Job 38:1-7, 34-41 (NRSV)
Then the Lord
answered Job out of the whirlwind:
2 “Who is this that
darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
3 Gird up your loins
like a man,
I will question you, and you shall
declare to me.
4 “Where were you when I
laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its
measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 On what were its bases
sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone
7 when the morning stars
sang together
and all the heavenly beings shouted
for joy?
34 “Can you lift up your
voice to the clouds,
so that a flood of waters may cover
you?
35 Can you send forth
lightnings, so that they may go
and say to you, ‘Here we are’?
36 Who has put wisdom in
the inward parts,
or given understanding to the mind?
37 Who has the wisdom to
number the clouds?
Or who can tilt the waterskins of
the heavens,
38 when the dust runs
into a mass
and the clods cling together?
39 “Can you hunt the
prey for the lion,
or satisfy the appetite of the
young lions,
40 when they crouch in
their dens,
or lie in wait in their covert?
41 Who provides for the
raven its prey,
when its young ones cry to God,
and wander about for lack of food?
Job 38:1-7, 34-41 is part of the
Theophany, the speeches of God in Chapters 38-41. It cannot give an answer to
Job for his suffering, for it would remove the nature of the test. Why is it
that believing in God and following God’s commandments does not automatically
entitle one to a life of happiness? This is the question of theodicy — the
theological concept that addresses the question of whether God is just. Many
readers think of Job as a reflection upon that question. Job’s faith posits
divine sovereignty — his God is in ultimate control of the universe — and his
religious tradition posits a system of strict moral retribution: the good receive
reward and the evil punishment. Job, however, seems to be suffering the
punishments of the wicked without having done the deeds to deserve it; the
moral universe has gone topsy-turvy, and the book is an attempt to sort it out
again. God’s response from the whirlwind is the beginning of God's contribution
to that attempt.
In a hymn to God's power in Chapter 38, the Lord urges Job
to meditate upon the works of God in nature, which reveal both justice and
power. Theologically, we have a reminder that the biblical belief that creation
in its richness of life and in the variety of its forms plays an important
role.[1]
Job 38 is part of the presentation of a theophany that extends from 38:1-42:6.
It consists of the first speech. However, readers who go to Job for answers on
the theodicy question often find the Lord’s answer to Job beginning in chapter
38 to be less than satisfying. In fact, the book of Job never actually attempts
to answer the question of whether or not Job was really completely righteous,
or whether God was being arbitrary in allowing Satan to plague an innocent
believer with misfortune.
Outside the books of Job and Ecclesiastes there appears to
be very little divergence in the predominant theological view of ancient Israel
(represented best by Deuteronomy), namely — that if one is righteous, God will
reward that righteousness with a prosperous and happy life. Because there was
no clear belief in life after death in ancient Israel much before the
post-exilic period, it was essential to an Israelite doctrine of a good and
just God that this God would reward and punish both virtue and iniquity in this
earthly life. This, however, left those who felt they had suffered for no apparent
cause, as illustrated by the character of Job, puzzled over this seeming
contradiction in the way God was expected to relate to the universe. Either God
is not a God who rewards the good and punishes the guilty (and is therefore not
a particularly just God) or human beings who suffer must simply deserve the
suffering they get whether or not they can divine the cause of that suffering
in some personal shortcoming.
