DAY 264 - If God Does Not Care

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Job 42:1-5 (NIV) Then Job replied to the Lord: ² “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted. ³ You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. ⁴ “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ ⁵ My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.

Questions about suffering will not go away, and they cannot seem to be answered. We fight against suffering. We remove it when we can. And we wonder why there has to be so much suffering.  The book of Job is one of the oldest and most widely read efforts to answer some questions about suffering, especially those questions about God’s control or lack of control over suffering in our world.

Though we are generally not counseled to rebel against suffering, that is perhaps the most instinctive response. We do not necessarily blame God for causing it, we simply ask Him for relief, and when none seems to be coming we bear it for as long as we can, then we get angry. This rebellion against suffering is at least an honest and open way of dealing with it, and if we are going to cry out and complain, God is probably the best one to turn to. The problem is that such rebellion can also make us a kind of bulwark, a person putting up walls against the very answers we seek.

Sometimes we are advised to accept our suffering as our own responsibility and are advised against fighting it. It’s our own fault after all. If we would only open our eyes we would see we invited all this trouble on ourselves. Of course, there is an element of truth in all of this advice – some suffering is punishment, some is self-inflicted - and some suffering can make us stronger.

So what help does the book of Job offer us? It offers us a “resolution without a solution.” The key that unlocks the mystery is the revelation to Job that in the past he knew only what others had told him, but now he has seen with his own eyes. It is the answer of encounter, of an event, of a happening between Job and God in which God speaks of Job being Job, with all the limitations and liabilities that lay therein, and of God being God, with all the knowledge and power that lay therein. It is in that moment of first-hand understanding that the problems and questions about God’s control or lack of control are resolved. It is the moment when we can receive what is being offered and be satisfied. Before that time, nothing that is offered will help, whether from the heart of a human being or from the hand of God Himself. But, after that encounter with God, we receive the one thing we need more than an answer, and that is the ability to recognize and to accept the answer we are given. This acceptance is not passive resignation, but active affirmation of what we ourselves have discovered to be true.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope June 8, 1986

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell