The Lesson of Job

The story of Job may be the oldest source text in the Bible, and it’s certainly been one of the most puzzling. Bandits, fire, and a tornado take all of Job’s children, his servants, and his possessions on the same day. He lost his health and was covered with painful boils.

 Rather than comforting Job, his friends tell him he got what was coming to him. That the calamities were proof he'd done something terribly wrong - so why doesn't he just admit it? 

Often when tragedy or illness strikes, even our closest friends don’t know what to do. Partly it’s because they’re afraid of the same thing happening to them. So long as Job's friends could believe that he had done something terrible, they didn’t need worry about the same thing happening to them.

But, as Job pointed out, the objective evidence proves otherwise. 

People don’t always get what they deserve – or at least, it doesn’t seem that way. The wicked often seem to go unpunished, while good people can suffer such bad luck you would think their lives were cursed. We could argue that everyone will eventually get what’s coming to them on judgment day, but we can't reasonably maintain that everyone will be justly rewarded or condemned for their actions in this life.

Often when tragedy strikes, there's a part of us that wants to believe we are being punished for something we did wrong. Like Job’s friends, we begin to accuse our self. It's especially true when the alternatives are either believing that God doesn’t care what happens to us, or maybe there isn’t a God. Blaming ourselves can be a way of controlling what’s happening to us. We would rather blame ourselves than believe that God could be cruel or unjust. We would rather feel guilty than live in a world where human suffering had no meaning or purpose.

While Job’s friends argued that guilt was the appropriate response to human tragedy, Job wanted the opportunity to plead his case and prove his innocence. He believed that what had occurred should never have happened at all. And we can certainly sympathize with him.  After all, Job was a good man  and his suffering was very great. But just because Job didn’t understand why God  had allowed it didn’t mean he had any right to judge God’s ways or to feel sorry for himself. Self-pity is always a judgment call about God’s fairness and righteousness. We feel sorry for ourselves when we believe life (i.e. God) has been unfair to us.

Job was correct in saying that the tragedies were not a punishment for sin, but he was wrong in assuming that God was being unfair. Job had actually made the same false assumption as his three friends. The only difference was that he saw himself as someone who had - by some tragic mistake - been given the wrong payoff. He wanted an audience with God so that this terrible mistake could be rectified.

But even though Job may indeed have been a very good man, his righteousness in no way came anywhere close to God’s righteousness. As Jesus also pointed out, (Mt 19:17) “there is none good but one, that is, God.” Instead of taking the attitude that God owes us something, Jesus advised (Lu 17:10) “So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.” 

What if God sends it to rain on both the just and unjust, and causes His sun to rise on both the evil and the good (as it certainly does). What if God’s blessings should not thought of as ‘payment-in-kind’ for our righteousness - as if they were something we should expect and demand from Him, like wages for services rendered. What if His blessings are always a manifestation of God’s underserved mercy and grace, whether or not we think we’re better than other people (as most people do). And what if people suffer tragedy and illness in much the same way – not because they deserved or had it coming to them, but because God has reasons of His own?  What if the meaning of human suffering - just like the logic of God’s grace - must always remain somewhat of a mystery to us since it's outside the scope of our understanding? 

When tragedy or illness strikes, the temptation to blame ourselves, blame other people, blame the devil, or hold God at fault will always be high. Because as human beings, we want to get our mind around what’s happening to us. We don’t want to feel as if our life is out of (our) control, even though is to a large extent. We don’t want to give that control over to God. Unfortunately, the more that we give into the temptation to blame ourselves, blame God, or to blame other people, the more miserable we make ourselves, and the further we are from the truth of the matter. 

Knowing God doesn’t mean intellectually understanding His ways or why things happen like they do.The only way to really know God and His ways is by the way that He has made Himself known to us –  through faith. Faith is healing in the sense that faith connects us to the spirit of healing and wholeness - whether we call that spirit God, a Higher Power, or the power of love, We suffer when we live our life separated from God. As Christians, it shouldn’t matter whether our lives seem blessed or cursed. As Paul wrote (Php 4:12 – 13) “ I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.” We should always be seeking His love and comfort inwardly, rather than obsessing too much about the outward trials or passing pleasures of life.

In the end, Job came to realize that "those who suffer, he delivers in their suffering, he speaks to them in their affliction." God is speaking to us through the bad things that happen to us - not to accuse or punish but to draw us closer. The beginning of dealing constructively with any challenge in life is in realizing that we don’t have all the answers. It is precisely within the space of all we don’t know that we become free to draw closer to the One whom we can only know by faith.

 The moral of the story is that Job came to know God much more intimately than before through his suffering. As he declares at the end of the story, (Job 42:5-6)  “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” Previously, Job had know about God - through the scriptures, various stories, and oral traditions about God - but he only came to know God directly through faith and by way of his suffering. Job became wiser because he came to understand  more about God and His ways by appreciating all that he really didn’t know, simply because he wasn’t God. The tragedies that he'd experienced strengthened Job’s faith by centering it more completely in God alone, rather than in his own very limited understanding or righteousness.