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind (“storm”
or “tempest”). Elihu refers to a storm in 37:2. We also see it at 40:6.[2]
Natural upheavals were a regular accompaniment of divine revelations (e.g.,
Psalm 18:7-15). Such pervasive Old Testament imagery derives from the various
ancient pre-Israelite cults of weather deities, most notably the Canaanite
storm-god Baal, who seemed locked in a centuries-long battle with Yahweh for
the loyalty of the Israelites. 2 “Who
is this that darkens counsel (“obscures [the
divine] plan” or “confuses divine truth”) by words without knowledge? Elihu also accused Job of speaking out
ignorance in 34:35. The same question appears at 42:3 (translated slightly
differently in the NRSV). 3 Gird
up your loins (which occurs again at 40:7 as part of the second divine
speech) like a man (gever “warrior”
or “hero”). The word occurs regularly
as metaphoric (and sometimes literal) preparation for any serious undertaking
(e.g., Exodus 12:11; I Kings 18:46). The image may derive from the warrior's
girding his sword onto his thigh (Psalm 45:3), or (as in Isaiah 11:5 and the Kings
passage) it may refer to the belting up of a warrior’s kilt to allow greater
freedom of movement. Naturally, the term is gender specific. I will question you, and you shall declare
to me. God is now
the one doing the questioning, rather than Job.
God refuses to submit to questioning.
God also refuses to list Job's sins.
The response of the Lord is a series of rhetorical questions that
Job cannot begin to answer, and no answer is expected. 4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell
me, if you have understanding.[3]
Eliphaz asked Job
similar questions in 15:7-8 and Elihu in 37:18. Job was not present at
creation. The author evokes imagery of primordial days when water covered the
face of the earth so that the first creative act of God was to form dry land
upon which creation could take hold (Genesis 1:2-10) and to control the power
of the remaining chaotic powers. God anchored this island of dry land that we
call earth and set it upon a sure foundation. The value placed in the Old Testament
on an earth that does not shift is no doubt due to the fact that earthquakes
were a reasonably common experience in biblical times (Amos 1:1). 5 Who determined its
measurements—surely you know! Job cannot order nature to do his bidding. He
has no power over nature, nor does he have detailed knowledge of it.
Alternatively, who stretched the line
upon it? 6 On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone
(which may be the foundation stone or it may be the capstone of the earth’s
highest mountain-tower)? The laying
of a foundation (Ezra 3:10-11) or the positioning of a capstone (Zechariah 4:7)
was an occasion for great liturgical and secular celebration, occurring at
either the start of an important undertaking or at its successful completion. The question (verses 4-6) reflects
ancient Israelite cosmology, in which it conceived the earth not as a sphere
suspended in limitless space, but rather as a rectangular plane with four
corners (Isaiah 11:12), supported by pillars, which were, in their turn,
resting on a solid foundation of unfathomable depth and substance. Such a time
of creation is 7 when the
morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings (elohim, sons of
God) shouted for joy. God set the
time for this work at the very earliest possible point in creation. Although
the celestial bodies were frequently mythologized in the OT as heavenly armies
under the command of Yahweh (giving rise to the common title “the Lord of [the
heavenly] host”; cf. Isaiah 40:26), they were also part of the heavenly court
(1 Kings 22:19-23), and as such, their responsibilities included hymning the
praises of their liege (e.g., Psalm 19:1-4; 29:1-2; 148:1-4). This is a
reference to the ancient Near Eastern belief that the stars were actually minor
gods, known elsewhere in the Old Testament as the “hosts of heaven.” Worship of
these minor gods was common in other countries (witness Assyrian Ishtar who is
the morning and evening star deity of Mesopotamia), but in the Bible they are
creatures, created by the One God as worthy of worship, such minor creatures
not being worthy objects of worship in their own right. In this passage, the
author portrays them worshiping the One God and glorifying him for his creative
power. Given all of this, of course, the point is the folly Job displays in
questioning the wisdom and justice of God. The purpose is not to demonstrate
the Lord’s righteousness within the moral framework proposed by Job and his
friends, but rather to shift the terms of the debate completely. By demanding
that Job articulate his participation in the ongoing fact of creation, the
divine response makes the point that the human self cannot serve as the point
of reference for the moral universe. The divine speech is a direct refutation
of the view attributed to (among many others) Protagoras of Abdera (c. 480-410
B.C.) that the human being is the measure of all things. Whether the author of
Job had this particular philosopher’s views in mind is doubtful,[4]
but the idea was widespread even in the ancient world. The purpose of the first
divine speech is not to demonstrate Job’s innocence, but rather his ignorance,
and the role that ignorance plays in constructing a functional morality.
