old daddy change a tire for me.

Meaning, just because I love my dad, believe in my dad and receive strength from my dad doesn’t mean I still expect him to solve my problems for me or that I’m going to run crying to him every time something goes wrong in my life.

That’s what my mommy's for.

God help her.

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