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.