In Job 38: 34-41, God shifts from describing his role in
making the created universe to pointing out the continuing care of God for
creation. 34 “Can you lift up
your voice to the clouds, so that a flood of waters may cover you? Verse 34b equals 22:11b. 35 Can you send forth lightnings,
so that they may go and say to you, ‘Here we are’? 36 Who has put
wisdom in the inward parts (hapax legomena), or given understanding to the mind (hapax legomena)?[5] Regardless of the specific translation, the sense is clear and the
author makes his point: Job knows little of what he speaks when challenging the
Divine. 37 Who has the
wisdom to number the clouds? Who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens, 38
when the dust runs into a mass and the clods cling together? The image of God
gathering the heavenly or terrestrial waters into a waterskin or bottle is one
we also find in Psalm 33:7. God is the one who brings rain, without
which nothing grows in Palestine. 39
“Can you hunt the prey for the lion, or satisfy the appetite of the young
lions, 40 when they crouch in their dens, or lie in wait in their
covert? 41 Who provides for the raven its prey, when its young ones
cry to God, and wander about for lack of
food? Psalm 37 also has the images of young
lions and ravens seeking their food from God (vv. 39, 41; cf. Psalm 104.21;
147:9). God is the one who provides prey for the wild animals and birds.
This speech portrays God as the provider of all sustenance needed by his
creation. God not only makes life, God sustains life. For this reason, Job
should acknowledge that God is the initiator and the sustainer of his life —
the author of all that is. Once Job acknowledges this fact, all questions about
the relative virtue of God’s behavior in creation become absurd. The chapter ends, as it began, completely ignoring the narrow
morality with which Job and his friends have approached the problem of his
suffering and points the argument in an entirely new direction, toward the God
whose actions in creation beggar human comprehension.
According to Frederick Greenspahn, the author of Job has
made special efforts to give all of the speakers in the book their own
voice. Each of Job's "friends"
speaks with his own distinctive vocabulary, and when it is God's turn to speak,
God's speeches have an inordinately high percentage of hapax legomena, words
that only occur once in the Bible. In fact, these speeches contain more unique
words than any other passages in the Hebrew Bible. Not only does God speak of
topics too grand for full human comprehension, God also uses a most
sophisticated and exotic vocabulary. Such unusual vocabulary makes the
translation of these speeches an exercise in the topic of the speeches, namely,
the human inability to fathom the mind of God!
Another key aspect of the book of Job is the odd disjunction
caused by the way God changes character between chapter 1 and chapter 38. In
Chapter 1, God brags to Satan of Job's complete faithfulness, his exemplary
character, and sounds every bit like a doting parent singing the praises of a
favorite child. In those early portions of the book, God is wearing the face associated
with the kindly father, the ancient of days. This God associated with agrarian
patriarchal society where the beneficent elder God reigns as judge over a
counsel of other heavenly beings (called in Job 1:6 and 38:7 and elsewhere the
bene elohim, or “sons of God”). This image was most popular in Northern Israel
as well as during the era when Israel was an agrarian tribal society ruled by
their elders. In this heavenly court God is the righteous judge who rules the
creation through force of covenant law that is, and should be, intelligible to
the average human being. This God of covenant loyalty, one can trust to be
faithful to the rules of covenant and to seek retribution only against those
who violate the covenant. This image portrays God, the initiator of the
covenant law, as an elder whose primary role is to sit in judgment of those
bound together by this law, with its predictable rules of reward and
punishment. God wears this face at the beginning of Job, leading the reader as
well as the protagonist to assume, perhaps wrongly, that God the judge will
always act in a manner that one can rationally deduce from the laws of the
covenant governing the divine/human relationship. Job assumes that he can use
the mechanisms of a court, whose prosecutor, or Satan, has accused him, to
defend himself against any charge. He believes that he has a defense attorney,
(Hebrew, go'el) or Redeemer somewhere who will plead his case for him (Job
16:19; 19:25)! In covenant law, the go'el is your nearest kin who has the covenant
right and obligation to ransom you if you are taken captive, revenge your death
if you are murdered - in short, to defend you from wrong under the law, as Boaz
does for Ruth and Naomi. Job feels he knows that he is dealing with the God who
founded this system of justice and that one can expect God to act accordingly.
