Job

Peculiar People: Job, and the End to Easy Answers

June 24, 2007

Ralph DiBiasio-Snyder

Having never been a parent myself, I have great admiration of and sympathy for all of you who are. My observation is that you brave souls are called upon to do the impossible just about daily, and manage to do it pretty well! Like answering questions your children pose. There seem to be three categories. The first is questions that have answers; they just don't happen to be in your head, at the moment. "Dad, why was the moon so huge last night and so small tonight?" You once knew the answer, and even understood it at the time, but now for the life of you you can't remember!

Then there are questions you DO know the answer for, but you'd rather go a different direction. My mom would do that sometimes. Every so often the milk would taste different to me, and I'd raise the issue. "Mom! This milk tastes funny!"

"Oh," she would say matter-of-factly, "The cows have gone to a different pasture, and so the milk is different." I believed that for a long time . . .

Then there are, of course, questions that children - and adults - ask for which there ARE no answers. "Why did God let grandpa die?" There must be an answer to that. But we don't know it. NOBODY knows the answer to such questions. Not the wisest, not the most pious person who ever lived. except, presumably, God, who is not telling.

But even when God is silent, we like to speak for God sometimes, don't we. We call such answers "easy answers," "pat answers." "Why did grandpa have to die?" "Because God must have needed him in heaven." It's an answer all right. But it's just made up. We're just guessing, and would be better off admitting it.

Why there is real, undeserved, unrelenting suffering - unspeakable tragedy - in a world where we really do believe exists a loving, powerful God is a question that humankind has wrestled with from time in memoriam. And many so-called "answers" have been offered. Which brings us to our man of the hour: Job.

The story of Job in the Hebrew scriptures is there, I believe, to say once and for all that the hurtful answers that are offered by Job's "comforters" are just plain wrong. More on that in a moment.

You've heard, no doubt of the "patience of Job?" Let's hear his story again, and see just how patient he really was.

The story of Job is a LONG story! It is 95% poetry - page after page, chapter after chapter, of poetic speeches by Job, by his friends, and in the end by God speaking out of a whirlwind. The poetic dialogue is set up by two prose chapters, and concludes with another chapter of prose. Chapters one and two set the scene, and begin like any good story should:

Job 1:1 There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.

A perfect man - no, really - a perfect man - is living on the earth. That's the premise repeated again and again. He has done no wrong.

In the heavenly court one day appears all the "heavenly beings," including one whose job it seems is to find fault, to test people. He is called "the Accuser," and - with God's permission - tests hapless humans to see if they are really who they appear to be. (By the way, PLEASE don't build any theology on the portrayal of God in this section. This God is light years away from the God Jesus taught us about. But that's another matter!) On this day in the heavenly court it is God who brings up this perfect man, Job. He has caught God's eye - it is not the Accuser who brings up Job. Listen:

Job 1:6-9 One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the Lord, and Accuser also came among them. The Lord said to the Accuser, "Where have you come from?" He answered, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down in it."

The Lord said to the Accuser, "Have you seen my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears me and turns away from evil."

Why does Job serve God? Is it simply to get God's blessing? For him being good has brought great reward! He's rich, he has a great family, the respect of all . . . . Would he serve God if his life was suddenly in the toilet? That's the Accuser's question; a question apparently even God can't answer.

It is a fundamental question here, not just for Job, but for us, for everyone religious. Why do I believe? What do I get out of it? Do I seek to serve God because I think I will be rewarded for it - in goods or happiness or the admiration of others? A "heavenly home" perhaps? Just why AM I here today, in church? "Does Job fear God for nothing?"

The story goes on to tell of the fall of Job from the very pinnacle of his world to the pits. He begins rich in every way: a large, loving family, healthy, wealthy beyond counting, admired by all, even admired by God - Have you seen my servant Job? There's no one like him! Step by step Job loses it all: First, his possessions - his cattle and sheep are all destroyed. Then his children are all killed in a terrible storm. How does Job react?

Job 1:20-22 Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshiped. He said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.

Job seems perfect . . . perfect in patience and allegiance to God. So far. But the Accuser is not done with Job. Job then contracts a terrible skin disease - he's covered with painful boils. His children are all gone; his wealth is gone; now his health is gone. His wife advises him to curse God and die. But Job says,

Job 2:10 "Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?" In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

You see why we use the phrase, "the patience of Job." He is the man who once had it all, lost it all, finds himself literally sitting on an ash heap, scrapping his boils with pieces of his broken china for a little comfort - and yet he doesn't complain. And yet he doesn't lose faith.

