By Eric Blauer
“For God has cut my bowstring” – Job 30:11
That phrase in the book of Job captures the utter desperation everyone will feel at some point in their life. The whirlwinds of devastation, suffering, abandonment and the asphyxiating presence of doubts, fears, evil and regrets will find us.
Job is arguably the oldest faith story in the bible and it wrestles with the maddening mysteries that bite to the bone of human experience. The raging storms of life, loss of loved ones, failing health and dissipating wealth, all work to upend our spiritual equilibrium.
When Understanding Collides
The desire to understand what is going on in our lives and why the God we thought we knew collide. We will come to places where we feel like we are standing in sand at oceans edge. Our footing is being pulled out to drowning depths and yet the constant incoming waves of familiar spiritual truths push us back toward the stability of land.
The characters are all familiar, the “friends” whose theology is neatly packaged to pad them from the anxious tensions that religion and reality often weave. The “adversary” that embodiment of malevolent resistance and assault is ever working to accuse us as actors and benefactors in the cosmic battle of worship. We are ‘fakers and takers’ echoes in heaven’s court and Satan, has plenty of evidence to prove it.
Soon suffering exposes us, and those close enough to us, to the parts of our inner lives that have been poorly shuttered. Pain penetrates the cracks and soaks us in a melancholy of meaning that words rarely ease. I think that’s why the very first apologetic is silence, which should always be our first response to the problem of evil and suffering.
“Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and nights. No one said a word to Job, for they saw that his suffering was too great for words,” Job 2:13.
Evidence Emerges
But silence eventually clears the tumultuous waters and out emerges our charges to the court. The evidence starts being laid out, first it’s a charge against our own failure to be who we were supposed to be. We are indicted in the trial of tragedy. All the reasons that these things shouldn’t happen to us spill out, as all the reasons it should, also attack us. Then as we exhaust that docket, we turn towards the God who could of prevented our problems. The book of Job unleashes all these charges with the emotional vengeance of a spouse betrayed.
I believe this story is meant to be a tool to gnaw upon, like a Buddhist Koan or Christian parable, it’s beckons us to look deeper, despair greater and abandon the illusionary views of ourself, others and most critically God.
Towards the end, we finally see God take the witness stand. He willingly shows up in Job’s storm with the gift of His presence, probably the most profound answer to the problems presented in the book in my opinion. But he doesn’t stop there, He delves into the mysteries not of Himself, but the created order.
“Then the Lord answered Job from the whirlwind:v“Brace yourself like a man,vbecause I have some questions for you,vand you must answer them,” Job 40:6-7.
The Divine
It’s a divine cosmos series of talks that describes the complexity and chaos of the universe. A place where only an all knowing and all powerful God could weave together the impact and influence of finite and infinite beings in a redemptive invitation to rest, yet, not in mere human understanding but the simple trust of faith, hope and love.
It’s a defense that causes Job to once again bow in humble surrender and confess:
“I have uttered what I did not understand..I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes,” Job 42:3, 6.
God Speaks
Then in one last moment of deep revelation that is meant to be held in the mind and heart as one begins the arduous journey of reading the rest of the biblical story, God spanks Job’s friends:
“After the Lord had finished speaking to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “I am angry with you and your two friends, for you have not spoken accurately about me, as my servant Job has,” Job 42:7.
Such is the challenge of theodicy, it’s a conversation that often ends up speaking about realities we just can’t fully understand and ends up inaccurately representing God. But that’s part of the education of life that is required for growth. I invite you to delve into Job’s confessions for yourself and brood over it until God visits you with wisdom, understanding and surrender.
Thank you, Eric. Today I opted for some silence and was able to hear God speaking to me through your words, which are much appreciated and deeply convicting.
Thanks for reading the article Mark I’m grateful to be a small part of a meaningful moment. Writing on Job just felt like hubris but it moved me so much this time through it. It’s good to hear some good came out of my attempt to capture my thoughts.
Thanks, Eric! There’s a lot of messages in that book, to be certain.
I love what pastor Tim Keller says: @timkellernyc: “The Bible has answers-but if we really let the Bible speak we may find that God will show us that we are not even asking the right questions.”
Convenient.
The whole purpose of the response from god isn’t to show anything to Job about suffering or why it happens. It’s a non-answer. God, in his all-powerful, speaking-from-whirlwindness could have easily given a legitimate reason about why suffering happens. He could have easily distilled his reasoning into our tiny brains – or, even better, made our brains bigger to accept those reasons. But he doesn’t do any of that. He says “shut up kid. how dare you question my authority!” like an abusive father to an inquisitive child.
And why is god so insecure as to enter a bet with satan? Why does god even let satan exist? According to his own story, he has no problem with mass genocide, several times over, and once at his own hand, yet he allows this “accuser” to go run amok over Job’s health and family over some petty wager. Why does Job have to suffer in order to prove god right when god has all the power in the universe to do that himself? Is he incapable? Unwilling?
“But he restored Job!” Drunken husbands buy their wives gifts after beating them, it doesn’t make them decent people. God, again, with all the power, never had to put Job in a place where his lot would be destroyed.
God in that story let Job’s family be slaughtered to prove a point, and then doesn’t even make the point! If that story is true, it depicts an a malevolent child playing with the lives of humans the way cats play with mice. Certainly not an entity to whom we should bestow honor.