Bertrand Russell, the renowned atheist philosopher, wrote in his essay, ‘The Faith of a Rationalist’, ‘I can imagine a sardonic demon producing us for his amusement, but I cannot attribute to a Being Who is wise, beneficent and omnipotent, the terrible weight of cruelty, suffering and ironic degradation of what is best that has marred the history of man.’ And there is no doubt that innocent suffering is a major stumbling block to belief in a good God. The problem of pain (as it is called) only really exists for those who believe in such a God. For the polytheist, the dualist, the atheist, the naturalist, the fatalist, the materialist, the agnostic, suffering is a tragic fact, but it is not a philosophical problem, because there is nothing in their world view that suggests it shouldn’t exist. But for the Christian believer it will always be a problem. And because suffering is a problem for our beliefs, it compounds the problem of how we cope with the experience of suffering:- C. S. Lewis wrote (in A Grief Observed), when he was struggling agonizingly with God after his wife’s death, ‘Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion, or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.’
Even though our society is as prosperous, peaceful and healthy as any society has been in the history of our planet, we are still aware of this problem. As never before, we see the sufferings of others paraded before us on television and in our newspapers; and, despite all we can do to keep it at bay, suffering still creeps up on each of us – bereavement, illness, depression, broken relationships, disappointed hopes: only a tiny part of what Job suffered perhaps, but this book still touches us where it hurts, where our own beliefs are challenged by the problem of pain.
Now, I have suggested that this may not be the main theme of the whole book; and I think I still believe that it is not. But it is the main theme of the central part of the book, which we are considering at present: chapters 3 – 37.
Remember the structure:
1) Prose (setting) Chapters 1-2
2) Poetry (debates) Chapters 3-41
3) Prose (restoration) Chapter 42.
At this point, we are dealing with those debates with Job’s ‘comforters’, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar and the young man, Elihu, but we will leave God’s speeches (38ff) to next week. I have called them debates: they are actually a lengthy exchange of poetic speeches. Job starts it off in chapter 3; then there follow three rounds of speeches.
Job dominates: he has twenty chapters, to four from Eliphaz, three from Bildad, two from Zophar (who doesn’t speak at all in the third round of speeches), and six from Elihu, who is not himself answered by Job. It is all poetry. It is not philosophy or logic, so we cannot handle it as if it were strictly rational argument.
I think we need to cheat at this point and go to the very end of the book to see what God has to say about the arguments. Chapter 42, verse 7: ‘After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.”’ This is sufficiently important for God to repeat it in verse 8. God’s eventual endorsement of what Job has said does not mean that every theological statement Job makes is correct, nor does it mean that what his friends say is wrong. The matter is not as simple as that. It is hard to find any proposition in the book which is not to some extent correct. And the book is not trying to debunk any particular theory of suffering. The different views that are expressed are not put before us as mutually exclusive. At times the speakers endorse each other’s views and at other points they contradict each other. But poetry is not a logically precise medium of communication. So we must be careful not to over-simplify this debate.
However, as we do not have the time to read it all through chapter by chapters (and only then read that verdict by God in 42:7, after we have heard and weighed all that has been said by all the speakers for ourselves), I will have to try to simplify it for us.
1. Retribution: the idea that we all get what we deserve in this world, as expressed by Eliphaz in 4:7-9.
‘“Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished?
Where were the upright ever destroyed?
and those who sow trouble reap it.
At the breath of God they are destroyed;
at the blast of his anger they perish.”’
These three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, all espouse the view that in some way Job deserved what was happening to him. We should not caricature them: remember they had sat in silence with him for seven days and seven nights, waiting for him to speak first (2:13). Have we ever done that? A silent presence is sometimes the greatest comfort in extreme grief. And only when you and I have provided that for someone should we feel free to criticise these three men.