How different from this image is the fierce rebuke with
which the Lord greets Job in chapter 38. Many readers wonder where this change
comes from. Is it merely Job's very human desire to know and to understand what
he has done wrong that turns God from his defender to his accuser? This seems
unlikely, given the fact that many characters, both venerated (Abraham, Genesis
19; Moses, Exodus 32), and not so venerated (Jonah) argue with God and question
God's intentions without receiving such a devastating response. It seems more
likely that Job is intentionally portraying God in two different guises, both
of which one can find elsewhere in the Bible. After Job’s lengthy protestations
of his innocence, God changes form so that the God who answers Job out of the
whirlwind is not the kindly elder. God becomes the warrior God, Divine King of
the universe at the height of his power. Seen in this form, God is not required
to rule by law. Rather, God rules through absolute power and divine right as
Creator. This aspect of God need not justify divine actions to anyone, through
law or any other means. Here God is a being of raw power that one is simply to
worship for who this God is and without question. Here, God is the Divine
Warrior King, Creator of the Universe. This God does not respond to appeals to
law. This God is more like Canaanite Baal, or Babylonian Marduk, the God of the
Storm, who vanquishes his enemies, creates the world out of the wreckage, which
the divine assembly declares King, and takes up residence in his temple, to
receive worship by all. In Job 38, God speaks to his "creature" Job -
not to his covenant partner. This God does not rule through judgment and
decree. This God rules by dazzling opponents and shifting the very ground under
their feet. Therefore, Job began in the presence of God the kindly elder. He
soon finds himself, however, at the mercy of God the Divine Warrior. Although
these two divine faces carry with them widely divergent theological overtones,
the Hebrew Bible holds both of these images (as well as many more!) in creative
tension (e.g. 1 Kings 18-19).
Job is shifting from the image of God the
"Adjudicator" to God the "Dazzler" is also central to the
way in which Israel began dealing with the problem of righteous suffering. The
older God, the God of Law, is one might expect to reward the righteous and
punish the wicked in the here and now, but as Job and Ecclesiastes in
particular, point out, this often does not happen in real life. One way to
understand what is happening when the righteous suffer is to cling to the
worship of God the Dazzler. This God, though inscrutable, is still one can
count upon to be righteous. If this God does not reveal the plan in this life, one
can still assume this God to have a plan to restore justice, perhaps in another
life. The key place that Job and Ecclesiastes occupy in the development of Old
Testament theology is that they open the door to the beginning of apocalyptic
speculation about life after death by pointing out that if God is indeed just,
then there must be some future reality in which God will balance the scales of
injustice created in this life. The key to happiness then, is not in an endless
soul searching which may or may not reveal a personal shortcoming that
justifies God for inflicting one’s suffering, but rather in acknowledging that
God is ruler of the universe and the owner of all power, and that one cannot
second-guess God concerning the uses of that power. The Israelite religion
gradually began to walk down this road as it explored apocalyptic thinking and
later Hellenistic notions of the eternal life of the soul separate from the
body. What Job portrays in its depiction of God's changing face is what
humanity experiences whenever it feels the "Redeemer," whom faith
insists must be present, is hiding. When evil seems to have overpowered good,
God the All-powerful Creator is still in charge of the universe, whether or not
the universe can comprehend exactly what God is doing.
The items of evidence used to subdue Job’s objections
throughout God’s answer to him are clear reminders of Job’s finitude, his
incomplete knowledge and his insufficient right to question God’s motives. In
passages that portray God as the elder judge of covenant law, one recounts
God’s great acts in history as the justification for human faith in God
(Deuteronomy 29; Joshua 24). In Job 38, however, the repetition of the vivid
descriptions of the great acts of creation in order to enumerate the many ways
in which God’s order of power and order of being surpass any human ability to
understand or comprehend and abrogate all human rights to question God’s
actions.
