Tag: questions

Talk About Trouble: Chapter 24, Part 3

Well, Job asked the question, whether it was right of him or not. Why doesn’t God do something about this?

Let’s remember where Job is at this point in his life. He has been robbed. What was not stolen, he has lost to natural disasters. He has lost his children, his entire staff, and his business to thieves and tragedy. And then, if that weren’t enough, he got sick. Very, very sick. He is on his deathbed sick. He is facing the probability of leaving his wife behind widowed, childless, and completely unprotected.

And nobody got in trouble for any of it.

I can’t say I understand completely, but I understand some.

Last year, our van was stolen right out of our driveway. That van was a gift to us; we could never have afforded to buy it on our own, but by the generosity of some of our family, we were gifted this vehicle that allowed us to take our children camping and on road trips and all over the city with their friends. It fit all of my brother’s kids and mine, comfortably. It could tow our little camper to the mountains and fit suitcases, Christmas presents, and the dog for a holiday with family. And it was ours. The kites my kids had bought with their own money were in it, and my husband’s tools were scattered all through the back. The stickers they had stuck to their doors against the rules were right where they left them. My husband’s sunglasses, my pens, the bag of nickels leftover from a birthday party at Nickel-A-Play. Even the lingering stench of that time somebody forgot a gallon of milk in the car on a hot day, and it burst. Ours.

And they took it. Partied in it. Wrecked it. In one night, the van we had scrubbed, repaired, modified, and loved with our own time, energy, and money was destroyed by someone who gave nothing for it.

But this is the United States, right. So the thieves would have to pay for it, right. We have a criminal justice system. People don’t get away with stuff like that here.

Nope.

Oh, make no mistake. They were caught. We know their names. Their faces.

We never saw a dime of recompense. Our insurance, who we pay, paid for some of the replacement. We paid for the rest. The thieves paid not. a. dime. They were teens, see. So they were let go.

After talking to other victims of crimes whose perpetrators, though clearly proven guilty, went free, I grew stunned at the lack of consequences for crime, even in America. Child abusers who left children permanently handicapped, free. Men who locked up their wives and threatened to kill them, free. Rapists, free. Drug dealers, free. Thieves and swindlers, cheaters, murderers, bullies, free.

If the government has no teeth, then what reason does anyone have not to do these things?

That is the question Job is asking, too. If God does nothing to the rulebreakers, why should anyone follow his rules?

This is his path back down the mountain: he is trying to take this new revelation he’s had at the top and understand what it means for life at the bottom. What is interesting to me is that this discussion is mirrored in Romans 6 under the new revelation of God’s plan for salvation by grace through Jesus Christ:

Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God’s grace.

Well then, since God’s grace has set us free from the law, does that mean we can go on sinning? Of course not! Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living.  (Romans 6:14-16)

Job has seen a need for a mediator – that need would be fulfilled in Jesus. He has expressed faith that because this need exists, God will meet it – and that declaration of faith became a beautiful prophecy of the coming Messiah that Jesus would fulfill. Job is, thousands of years before Jesus was born, going through a conversion experience in which he moves his faith for salvation from himself to Jesus. And like those who would put their faith in Christ thousands of years later, the process of transitioning from a life under law to a life under grace created some confusion in his theology. One of the first things most new followers of Jesus ask is, “So – if Jesus took the punishment for our sins – can we just do whatever we want, then?” Funny, I don’t think that was the end goal of the cross.

But if God shows grace to wrongdoers, then what does it matter what I do?

Look at Job puzzling over the same question. It’s like grace confuses people no matter what their cultural-linguistical context.

So if God does not directly punish the wicked, if that’s not why we’re doing this, is there any other reason to be good? Is there any reason not to take whatever we want, knocking down anyone who gets in our way? Does it even matter what we do? If we are all treated the same by God, why shouldn’t we just follow our impulses and live for no one but ourselves?

