Suffering: The Value of Knowing God

The book of Job is among the oldest of all human literature, and may be the oldest of all writings on the mystery of suffering. It remains one of the most profound. Why do people suffer? Is there any value in it? It's such a vital question, God gave answers very early in history.

We have to tell the story first. Job opens with a description of the main character, Job himself (pronounced Jobe), a wealthy man blessed with a fine family, a marvelous reputation, and an exemplary life of righteousness. With that information, we are quickly transported to a scene at the throne of God, where Satan, the adversary, tells God that Job's great righteousness is hardly surprising in view of the way God has rewarded him. "But now," he says, "stretch out Your hand and touch all that he has, and he will surely curse You to Your face!" God does not do this, but gives Satan permission to do so.

Multiple tragedies fall on Job in a day: the loss of his children and most of his wealth to a natural disaster and to raiders. And Job said,

      "'Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
      And naked shall I return there.
      The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away;
      Blessed be the name of the LORD.'
"In all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong."

Satan, frustrated, tells God that this was not bad enough for Job, and God permits him to go touch Job's body. Job was afflicted with severe boils. Now even Job's wife tells him to "curse God and die," but he responded,

"'Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?' In all this Job did not sin with his lips."

From this point for a long time Job is in misery. Three friends come to comfort to him; to their credit they sit quietly with him for seven days while he scrapes his boils with a potsherd. Then they proceed to tell him how awful he must have been after all, how his sins brought this on him.

I studied this book in a Humanities course in college, with a professor who did not believe in God but nevertheless understood the point well: God does not do double-entry bookkeeping. I didn't know accounting then, so I needed to hear his explanation: double-entry bookkeeping always enters a debit to match every credit, and vice versa. This is what Job's "comforters" wanted to tell him: his misfortune was a direct result of his sin. Job knew otherwise. Our behind-the-scenes look in the book's introduction shows the opposite was true in Job's case: it was his righteousness that made him the object of the adversary's attention. The Bible does not teach that our good or bad deeds always result visibly in good or bad outcomes.

Job is a paradigm of misfortune: he lost his children, fortune, and honor, all in just a few days. All he had left was a nagging wife and condemnatory friends. He certainly saw injustice in it: he wanted to bring a case before God to show that he had not deserved this. The book proceeds through many pages of interchange between Job and his comforters, in the characteristic parallelism of Hebrew poetry. No explanation is forthcoming.

Until the Lord sweeps away all the philosophizing with a sudden entrance and one of the great lines of literature:

"Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said:
"'Who is this who darkens counsel
By words without knowledge?'"

The comforters are never heard from again, until the end when God calls for their repentance. That was all it took to deal with them. God goes on to turn around the plans of Job, who had wanted to bring his case before God:

"Now prepare yourself like a man;

I will question you, and you shall answer Me."

This introduces several picturesque pages of God describing his majesty--and Job's smallness in comparison, starting with:

"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Tell Me, if you have understanding.

Who determined its measurements?

Surely you know!

Or who stretched the line upon it?

To what were its foundations fastened?

Or who laid its cornerstone,

When the morning stars sang together,

And all the sons of God shouted for joy?"

Finally Job has another turn to respond:

"Then Job answered the LORD and said:
'I know that You can do everything,
And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You.
You asked, "Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?"
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
Listen, please, and let me speak;
You said, "I will question you, and you shall answer Me."
I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear,
But now my eye sees You.
Therefore I abhor myself,
And repent in dust and ashes.'"

His fortune was restored and he became father to more wonderful children.

That's the story in compressed form. We don't know if Job ever learned of the events at God's throne that led to his change of circumstance, but we know that he continued to trust God in spite of the perplexity. His response was not perfect, yet God honored him in the end. He never got an explanation of what God was doing, but he had a marvelous encounter with God, seeing God's glory and majesty, and recognizing that he was no one to bring a charge against this all-powerful creator of the universe.

The first key to seeing value in suffering is to recognize God for who he is. Indeed, this is the first key to understanding all of life. He is sovereign (he is in charge). He has the right to turn our circumstances as he wills. He is just and gracious, and will certainly restore our losses at some time in the future if not immediately--if we recognize him for who he is. The knowledge of God himself is such a great good that it outweighs all pain. God's answer to Job was not to explain it all, but to show his greatness. And Job recognized it as enough.

Readers here who do not know God: this is likely to sound very unfamiliar, surprising, maybe even crazy. I can liken it to something you may have experienced, though: the lengths many of us go to, the sacrifices and pain we'll accept, to be close to a person we love. The same is true, greatly multiplied, for knowledge of God and closeness to him: it is worth it. It is worth it not just in theory, but by the testimony of many Christians through the centuries who have smiled at misfortune and turned with loving gratefulness toward the God who loves us infinitely.

I remind you of my introduction to this occasional series: this entry is not intended to be anything near to the whole description of what the Bible teaches about suffering; and it is description, not an attempt at demonstration or proof. I'm hoping over time to convey a full sense of all the Bible says about this, for the sake of personal comfort when things are hard, and for understanding what the Bible really teaches.

Posted: Sat - June 17, 2006 at 02:54 PM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

Suffering: The Value of Knowing God

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson