Between our Steps: Job's Answer
There is no explanation as to why bad things happen to good people. How can we give a healthier context to questions we cannot answer?
COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTION
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth…On what were its bases sunk or who laid the cornerstone …” These words are attributed to God in the book of Job in the Hebrew scripture.
Job had suffered tremendous losses—he lost all his herds to raiders and accidents; his children all died in a sand storm; finally, his health was attacked. Three friends visited him, certain that because God rewards goodness and punishes wrongdoing, Job must have sinned. If he repented, things would get better.
Job was angry with them. He claimed to be righteous, to have done nothing wrong. God was unjust in punishing a good man. This argument continued for a long time, with both sides sure they were right.
Eventually, God answered Job with a series of rhetorical questions beginning with the quote I opened with. After pointing out that Job had no idea how the world was formed, God asked if Job had explored the extent of the earth and knew anything about the depths of the sea or the expanse of the earth. Job knew nothing of what God knew.
Then, God moved from knowledge to power. “Can you manage the changing of the seasons, bringing snow, turning water hard as stone? Can you bring rain? Can you cause the lightning to flash?”
The answer to each question is negative: Job had not seen what God saw; Job could not do what God did. The implication is that Job was way over his head when he accused God of injustice when he claimed to know how the world should work.
Then, there is a shift from power to compassion.
“Can you feed the wild lions?” God asked. “Do you know when the wild goats give birth on the mountains? Do you care for the wild donkeys, the wild oxen, as they live their lives in the wilderness?”
The implication is clear that neither Job nor any other human looked after the wild creatures. It was God who ordered the world in such a way that the animals of creation thrived.
God went on to speak of creatures that no one in Israel knew directly but would have heard rumours of from those who travelled to Jerusalem: the ostrich, the elephant, and whales. Job had been strong in his little corner of the world but was tiny compared to the universe. He had no perspective from which to challenge God.
The message for Job’s three friends is similar. They are arrogant when they claim to see Job as God does. And with the reminder of God’s care for the wild creatures, there is a hint that their role was not to challenge Job but to show compassion for his suffering.
We get frustrated if we come to the Book of Job hoping for an explanation of why bad things happen to good people. There is no such explanation. There is a hint that the response to suffering needs to be compassion in God’s care for the wild creatures, but the main point of the book is that people get caught up in their own ideas and forget the small place we occupy.
I wonder how we in our modern world hear that message?
Late in the book, God goes on and on about the power of the whale and its lack of fear. God asks if Job or any of his companions can take down the whale. Their answer is no.
But we have a different answer to these questions. Can we put harpoons into a whale? Yes. Can we hook it and pull it to shore? Yes. Can we harvest it? Yes. Is the whale afraid of us? It should be. We have decimated the whale population worldwide.
When we hear God speak of the power that is God’s, not humanity’s, we are judged. We have expanded what people can do, and we keep pushing the boundaries. The praise of the whale judges us: there are things we reach for that hurt creation.
One of the areas where we have made huge progress is in medicine. So many problems that would have been fatal are now curable.
But not everything can be healed. Often, when we hit a disease that cannot be fixed, we feel shock and anger. People go from specialist to specialist, certain that medicine can do miracles, and seek a miracle for themselves.
Our arrogance is different from that of Job, but it is an arrogance that is challenged by God’s words to him. There is a limit to what we can do. Remembering that God is the creator of all—the creator of the universe and the smallest creatures—can help us find a healthy place in the context of the great technological accomplishments of our day.
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