Children grow up asking “Why?” In fact, we encourage their curiosity, and we’re glad (usually) that they are questioning the cause of things. This can lead to difficulty, however, when as more mature persons, we still engage that straight-line thinking: “Everything happens for a reason.” Actually, I’m not certain whether that statement is true or it isn’t. But this I know for sure: We do not understand all of life’s “reasons.”
Job, a man in very early Bible days, didn’t either. He was known as the greatest man of all the people of the East. He had huge holdings of livestock, many servants, a houseful of children—seven sons and three daughters—plus genuine godliness. In the Scripture account, there is no stated connection between Job’s prosperity and his piety, although that is what people at the time thought, and what many continue to think even today.
Job did not know that a hidden drama was about to unfold. Before God’s throne, Satan taunted Him with the suggestion that Job was righteous only because of all that God had given him. Satan proposed a test. “Let me take his possessions and he will no longer serve you.” With God’s permission, Satan brought calamity to Job. In one day, just minutes apart, messengers came to tell Job that his flocks and herds had been driven off or destroyed, his servants killed, and all his children destroyed in a ferocious whirlwind. Still Job worshipped God. “I came naked from my mother’s womb, entering this world with nothing. Now again I have nothing. You gave me all I had, O Lord, and now, all of a sudden, you have taken it away. I bless Your name.”
Satan’s cruel experiment had failed, so next he proposed the loss of Job’s health. God again gave His permission, stipulating only that Job’s life be spared. Some dreadful disease came upon him; references in the Book of Job highlight his misery: severe itching, sleeplessness, running sores and scabs, nightmares, depression, weeping, foul breath, emaciation, skin sloughing off, rotting teeth, chills and fever, diarrhea, and fear.
Job sat in the ashes outside his home, and using a broken piece of pottery, scraped his oozing sores. His overwrought wife said to him (screamed at him, I imagine), “Is this the reward you get for your integrity? Curse the God who treats you this way. Just die!”
“Shh,” I can hear Job saying. “Don’t speak so foolishly. We gladly accepted all the blessing of God during our years of prosperity, should we not accept adversity also for a time?” Boldly, Job held fast to his confidence. Although good and evil are contradictory, he did not see them coming from opposite causes. He accepted that all things come through the hand of God.
Word spread of the sorry spectacle to be seen at the home of Job in Uz. Three friends from far-off places came to comfort him. When they found that the dirty, unkempt creature they could barely recognize was indeed Job, they howled in genuine anguish and tore their robes in grief. They sat down with him on the ground, and for seven days and nights, no one said a word. Their silence respected the depth of Job’s pain.
At last Job spoke. “I wish I had never been born,” he cried. “Why did I not perish when I came from the womb? Why is life given to one who is in misery and longs for death more than any other treasure?” And although God was silent, Job did not turn against Him. He might curse the day of his birth, but he would not curse his Maker.
The men listened quietly to Job’s outburst, and then one after another they gave long speeches condemning Job. God, they said, rewards the righteous and punishes wrongdoers. Peace and prosperity are linked inevitably to upright living, and trouble and sorrow are linked to displeasing God. Job’s suffering, therefore, must be caused by sin for which he had not repented.
After each speech, Job protested his innocence to the men and to God. “I do not understand such misery,” he cried to the heavens. “I ask two things of You: Remove from me this terrible ordeal, or relieve the unbearable torment in my mind. Speak to me—or at least answer me when I cry out to You! My friends are quick to tell me I have sinned,” he stormed. “If I have transgressed, why don’t You tell me? Why do you hide Yourself from me? I cannot go on living, but You won’t let me die! Tell me, is there any hope for me?” But God was silent.
Each of the three friends spoke again, defending themselves and each other, repeating their accusations against Job. Over and over again Job’s visitors voiced their arguments, but try as they might, the three men could not convince him, shame him, or frighten him. After a long while, they stopped answering Job, giving as their reason that it was useless to argue further with a man so opinionated and so persistent in maintaining his own righteousness. They all sat in silence. And God too was silent.
At some point during the days of debate, the men by the ash heap were joined by another man. To Job, he said angrily, “You are full of empty talk, for God is neither injured by your transgressions nor gratified by your righteous deeds. Your suffering is not punishment for your sin, as your so-called friends have said, but a warning for you to correct the foolish idea that your actions are of any great significance to God!” He talked on and on, ending scornfully with, “Just don’t expect that the majestic Creator of all the earth is going to respond to your pitiful whimpering, Job. Your pleas are in vain.”
So this is it then: God does not care? He is going to remain silent?
But suddenly, a great whirlwind came upon them. With human voices stopped, God was ready to speak. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” God asked Job. “Did you lay the boundaries of the seas? Can you tell where daylight dwells and where is the place of darkness? Do you cause the grass to grow, the rain to fall, the deer in the forest to bear young? Who do you think you are?” The repeated piercing questions must have struck Job like lightning.
“Oh Lord God,” Job answered humbly, “how can I answer you? I was wrong to question you.”
“Stand up like a man,” God told him. “You must answer me. Can you tame the greatest of the wild animals of the field? No. But I made him, just as I made you, and he is perfectly at ease with me. Can you catch the fiercest scaly creature of the sea and make him do your bidding? No. But I created him and he obeys me without fear. Now what do you have to say for yourself?”
“Oh Lord God,” Job answered, “these things are too great for me. You are too great for me. I’ve babbled on ignorantly about the way You work as though I understood all about You. I don’t. I despise the words I’ve said to You, insisting that You had to explain everything to me, that You had to give me reasons for all that has happened in my life. I’m so sorry, God, I’m so sorry. You are God! God! Who did I think I was, calling on you to justify your purposes?”
And as far as we know, Job never did learn about the confrontation between Satan and God. He never learned the reasons for his suffering. What he did learn was that God is not obligated to explain Himself to us humans. He is God. He is in control. He has given us a fundamental outline in His Word—which, by the way, is a great advantage that we have over Job—but following God is not an exact science, with “religious” actions always connected to beneficial results and bad actions to unpleasant ones. “Reasons” are sometimes a mystery to us. “Is God trying to show me—or someone nearby—something? Is Satan the instigator? Am I experiencing the consequences of a poor choice I made, or decisions that another made which affect me? Or am I just caught in the crush of a broken world?” Sometimes we simply don’t know.
We must understand this: Although “reasons” may be hidden from us, God has purpose in everything; He can use anything and everything to fit His purpose—that we know Him. The source of our suffering is not nearly so important to know as the source of our strength. Job found that having the answer to “Why” is not nearly as important as discovering who God is.
MaryMartha
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Email: mrymrtha@gmail.com
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