It is only when Job resolutely maintains his innocence and claims that retribution is not an adequate explanation for what has happened to him (because he has committed no sin that could be in proportion to his suffering), that they get increasingly strident and bitter and insensitive in asserting that he must have done so. They are determined to fit Job to their theological explanation, and they abandon pastoral sensitivity in the attempt. One commentator compared it to Procrustes, that figure from classical mythology: if his guests didn’t fit the bed, he’d cut a bit off them until they did fit it, or stretch them until they fitted it. Well, Job’s ‘comforters’ were a little like that. There was a policeman in Northern Ireland who lost both his legs in a bomb outrage, and was then sent by well-meaning Christians in the next few months over fifty different copies of Joni Ereckson’s book about her own experience of paralysis. It was well-intentioned, but it greatly increased his suffering.
Now, Job’s friends’ pastoral ineptitude does not invalidate what they say. We cannot deny the truth of their answer to suffering without leaving the universe a moral chaos. This is a moral universe and, in one sense, human sin is responsible for all the pain and suffering within it, not just for those examples of suffering that can be directly traced to human selfishness, greed and violence. When human beings refused to accept their God-appointed position in His relationship to creation and tried to rule themselves, all relationships were disrupted.
We live in a wonderful world, horribly marred at times and in places by pain and suffering. Theologically that is all attributable to our refusal to play the role God made us for. The whole universe was to revolve around one relationship – between God and humanity, His image on earth. When that relationship went wrong, it all went wrong, like clay on the potter’s wheel when it is not centred.
And every one of us has contributed to that. But you say, “Hang on, Mark. Surely you’re not implying that my little private acts of selfishness are responsible for the world’s ills?” Well, actually I am. Every little act of rebellion against God throws the universe off balance theologically. Our problem is that we just do not realise how serious sin is. Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar did:
‘“What is man, that he could be pure,
or one born of woman, that he could be righteous?
If God places no trust in his holy ones,
if even the heavens are not pure in his eyes,
how much less man, who is vile and corrupt,
who drinks up evil like water!”’(15:14-16)
Now, Job is not contradicting that in his reply. He is not saying that is not a true view of humanity. There is a sense in which we deserve nothing in life and Job himself has expressed that:
‘“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked shall I return;
The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away;
Blessed be the name of the Lord.”’ (1:21)
Job is saying that he deserves nothing in life. He says it to his wife again in the next chapter: ‘“Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?”’ (2:10b). My sinfulness means that I do not deserve a comfortable, trouble-free life.
Strangely, that doctrine, the doctrine of ‘total depravity’ is a very liberating doctrine. While I cling to my pathetic scraps of self-righteousness, I will always feel a little hard done by and will never know true security. When I give up on all self-righteousness, I have to trust entirely in God’s love and forgiveness, His grace – where true security lies. Have you discovered that for yourself? Only when I give up, once and for all, on my own goodness, can I discover the peace and happiness that God can bring.
But Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar did not realise that retribution was not itself sufficient explanation for what was happening to Job, until his determined defence of his own integrity eventually silenced them, and the young man, Elihu, took over in chapter 32.
His theory is
2 Correction and Instruction. Elihu repeats many of the ideas his three predecessors have already expressed, but he adds an emphasis, not on looking back to the cause to answer the question “Why?”, but on looking forward to the result:-
‘“But if men are bound in chains,
held fast by cords of affliction,
He tells them what they have done –
that they have sinned arrogantly.
He makes them listen to correction
and commands them to repent of their evil.
If they obey and serve Him,
they will spend the rest of their days in prosperity
and their years in contentment.
But if they do not listen,
they will perish by the sword
and die without knowledge.
The godless in heart harbour resentment;
even when He fetters them, they do not cry for help.
They die in their youth,
among male prostitutes of the shrines.
But those who suffer He delivers in their suffering;
He speaks to them in their affliction.”’ (36:8-15)
While the first three friends were asking, ‘Who is a Judge like Him?’, Elihu is asking (v.22) “Who is a teacher like Him?”
And a great many believers have discovered this truth in their affliction. When His disciples asked Jesus about the blind man in John 9, they wanted to look back for the cause – ‘“Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”’ But Jesus made them look forward to what He was about to do in the man’s life – ‘“Neither this man nor his parents sinned, . . . but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”’
It is well caught in this little poem:
God is like a magician,
continually producing
from the black top hat
of disappointment,
suffering,
anxiety
and despair,
the white rabbit of
patience,
joy,
peace and hope
in the lives of those
who know Him.