Yet, if we pay attention to how God refers to creation, we
can see the love and care God has for it, whether inanimate or animate. God is
inviting Job to consider that God remains good even while he has suffered and
experienced evil. God allows for chaos in this world, and thus opens the
possibility of reconciliation with life. Chaos is present, but it is not all
there is.
The reader has some surprise that God deals with something
completely different from what Job had asked. The point seems to be that God
has an Eternal and Infinite perspective that human beings can never have. Some
questions and puzzles of human life are beyond figuring in the context of
belief in God. The answer consists in a storm of counter-questions, all of
which point to the ludicrous limits set to human understanding. God shows Job
how many more and greater riddles lay behind life. The answer of God insists
upon the marvel of the providence of God concerning the world. Yet, the point
of the counter-questions is to help Job see that God turns a smiling face
toward creation; God cares for those creatures of which Job is not even able to
think. The whole of creation is dependent upon God. Yahweh is innocent of all
charges. The divine answer to Job glorifies the justice of God toward the
individuals God created. God turns toward them to do them good and bless them.
That is the answer to the questions of Job. Job held fast to his righteousness,
and thus questioned God. God gives the answer by pointing to the glory of the
providence of God that sustains all creation. The only answer Job gets is that
in this life, with all its mystery and suffering, he has the assurance of the
presence of God. Though Job demands an
audience with God that answers his questions, he does not get one. Yet, (Stump 2010)
he does receive an answer in a sense. He has questioned the goodness of God,
and God responds by challenging him to consider the providential care and love
God has for creation. The response of Job suggests that this encounter with the
Lord has caused Job to repent and to see God in a new way. Job seems satisfied
with the answer he receives. Faith will remain the only answer when confronted
with such questions of life and suffering. If it leads to the deepening of
character, it will become the story of a life worth telling for generations and
across cultures.
Job is in the straits of a dilemma from which he cannot
escape. Job should be in the right, even though he is also in the wrong. This
situation is intolerable and is resolved. Job shows himself to the witness of
Yahweh, taking the new step forwards with God. He is right in the upshot in
relation to his human opponents. In regard to them, he shows himself to be a
witness to the truth, and they are revealed to be liars. The fact that this God
lives is what makes it impossible for Job so long as breath remains in him, to
yield to his friends and to cease his cycle of questioning, petition, protest
and resignation, substituting deception instead at this painful point. He
writes of a flight from the strange to the true God. Job is contemplating God
meeting him in darkness, terror and wrath, that it is at the divine hands that
he suffers and yet to God that he appeals and in God that he seeks comfort. In
14:13-15 and 19:25-27, Job is looking to the point where the obscurity of the
divine rule encounters him at its most impenetrable, to the approaching
darkness of his being in death, in the underworld, with the hope in Chapter 14
and the certainty in Chapter 19 that even there he will have to do with the God
who holds him in the divine hands as his redeemer, seeing God with his own
eyes. The flight is from the God unknown in unknowability to the God whom we
hope or are sure is known in the same unknowability. R. de Pury says that the
remarkable thing about this Book of Job makes not a single step of flight to a
better God, but stays resolutely on the field of battle under the fire of the
divine wrath. God treats him as an enemy. Yet, Job does not falter and calls
upon the God who crushes him. Job’s word keeps an ear open for God to speak the
divine Word. Job must not leap ahead. He must follow with complete openness. He
must look steadily into and not past the hostility with which God encounters
him.[6]
God made no mistake in the step forward God made with this
man. From within divine concealment and unknowability, God reveals and makes
known the divine self. Yahweh is the God whose servant is Job the Edomite.