I mean, it’s a fair question, no? Maybe not one we humans are *quite* qualified to answer. We maybe have some biases and desires that *might* skew our thinking from rational to rationalizing. But then again, when has that stopped us from trying?

Job begins to consider what happens to people who do what God forbids. He begins to try to use his human reasoning to understand God’s reasons.

So when God does not intervene, what is the fate of wicked people?

But they disappear like foam down a river.
    Everything they own is cursed,
    and they are afraid to enter their own vineyards.
The grave[a] consumes sinners
    just as drought and heat consume snow.
Their own mothers will forget them.
    Maggots will find them sweet to eat.
No one will remember them.
    Wicked people are broken like a tree in the storm. (Job 24:18-20)

Job observes that for one thing, “everything [the wicked] own is cursed.” The pleasure their riches afford is diminished by the psychological torment that comes from how they are obtained; “they are afraid to enter their own vineyards.” Paranoid, constantly watching over their shoulder, these people can hardly enjoy anything they’ve taken because they are so worried about who might want revenge. What is the point of having power, of having riches, of having the medal or the award if it had to be taken by force? Valuable things lose their worth when they are cheaply obtained. They become a thing of terror rather than a thing of joy.

In Romans, Paul says it this way: “Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey?”

That sounds like a rotten consequence. But that’s not all.

For an extra kick, he says, “No one will remember them.” Not even their own mothers, apparently. Now, I look at this and think, Pretty sure we remember Hitler. I wonder, then, if the translation does not really do this passage justice. There are many different ways to remember someone, and one way we use this word is to say we miss someone who is gone. When we choose to remember our fallen soldiers who laid down their lives for us, it is with reverence. When we tell stories about our grandparents to our children, it is with love. We respect these people. We miss these people and wish they were still here with us.

Funny, I don’t know a lot of people who miss Hitler or wish he was still here. There are a lot of people, actually, who rejoice that he’s gone. Most of us just let out a huge sigh of relief when someone as dangerous as he is stops being a threat. It’s not even about whether or not we like him or hate him or if everything he did was bad. It’s how he affected our lives overall; it’s that he was a problem, a big, scary, demanding problem, that has finally come to an end. Would we have preferred redeemed? Some of us who dream of an ideal world, yes. Would we take just gone gratefully? Yeah, that’ll have to do. Maybe that’s what Job is saying. Folks, nobody’s going to miss cruel, selfish people when they’re gone. Not even their own mothers.

And yet, in chapter 21 didn’t he say that “an honor guard stands watch at their tomb” and “many pay their respects as the body is laid to rest”? Huh. Maybe so. But does that mean people will actually miss them? There is a difference between acknowledging a person’s end with outward respect and actually missing them from day to day life, isn’t there.

Or maybe, and I think this is more likely, is Job saying that everyone is forgotten in the end, and the cruel are no exception. That reputation they wrecked other people’s lives to build does not last like they think it will, does it. So what’s the point? All that destruction, all that pain and suffering, and for what? Nothing, he says. They’re just the same as everybody else: forgotten.

At the end of it, Job says, they die just like the rest of us. None of the power or wealth they obtained prevents them from suffering the same fate as the people they mistreated: “They may rise high, but they have no assurance of life.” So what is the end result of a life of wicked cruelty? 1) a life of fear, 2) nobody likes them, and 3) still death.

Or, according to Romans, “You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death.”

As this journey concludes, Job finds

God, in his power, drags away the rich.
    They may rise high, but they have no assurance of life.
They may be allowed to live in security,
    but God is always watching them.
And though they are great now,
    in a moment they will be gone like all others,
    cut off like heads of grain.

Job is on his way back down the mountain, and he has concluded that no amount of riches gained, no matter how they are gained, can overpower God or buy an escape from death. If that’s the goal, cruelty failed. The only thing the wicked get for their methods is spoiled enjoyment of their wealth and others’ contempt. They do not go unnoticed by God, even if he does not move against them immediately. He gives them no special favor, even if he gives them no special punishment, either.

