Clues from the Book of Job.
“But those who suffer he delivers in their suffering; he speaks to them in their affliction.”
—Job 36:15
“Why me?” Almost everyone asks that question when great suffering strikes. An earthquake in Mexico, a diagnosis of illness—in circumstances large and small we face anguished questions about why God allows pain.
Ironically, suffering Christians often gain help and comfort from the Book of Job. I say “ironically,” because Job actually raises more questions about suffering than it answers. One setting in the book seems perfectly stage managed for an enlightening monologue: God’s personal appearance in chapter 38. But he avoids the question entirely. And all theories about suffering, fine-sounding theories proposed by Job’s friends, are dismissed by God with a scowl.
The Book of Job contains no compact theory of why good people suffer. Nevertheless, this amazing account of very bad things happening to a very good man does give many “over-the-shoulder” insights into the problem of pain. My own study has led me to the principles that follow. They do not answer the problem of pain—even God did not attempt that. But they do shed light on certain misconceptions that are as widespread today as they were in Job’s time.
1. Chapters 1 and 2 make the subtle but important distinction that God did not directly cause Job’s problems. He permitted them, but Satan acted as the causal agent.
2. Nowhere does the Book of Job suggest that God lacks power or goodness. Some people (including Rabbi Kushner in his best seller, When Bad Things Happen to Good People) claim that a weak God is powerless to prevent human suffering. Others deistically assume that he runs the world at a distance, without personal involvement. But in Job, God’s power is not questioned; only his fairness. And in his final summation speech, God used splendid illustrations from nature to demonstrate his power.
3. Job decisively refutes one theory: that suffering always comes as a result of sin. The Bible supports the general principle that “a man reaps what he sows,” even in this life (see Pss. 1:3; 37:25). But other people have no right to apply that general principle to a particular person.
Job’s friends tried with all their persuasive power to convince Job that he deserved such catastrophic punishment. However, when God rendered the final verdict, he said to them, “You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has” (42:7). Later, Jesus would also speak out against the notion that suffering must imply sin (see John 9:1–5 and Luke 13:1–5).
Job’s friends, along with most people in the Old Testament, did not have a clearly formed belief in an afterlife. Therefore, they wrongly assumed that God’s fairness—his approval or disapproval of people—had to be shown in this life only.
4. God did not condemn Job’s doubt and despair, only his ignorance. The cliché “the patience of Job” hardly fits the stream of invective that poured from Job’s mouth. Job did not take his pain meekly; he cried out in protest to God. His strong remarks scandalized his friends (see, for example, 15:1–16), but not God.
Need we worry about somehow insulting God by our outbursts in time of stress or pain? Not according to this book. In a touch of supreme irony, God ordered Job’s pious friends to seek repentance from Job himself, the source of such bitter complaints.
5. No one has all the facts about suffering. Job concluded he was righteous but God was unfair. His friends insisted on the opposite: God was righteous and Job was being justly punished. Ultimately, all of them learned they had been viewing the situation from a very limited perspective, blind to the real struggle being waged in heaven.
6. God is never totally silent. Elihu made that point convincingly, reminding Job of dreams, visions, past blessings, even the daily works of God in nature (chap. 33). God similarly appealed to nature for evidence of his wisdom and power. Although God may seem silent, some sign of him can still be found. Author Joseph Bayly expresses the same truth this way, “Remember in the darkness what you have learned in the light.”
7. Well-intentioned advice may sometimes do more harm than good. Job’s friends offer classic examples of people who let their pride and sense of being right interfere with their compassion. They repeated pious phrases and argued theology with Job, insisting on wrong-headed notions about suffering (notions that, in fact, still haunt the church). Job’s response: “If only you would be altogether silent! For you, that would be wisdom” (13:4–5).
8. God refocused the central issue from the cause of Job’s suffering to his response. Mysteriously, God never gave his own explanation of the problem of suffering. Nor did he even inform Job of the contest recorded in chapters 1 and 2. The real issue at stake was Job’s faith: whether he would continue to trust God even when everything went wrong.
9. Suffering, in God’s plan, can be redeemed, or used for a higher good. In Job’s case, a time of great travail was used by God to win an important, even cosmic, victory. Looking backward, but only looking backward, we can see the “advantage” Job gained by continuing to trust God.
Job, a suffering innocent, set a pattern of redemptive pain eventually fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who lived a perfect life but endured pain and death in order to win a great victory.
Thousands of years later, Job’s questions have not gone away. People who suffer still find themselves borrowing Job’s words as they cry out against God’s seeming lack of concern. But the Book of Job affirms that God is not deaf to our cries, and is in control of this world no matter how it appears. God did not answer all Job’s questions, but his very presence caused Job’s doubts to melt away. Job learned that God cared about him, and that he rules the world. It was enough.