Yahweh is the one who makes this transaction with Satan which is the first
turning-point in the history of Job, and who speaks the Word of decision that
is the second. Yahweh is the one who proclaims the right of Job and transforms
his grief into even greater joy. Yahweh is the ruling subject in the history of
Job indicated in the names Elohim and Shaddai. The right of Job is his
unwearying demand for the self-declaration of Yahweh. The answer that Yahweh
gives to Job consists in Yahweh being known as Elohim-Shaddai, as the one who
even in the enigmatic character of the rule of divine majesty and omnipotence
is still the God of the particular election of Israel and therefor of Job,
before whom he can only keep silence. Job will “see” Elohim-Shaddai in the
cosmology and zoology of Chapter 38-39. We must not miss the fact that God
takes seriously the questioning man, Job. Yahweh is the covenant partner and
friend of Job. Yahweh is also Elohim-Shaddai, the Most High, the Almighty. The
point in these chapters is not that humanity should recognize divine
superiority. Rather, can humanity really think that the cosmos belongs to it?
Can humanity really think that one can order it around human wishes? Humanity
needs to respect the mystery of creation. Job sees Yahweh directly in creation.
This is Yahweh’s answer out of the whirlwind. Job will need to confess that he
is incompetent in respect of the independence of the cosmos and confess the
freedom of Yahweh in the divine rule of Elohim-Shaddai. For the reader, this is
a strange answer from Yahweh. God recognizes Job as a servant of the Lord who
has remained faithful through it all.
For
many people, suffering is the deal breaker when it comes to belief in God. We
know that in general, suffering and evil occur. For some people, pondering
suffering in humanity and in human history is enough. If God existed, if God
made a world, it would be better than this one. For others, it becomes
personal. A terrible thing happens in their lives, and something snaps inside.
How could God allow this? How could God do this?
I
reviewed what I had studied concerning world religions and suffering. For the
Hindu, suffering occurs because we have cared too deeply for the people and
things of this world. We need to practice meditation, yoga, in order to
separate from this world. We will then realize that the only proper attitude
toward the world is one of indifference. Buddhism has a similar view, wanting
us to extinguish desire for anything in this world through its four noble
truths and the eightfold path. I thought that Islam, with its connection to
Abraham, might have something like the Old Testament laments in the Psalms or
the Book of Job. I was wrong. Muslim means submission and one submits to fate
or the will of Allah, regardless of whether it makes sense to do so or not. The
religions and philosophies of China
I
guess I have come to appreciate lately the approach of the psalms and of Job.
Something is radically wrong with the way things are. We have every right to
bring our questions and even challenges to God.
I want
to be quite careful here. Anytime one attempts to speak about God and human
suffering, there is always the risk that we will sound like Job's friends. I sympathize with them, as I hope you do as
well. What do you say when a friend suffers? In particular, when they have deep
questions concerning themselves, life, and God, what do you say?
As
our attention turns to Job, a side of us likes him. He defiantly demands from
God to know why. Throughout the book, we find the imagery of the courtroom. He
demands to stand before the judge, God, and lay out his case. He says, “I do
not deserve this.”
Some
questions we will need to live with throughout our lives. If you think you can
explain all of the horrendous things that happen in life, I think you are
trying to explain too much. Our minds have limits. At some point, we will need
to have faith that God will work, in even in the midst of horror. God will be
at work, even in the things that happen that are contrary to the direct will of
God.
Therefore,
what do we learn about God from Job?
First,
Job’s God is also our God. The
speeches of God in 38-41 are difficult, but if you read it carefully, you learn
that God is infinite, eternal, and able. We are finite, temporal, and
dependent. We need to learn humility and submission. These are uncomfortable
lessons. They are lessons each of us needs to learn. We are not the measure of
all things. Job teaches us that God is measure of all things. This leads us to
make some important affirmations.