God treats us all the same, Job argues, no matter what we do. This is as far as his human mind can come to a rational explanation of what he has seen.

And then he concludes his observations, his evidence, his argument with this challenge:

Can anyone claim otherwise?
    Who can prove me wrong? (Job 24:25)

Say it isn’t so, Job dares. Tell me you have not seen what I have seen.

Sounds a little bitter, a little jaded, I admit. Definitely not a story you’d see on a felt board.

But can you, student of history and experience, say he’s wrong?

Talk About Trouble: Chapter 7

I said before that I’m no theologian; I’m just a word nerd with a keyboard, and I see the world through stories. I said before that in the story world, we say, “Plot reveals character.” I can’t sit here behind my safe little keyboard and judge the justice of Job’s situation or determine the value of his suffering. That’s God’s business, and I won’t attempt it. But this is a story, so what I will attempt to do is find the arc.

Stories and characters follow a pattern; they progress toward a goal, a growth, a change, an ending. We call this progression their arc. Though we often simplify it to say “plot reveals character,” I would also add, “plot refines character.” Something grows or changes or clarifies in the character along the way. No character should come out of the story the way they went in. In the story way, I see Job revealed, clarified, and refined through his suffering.

Consider where Job began: he was so afraid of offending God, so determined to never put a foot wrong and to do everything so perfectly right, he used to make extra offerings just in case his children sinned.

When these celebrations ended—sometimes after several days—Job would purify his children. He would get up early in the morning and offer a burnt offering for each of them. For Job said to himself, “Perhaps my children have sinned and have cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular practice. (Job 1:5)

Now I’m not here to tell you what he did was right or wrong. God already made that judgment – he said there was no one on earth as good as Job. He claimed Job as his own. Whether not it was necessary, whether not we too should adopt the practice – all of that is beside the point. The point is Job went from so scared to offend God in chapter one that he was making extra unnecessary sacrifices to wailing this in chapter 7:

Why won’t you leave me alone,
    at least long enough for me to swallow!
If I have sinned, what have I done to you,
    O watcher of all humanity?
Why make me your target?
    Am I a burden to you?[b]
Why not just forgive my sin
    and take away my guilt?
For soon I will lie down in the dust and die.
    When you look for me, I will be gone. (Job 7:19-21)

It seems to me, story lover that I am, something has just been revealed in Job’s heart. It took breaking it open to find it, but I think it’s what I think it is: avoidance.

All my life, I, too, have been a careful rule-follower. Can’t say I was nearly as successful as Job, but I gave it my best. I thought I had clear motives: I wanted to be good, truly I did. It was not until years later that it occurred to me there might have been a little more to it. See, as long as I obeyed the rules, the teacher never talked to me. As long as I obeyed the rules, I never made the center of attention. As long as I obeyed the rules, the eyes of the crowd would fix firmly somewhere else. As a child who was painfully shy and scared of everything, invisibility was my armor, and the best way to be invisible was to play by the rules.

But God is not easily fooled. And his goal, believe it or not, is not to avoid relationship with us. It is not the rules he wants us to obey; it’s him. Personal obedience, rather than rule obedience, requires, in fact, relationship. When I carried my rule-following avoidance technique into my relationship with God, he put his foot down so hard on my invisible armor it cracked like an egg. I was a teenager when I prayed, “Lord, tell me what rules to follow and I will follow them!” and he said, so clearly, “No. Follow ME.”

So is it possible that Job, for all his goodness, for all his integrity, for all his righteousness – still fell short of God’s heart for humankind? Is it possible he wants us to be something more than merely righteous? Is it possible… he wants us to know him?