What a guy! But we've only begun the story. Even Job's patience did not last. The rest of the book reveals a much more complex man - a man much more like me, like the rest of us. Job complains. Loudly. Persistently. Defiantly, about God. And in his complaint he raises some of the most fundamental questions about faith, about God, about suffering and evil, about the justice of God, the nature of God . . . and about "easy answers" to life's most crucial questions.

Job 3:1-6 After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. He said: "Let the day perish in which I was born, and the night that said, ?A man-child is conceived.' Let that day be darkness! May God above not seek it, or light shine on it. Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds settle upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it. That night?let thick darkness seize it! let it not rejoice among the days of the year; let it not come into the number of the months!

That's a discouraged man. But an honest man, wondering why all this has happened to him.

But soon his friends show up. A good thing, right? Wrong.. Supposedly they come to give comfort. But they give none. Instead, here come the simple answers; here come the pat answers that many pulpits still dole out today, valiantly attempting to defend God, to explain the inexplicable, to answer the unanswerable rather than admit and accept the mystery.

You see, the four friends - Zophar, Eliphaz, and Bildad, and later the younger man, Elihu - they have figured it all out for Job. Sure, he appears to be a righteous man, but he must have secret sins! For if he were sinless - here's the answer - then these horrible things would not have happened to him. If you live right, nothing bad will happen to you. Listen to Eliphaz:

Job 4:7-9 "Think now, Job: what innocent person ever perished? Or where were the upright ever cut off? As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same. By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of his anger they are consumed.

On what planet has Eliphaz been living? Has he never seen the innocent suffer? Has he never watched the evening news, read the latest report of this bombing, that accident, this earthquake and that tsunami? Then he offers this bland and condescending piece of advice:

Job 5:17 "How happy is the one whom God reproves; therefore do not despise the discipline of the Almighty."

The teaching that if you disobey God, God will punish you; and if you obey God, God will reward you ? the doctrine that truly righteous people are healthy and happy and protected by God, while sinners suffer and get sick and die early, miserable people that they are ? such ideas deny what happens in the real world. For here in the real world bad things do happen to good people and to bad.

We associate that kind of punishment-and-reward teaching with church people. But curiously the very same idea has risen recently in the form of the book and movie you have may heard of - if you watch Oprah Windfrey - The Secret. The Secret's "law of attraction says that "we attract into our lives the things we want; . . . we create our own circumstances by the choices we make in life." [www.oprah.com/spiritself/slide/20070208/ss_20070208_284_102.jhtml] That is, you bring on your own suffering and your own success. If you are suffering or sick or unhappy, it's your own fault! You've done something to bring it on, Job! Sinners get punished; good people don't. That's the pat answer that is offered to poor, innocent, suffering Job.

The arguments go on for another 37 chapters - the friends trying to convince Job that he must have sinned - he must be the cause of his own downfall. And Job - convinced that as the prologue to the poem stated several times he HAS done no wrong. God himself has said that - repeatedly! He has done nothing wrong. And Job is bold to demand an explanation.

And we wish for one as well. We want so badly to "make sense" of senseless events. We wish with everything within us to explain the world, to make it fit somehow into a pattern, a scheme where everything has a purpose, a reason, and where Someone - God - is "in control" when our world seems totally out of control. We long for that.

But faith must never be stubbornly closing our eyes to the world, pretending that all is well. Rigorous faith seeks the truth, protesting sometimes even to God, as our friend Job does so well. And in fact in the conclusion to the book God affirms Job's honesty and boldness, and roundly condemns the comforters who offered up the easy answers, the false answers. Listen to this verse from the very last chapter:

Job 42:7 After the Lord had spoken to Job, he said to Eliphaz, "My wrath is kindled against you and against your friends. For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has."

Job spoke the truth; not his friends! Not that he got an answer from God! Unless you call this an answer, a sort of answer. In chapter 38 we read,

Job 38:1-7 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me. "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements?surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?

You can read for yourself the four chapters of God's speech "out of the whirlwind" after which our man Job confesses,

Then Job answered the Lord: "I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. You said, ?Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you declare to me.'

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I relent, for I am but dust and ashes."

Job gets no justification from God for the tragedies of his life. And we get none either. But Job is allowed to ask - he is even commended by God for asking, boldly. And so are we allowed to ask. And this brings us to the conclusion of the matter, to point of Job's story.

Because faith is not so much in finding the right answers, as in asking the right questions, and then living those questions with courage and hope and joy. Faith is not closed certainty, but an open willingness to hear afresh the "God who is still speaking" to our day, to our world.

May Job's boldness inspire us to ask, to seek, and to find the holy presence of a living God in our lives. Amen.