The dark day for Job, in which life placed him unaccountably
and unexpectedly in a snare of despair, despondency, and desolation, becomes
the occasion to consider the role of this one righteous man in the presence of
God. Imagine a
wrestling match. God walks to his opponent, and says, “I must break you.” The
NIV captures the throw down well: “Brace yourself like a man; I will question
you, and you shall answer me” (v. 3). Punk. In this chapter, God brings down
Job. The poetry moves in a Genesis-like creative pattern — from cosmology
(38:4-21) to meteorology (38:22-38) to zoology (38:39–39:30). God is telling
Job the only thing he needs to know: “I’m Omni; you are not.”
Omniscient: God knows all. Job, the
opponent of God here, simply does not understand enough. When we do not understand,
our inquiring minds want to know why. Yet, we are finite, while God is
infinite. Yet, Job speaks with no knowledge or understanding (38:2, 4). The
tension for us as readers of Job is that Job’s lack of understanding in his
suffering never resolves itself. The “because” never arrives. Life is like
that. We can never know the whole thing. We are not at the end of the process
of history. Only God is there.
Omnipresent: God is eternal as well as
infinite, and thus, God is everywhere, in every place, all the time. Job, the
opponent of God here, has boundaries and limits, especially in being temporal
and finite. God does not live with such limits. In fact, we could suggest that
the question of Job ought not so much to be “why” but “where.” In Chapter 23,
Job essentially wonders where God is, are you in the north, south, east, or
west. The answer God gives here is, “Yes.” After all, God has been places that
Job could not imagine. That means that Job, as he went through all his
suffering, was never out of sight from God. He may have felt alone. God was
there.
Omnipotent: God is capable of anything
God wills to do. Job, the opponent, has a limit to his power or ability to
control the world. God does not.
When
we look at the whole speech of God, God tells Job in the second speech about
the divine battle with Behemoth and Leviathan, chaos and evil. This universe is
wild and dangerous. In fact, one way to read the book at this point is that
just as Job cries out at the disorder and chaos of life, God is saying that the
divine will and power is against it as well. Things happen in the world that
does not bring God pleasure, and, this is critical, God wants to collaborate
with us to fight against it.
We
can admit that life human affairs seem guided by chaos, suffering, and evil.
Yet, in reflective moments, we look beyond it. Suppose you have a painting
before you, but someone has covered all of it up, except for a small piece. It
does not look very good. It makes little sense standing alone like that. Yet,
you are aware that it is part of a much larger picture. The same might true of
some things that happen in our lives (not all, of course). Some things that
look so bad now may turn into one part of a beautiful picture that is your
life. We cannot make sense of the segments of our lives because we do not have
the perspective of eternity.[7]
Second,
we need to be careful to appreciate our limits.
Frankly, human suffering is a necessary part of being a creature. We have
limits to our power and intelligence. We are not big, strong, wise, old, young,
or versatile enough. We have not necessarily done anything wrong that has
resulted in our suffering. We simply have limits.[8] Paul refers, rather
famously, to a messenger of Satan that tormented him. However, it kept him from
feeling too elated after he had a powerful spiritual experience. He prayed
three times for it to leave him, and the response, finally, was, in II
Corinthians 12:9, “My grace is sufficient
for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”
Third,
Job teaches us that we should continue to live faithfully, even though our
faith is wavering. We rightly ask the
Lord how long the Lord will forget us, hide from us, and allow us to bear our
pain and sorrow (Psalm 13:1-2). People often lose their bearings — emotionally
and spiritually — and begin to make decisions they later regret, with lasting
consequences. Paul suggests a quite different attitude. In his case, his
suffering was the direct result of obeying God. He boasts is suffering like
that, because he knows it produce endurance, which will produce character,
which will produce a hope that will disappoint due to the love of God that has
come into our lives personally through the Hold Spirit (Romans 5:3-5).
Adversity will occur, but it also can initiate a chain reaction that forms us
into stronger disciples.