At least I can take comfort in this:
    Despite the pain,
    I have not denied the words of the Holy One. (Job 6:10)

Job was satisfied with his transactional relationship with God. This was strictly professional: a product or service was requested, a product or service was rendered, a payment was expected. No need to interact beyond the transaction. You asked me to do this, I did it, I get my reward. He’d done all the right things and gone on about his merry way, satisfied that God would accept his gifts and sacrifices, that God would be appeased. But was God satisfied with only that, and no more? Since when has the real God only asked to be appeased? Was that his goal in making mankind in his image? Do we only want our children to appease us, or do we hope to enjoy something more from them than that? Don’t we want to know and be known by our children? Doesn’t it bring us joy to know them, to guide them, to watch them grow into themselves? Does God maybe want the same?

God had given Job so many good things, and Job had been content. But I think God wanted Job to have more. I think God wanted Job to see there was more. I think God was getting Job pruned and ready to grow in ways Job never even imagined he could. Because God’s idea of good is bigger than our idea of good. Why wouldn’t God just leave Job alone like Job had asked?

Maybe because he still had more to give.

But patience. All we see in chapter 7 is the foreshadowing of growth to come, the beginning of a character arc with the stone pulled backward in the slingshot, ready to fly – the question: why won’t you just leave me alone?

Job’s friends, though, have not finished. Shh, it’s Bildad’s turn with the mic.

Talk About Trouble: Chapter 6

Don’t I have a right to complain?
    Don’t wild donkeys bray when they find no grass,
    and oxen bellow when they have no food? Job 6:5

FOUL. Job’s response to Eliphaz can be summed up in a little yellow flag thrown on the field, in a ref’s whistle blown, in a pause of game and leveling of the field.

First of all, Job says, I am MISERABLE. I am ALLOWED to say so!

If my misery could be weighed
    and my troubles be put on the scales,
they would outweigh all the sands of the sea.
    That is why I spoke impulsively.
For the Almighty has struck me down with his arrows.
    Their poison infects my spirit.
    God’s terrors are lined up against me. Job 6:2-4

Job defends his right to feel what he feels. Eliphaz has rebuked him for his response, but Job insists it’s a fair response, that any creature would make it, that he too is allowed his anguish when he has been so deprived of what he loves.

And then he goes scaring his buddies again –

Oh, that I might have my request,
    that God would grant my desire.
I wish he would crush me.
    I wish he would reach out his hand and kill me. (Job 6:8-9)

And then, he strikes.

One should be kind to a fainting friend,
    but you accuse me without any fear of the Almighty. (Job 6:14)

Again, he’s right. Which one of them could tell him what his sin is? Which one of them has proof of his wrongdoing? The only “proof” they have that he’s done anything wrong is the circumstances they find him in, and as we have determined, converse fallacy says that’s not really enough evidence to convict a man. He challenges them to show him the evidence of what he’s done wrong because he knows they don’t have any!

Teach me, and I will keep quiet.
    Show me what I have done wrong.
Honest words can be painful,
    but what do your criticisms amount to?
Do you think your words are convincing
    when you disregard my cry of desperation? (Job 6:24-26)

Yet they’ve gone ahead and assumed his guilt without any real evidence, and Job knows they don’t even have miraculous insight from God on this matter because he knows he’s innocent, and God would defend him.

Look at me!
    Would I lie to your face?
Stop assuming my guilt,
    for I have done no wrong.
Do you think I am lying?
    Don’t I know the difference between right and wrong? (Job 6:28-30)

His friends are saying, “We know you’re guilty,” and Job is saying, “You absolutely don’t! How could you, since I’m completely innocent?! You’re not even paying attention!”

How quickly they have forgotten who Job is – wrongdoing would be completely out of character for Job, no one has come forward as a witness to accuse him of it, and they have no other indication, but they have an easier time believing he deserves his punishment than they do believing God would let him suffer for no reason. Why? Why do they ignore the body of evidence before them that counteracts their conclusion and cling to the one and only observation that supports it?

Because people believe what they want to believe.

IF Job is suffering AND Job has done nothing wrong… then what prevents them from suffering the same fate? What they are facing is the terrible realization of the limit of their control over their own lives. They always thought they could determine what happened to them, and in that thought, they felt safe. It was the same feeling I had when I believed my baby wasn’t growing because of something I had done – at least if the effect was caused by my actions, I could change my actions and change the effect. Now Job’s suffering contests that. Job’s suffering says no matter what you do, you might still lose everything. They are afraid to believe him.