Simone Weil wrote:
The extreme greatness of Christianity lives in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural cause for suffering, but a supernatural use for it.
In our own congregation, the late Professor Sir Norman Anderson, whose son, Hugh, after a brilliant career at Trinity College, died of cancer at the age of twenty-one, wrote:
People used continually to ask us why a young man of such promise, and with such a zest for life, should be allowed to die so young. To this the only reply, we both feel, is that we do not, cannot know. The vital question to ask God in such cases is not ‘Why did You allow this?’ (to which He seldom, I think vouchsafes to answer), but ‘What do You want to teach me through this?’
God speaks to us in our affliction. He says things to us that He could not say in any other way.
Job himself had already grasped this truth:
‘“But He knows the way that I take;
when He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold.”’ (23:10)
God is able to bring good out of the most awful circumstances. Indeed He has committed Himself to do so in the lives of those who love Him. ‘We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.’ (Romans 8:28)
But we learnt from the prose prologue in chapters 1 and 2 that Job is not being punished by his sufferings; nor is he being disciplined or corrected by them.
The book began with Job blameless and upright; ‘he feared God and shunned evil’ (1:1). It was the human and divine verdict on Job, and there is no indication whatsoever that he is any more blameless or any more upright at the end of the book. His sufferings are not presented to us as part of a necessary process to make him better. So we are going to have to think further about them. Neither Retribution nor Correction provide a satisfactory explanation. Nor, I think, will we find one yet, but we will finish this week by looking at the content of Job’s own speeches, which I have called:
3. Honesty and Prayer. And it is pretty wild and passionate stuff. His cool, calm and collected response in chapters 1 and 2:
‘“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked shall I return;
The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away;
Blessed be the name of the Lord.”’ (1:21)
gives way to a cry of pain and strident rebuke for God:
‘“Yet if I speak, my pain is not relieved;
and if I refrain, it does not go away.
Surely, O God, You have worn me out;
You have devastated my entire household.
You have bound me – and it has become a witness;
my gauntness rises up and testifies against me.
God assails me and tears me in His anger
and gnashes His teeth at me;
my Opponent fastens on me His piercing eyes.
Men open their mouths to jeer at me;
they strike my cheek in scorn
and unite together against me.
God has turned me over to evil men
and thrown me into the clutches of the wicked.
All was well with me, but He shattered me;
He seized me by the neck and crushed me.
He has made me His target;
His archers surround me.
without pity, He pierces my kidneys
and spills my gall on the ground.
Again and again He bursts upon me;
He rushes at me like a warrior.
I have sewed sackcloth over my skin
and buried my brow in the dust.
My face is red with weeping,
deep shadows ring my eyes;
yet my hands have been free of violence
and my prayer is pure.”’ (16:6-17)
He will not invent imaginary sins to repent of. With great honesty, Job takes his complaint direct to God Himself and he is commended for that honesty.
‘His friends talk about God. Job talks to God,’ writes one commentator, ‘And this makes him the only authentic theologian in the book.’ (Francis Andersen). (Theologians among us, please note!) How honest is our prayer to God? God wants real communication from us. He does not want to hear the words that we think will please Him. He already knows our hearts and He longs for you and me to bare our hearts before Him.
And notice that Job does not ask God for healing, or to restore his property or children. He asks for his relationship with God to be restored. ‘“If only I knew where to find Him, if only I could go to His dwelling.”’ (23:3). ‘“I desire to speak to the Almighty and to argue my case with God.”’ (13:3). When the gifts are taken away, Job believes the Giver has gone. and so he cries out, not for the restoration of his health or his wealth or his family, but for the restoration of his friendship with God. He does not contemplate suicide and he does not contemplate disbelief. But he longs for relationship. And he is patient in that longing – not because he resigns himself to pain (he does not; he complains unceasingly about it) – but he is patient in his unwearying pursuit of the face of God when the wind of adversity is against him. God, for Job, is not just a logical inference; He is not just a doctrine.
He is the one relationship that makes sense of everything. Or, to put it the other way, the one relationship without which nothing else ultimately makes any sense at all..
Is He that for us? If He is not, is He really God at all?
In our next talk, we will try to cast some light on why he suffered and the central message of the whole book.