Fourth,
sometimes you have to wrestle with
God to understand who God is more deeply. Please, do not let suffering break
the deal between you and God. God is precisely the strength and power you need
to go through the difficult times of life. Do not cut off yourself from that
power. What I am suggesting is that we need to dig deeper. If we want to take
our struggle with life to God, God can take it. Frankly, if your walk with God
does not include passion in the heart, anguish of mind, uncertainty, doubt, and
despair, your belief may be in the idea of God rather than in the God who
wrestles with you in a personal way.[9] Job wrestled with God. Have
you ever wrestled with God? Have you ever just plain struggled with God in
prayer, meditation, and study? The story of Job certainly gives us permission
to do this. In the end, spiritual unrest is a battle that teaches us about our
God and us. We can always hope that we become stronger through the fight.
The
challenge of a human life is that the real world is too terrible to admit. The
real world tells us that we are small, trembling animals who will decay and
die.[10] Most of us want to go
through life with the illusion that we are safe and secure. In reality,
approaching our lives with some fear and trembling may be a good thing. It may
force us to see our limits, both before others and before God. Frankly, a
single human life is weighty responsibility. We have this one life to live. It
will take courage. I have read of a meeting between the great preacher, George
Buttrick, and the preacher Norman Vincent Peale. One can safely say that they
had quite different approaches to preaching and Christian faith. Buttrick
supposedly said, “Norman
Toward
the end of the movie, Forest Gump,
Jenny and Forrest finally marry, with Lieutenant Dan, wearing prosthetic legs,
in attendance with his fiancée. Jenny dies soon afterward. Forest
talks to Jenny at the graveside. He has just bulldozed the house in which Jenny
experienced abuse as a child. “Mamma always said that dying is part of life. I
sure wish it wasn’t.” I imagine most of us are there. Realistically, we know
that suffering is here to stay. Suffering is part of life. We sure wish it were
not.
I want to encourage you not to give up, either on you, on life, or on God. I want to give you an example.Paul
encountered suffering as he traveled as a missionary to the gentile world. The
result was that some people in Corinth Paul
struggled with God. Yet, he arrived at a point where he could write in the
confidence that nothing could separate him from the love of Christ. Hardship,
distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or sword were simply part of
faithful people have experienced in history. He can conquer through these
things because of the God who has loved him. Thus, death, life, angels, rulers,
things present, things to come, powers, height, depth, nor anything in
creation, will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord
(Romans 8:35-39).
I want to encourage you not to give up, either on you, on life, or on God. I want to give you an example.
[1]
Pannenberg (Systematic Theology, Volume
2, 129)
[2] The
word is not the same word that describes the more famous theophanic storm in
which Elijah found himself (1 Kings 19:11) or the “great wind” that knocked
down the houses of Job’s children (1:19).
[3] Literally,
“Tell, if you know understanding,” which may reflect an ancient mythological
personification of Understanding akin to the personification of Wisdom found in
the book of Proverbs.
[4] (although
not impossible, as the book of Job has been dated as late as the third-century
B.C.),
[5]
These two unusual words could also be translated as the names of two types of
birds who give warning of approaching weather phenomena, or as the Egyptian and
Greek divinities of wisdom respectively, Thoth and Hermes. The words are
uncertain, and the translations have ranged widely. Some indication of the vast
territory explored by translators with the difficult text can be seen by
comparing the NRSV translation with the rendering in Today’s English Version
(The Good News Bible): “Who tells the ibis when the Nile will flood, or
who tells the rooster that the rain will fall?” (See Pope, 302-3).
[6]
Barth, (Church Dogmatics, IV.3
[70.1], 421-434
[7]
On the Ultimate Origination of Things (1697),
Leibniz
[8]
God and Human Suffering: An Exercise in
the Theology of the Cross, Douglas John Hall
[9]
“Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart,
without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt and even at times
without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself.”- Poet Miguel de Unamuno
[10]
Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (p.
133).
[11]
John Kennedy wrote the following about Theodore Roosevelt:
“The credit
belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust
and sweat and blood, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and
spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best, if he wins, knows the thrills of
high achievement, and if he fails, at least fails daring greatly, so that his
place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory
nor defeat.”
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