You, too, have given no help.
    You have seen my calamity, and you are afraid. (Job 6:21)

Job does not yet understand their fear. He wonders if they’re so cold-hearted, so grasping, so selfish that they are afraid he’s going to ask for their stuff:

But why? Have I ever asked you for a gift?
    Have I begged for anything of yours for myself?
Have I asked you to rescue me from my enemies,
    or to save me from ruthless people? (Job 6:22-23)

And maybe they are afraid he’s going to ask for help. That would be inconvenient and unpleasant to them, that is true. It is obvious their own material and familial wealth matters to them – a lot. These men have done everything they have done to preserve it. But I think there’s a fear that runs much deeper than that, a fear that makes them desperate to cling to a belief system that puts them profoundly in control of their own futures: a fear that God might not be who they think he is, that he might not value what they value, and if he is in absolute control, he might take it all away in a moment.

Like he did to Job.

Now the question is – how can any of us stand to believe in a God like that?

I hate my life and don’t want to go on living.
    Oh, leave me alone for my few remaining days. (Job 7:16)

Talk About Trouble: Chapter 1

I have always been mesmerized by the book of Job. It was the first book of the Bible I ever started trying to read by myself, when I was about 8 and had just gotten my first ever little pink Precious Moments Bible. I picked it, I think, because the name was easy to read. Except I mispronounced it, like every child does the first time, and I’m sure when I told my mother what I was reading she found that endearing. I remember she said to me, “The book of Job can be kind of hard to understand.” Misunderstanding her, I said, “I understand it!” I thought she meant the words were hard to read. But of course, she was speaking theologically. And she was right!

I think that’s why Job has ever since been my favorite book of the Bible, although it’s not something I like to say. It sounds arrogant. It sounds like I’m saying I identify with the main character; that I, too, feel righteous and wronged. Quite the opposite, my dears, quite the opposite. I find Eliphaz the Temanite and Zophar the Naamathite far more relatable. I wish I was more like Job, but he’s absolutely baffling. I’ve returned to the book several times over the years, puzzling over the back-and-forth conversation, trying to understand what was so wrong about what Eliphaz and Zophar had to say. Why were they rebuked? I wondered. Weren’t they defending God’s justice as they had always known it? Aren’t their arguments echoed in other places – in the Psalms, in Kings and Chronicles, in Exodus, in the gospels and epistles? Doesn’t Job himself echo what they have to say? Where is the divergence of their beliefs and the truth?

Job is my favorite book because it is so nuanced, so unflattering to me, so difficult for me to wrap my head around. There is something here – it may not be something easy and it may not be something pleasant, but this little book is important, so I cherish it. In it, I find my errors. There is some mysterious truth in these pages I desperately want to understand. The heart of God is here, and I want it.

So yesterday I started reading Job again. I thought I’d just read a little, maybe a little more each day. No one else was home, a rare quiet moment for me, so I read it out loud. I feel like it hit differently that way. The emotion of the characters began to hum, to jump out of the pages. This is how the book was probably first recorded, orally, and how it is meant to be heard. It is one of those stories older than even the written word itself: some part of it dies on the page, I think, but speaking it revives it. The more I read, the more compelled I was to keep reading, to understand what on earth these people are saying. I read the whole book, 42 chapters. It upended my plans for the day, but I could not let it go. What did they say that God rebuked them? So many of their arguments are voices to my own beliefs, past and present. And God rebukes them:

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. So take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer on your behalf. I will not treat you as you deserve, for you have not spoken accurately about me, as my servant Job has.” (Job 42:7-8)

His rebuke seems wholly unconnected to their arguments in my mind. Clearly my mind is wrong. I do not like to be wrong about God; it scares me. So I dig in harder, ask the God who is never wrong to open this mystery to me. Help me, Holy Spirit, to understand things you said to men so much wiser than me!

To understand the end, we go back to the beginning.

The book of Job begins by setting the scene for a complex set of poetical, philosophical soliloquys that compare and contrast the widely held theological beliefs of the time. It asks a “what if” question, the basis of all fine literature: what if Job does not get what he wants? Does his faith, does his righteousness dissipate if he does not get his reward for it? Will the good cease to be good if justice ceases to appear just?

I don’t know a lot about a lot of things in this world, but I know something about stories. I come at everything in this world from that angle because it’s the only one I’ve got: I’m not a theologian, I’m not a historian. I’m not a scientist, an engineer, or a mathematician. I’m a word nerd story lover with an obsessive streak and a keyboard. Sorry if you’re getting tired of it, but it’s what I’ve got. This is something storytellers say in the story-making world that I carry with me into Job: “Plot reveals character.” I’ve probably said it here before. We read, we listen, we absorb stories not because we really care about exactly what happens, but because we care about how the characters will respond to what happens. We care about what it reveals about who they are. The Bible is, in my eyes, the finest piece of literature in existence in this way; it lays out the pattern clearly to show us how God has written, not fiction, but all of nature and history to reveal character – his and ours. Like a pair of good glasses that bring the world back into focus, the Bible sharpens the edges of what has happened in our past to allow us to see our God and ourselves, maybe for the first time, clearly.

Then the Lord asked Satan, “Have you noticed my servant Job? He is the finest man in all the earth. He is blameless—a man of complete integrity. He fears God and stays away from evil.” (Job 1:8)

This is where Job begins: God and the Accuser are discussing who Job really is. God claims there is no one on earth as righteous as Job. The Accuser says, “You get out what you put in, God. He’s only good because you’ve given him good things.”

Satan replied to the Lord, “Yes, but Job has good reason to fear God. You have always put a wall of protection around him and his home and his property. You have made him prosper in everything he does. Look how rich he is! But reach out and take away everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face!” (Job 1:9-11)

God, being the scientist that he is, allows this hypothesis to be tested. He knows what the result will be. But knowing that others will eventually reach the same upside-down conclusion, ready to demonstrate once and for all the error of the claim, he allows the scientific method to reveal it.

Here is the scientific question: is goodness a result of gratification only, or does it exist independently? Separated from its reward, will Job’s righteousness cease to exist? Why does he do what he does?

What – in short – is Job’s motivation?

The Accuser thinks it is health and wealth, external goodness that manifests by internal goodness – material possessions, comfort, success, honor, ease and plenty – if you would just give us all what we want, Lord, we all would be as good as Job. (Go on, tell me you’ve never heard that argument.) If, then, Job’s actions get him what he wants, only if they get him what he wants, he will continue doing them.

But God thinks there is something more. God thinks there is another reason Job does what he does. God thinks Job’s motivation is anchored in something firmer: conviction in God’s existence and consequent right to do as he chooses, and complete, pure, unshakeable trust in his Master God. Job, simply put, has real faith. Faith not in the circumstantial outcome, but in the character of God.

There is only one way to test this. They must separate the man from the reward. For the sake of clarification, for the sake of revelation, to silence the Accuser and all who would follow in his thinking, for the good of even us who would read it forever after, for a depth of just, perfect reasons beyond these, beyond what our human minds can even hold – God allows Job to be tested.

This is where we first trip.

Is this just? God allows Job to be tested. God allows Jesus to be killed. Who is this terrifying God, and what does it mean to serve him?

Job stood up and tore his robe in grief. Then he shaved his head and fell to the ground to worship. He said,

“I came naked from my mother’s womb,
    and I will be naked when I leave.
The Lord gave me what I had,
    and the Lord has taken it away.
Praise the name of the Lord!” (Job 1:20-21)

Don’t worry. This is the pinnacle of literature, the story we wait on baited breath to hear. All will be told in due time.