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| William Blake, Despair of Job |
Job was a righteous and wealthy man. The question is, did he live a charmed life? That’s the question Satan posed to God. While God takes great pride in Job’s faithfulness, Satan wants to know how faithful Job would be if life wasn’t so pleasant. So God and Satan make a wager and God gives Satan permission to make Job suffer. By the time we get to the 23rd chapter of the story, Job has suffered a lot and he is bitter. So, Job wants to take God to court to find out why so much suffering had come his way. (Job 1)
As the story goes, Job loses about everything except his wife and his own life. At one point he sits down to grieve his losses and ponder why his life changed so drastically and so quickly. Then his friends stopped by to comfort him, just like good church people do. At first, they sat quietly, letting him vent, but after a while, they got tired of his complaints. That’s because they operated under the assumption that bad things happen to bad people, so they told Job to repent his sins so God could forgive him. (Job 4)
Job didn’t take too kindly to this suggestion because he believed, rightfully so, that he was innocent of any wrongdoing. That’s when Job turned to God and cried out “Where are you?” “Why are you hiding?” That’s because he believes that if he can get his day in court he’ll be acquitted.
The book of Job raises a universal question: Why do bad things happen to good people? This is a question that often resonates with us as we look out at the world and wonder why there is so much hate, anger, violence, death, disease. Job’s friends would tell you that if you do the right thing you won’t suffer. So get right with God and blessings will flow. Job would argue otherwise.
It seems that every few days we hear about another school shooting and we wonder why. Why did the perpetrator go to a school and kill and wound students, teachers, and staff? Schools are supposed be safe-havens, and yet that’s no longer true. So, we grieve and ask why. Job’s friends would probably blame the victims. I hear Job asking God: Why do the good die young?
When I was a child—I was just eight or nine years old— one of my classmates, a little girl named Jill Scroggins, died on her way to school when the car she was riding in was struck by a train. This tragic accident occurred just a block from our elementary school. As I remember the story, her father was in a hurry that morning and didn’t fully clean off the windows of the car. So, he couldn’t see the train coming down the tracks, and both Jill and her father were killed. It’s been more than fifty years since that event occurred, but her death remains with me even though I didn’t see the crash or go to the funeral. Maybe it’s because I had a boyhood crush on her, but that first experience of losing someone you know to death is not easily set aside. I look back and ask why?
Job wants to have his say in the heavenly court. He wants to make his case known to God because he has questions that demand answers. Job sincerely believes he is innocent. He hadn’t done anything to bring this calamity down on his family. In fact, he went to great lengths to offer sacrifices to God just in case a member of his family did something to offend God. Since he believes he’s innocent he wants to see the evidence against him. Otherwise, he wants an acquittal.
You can understand Job’s bitterness. He tried to live a righteous life, so God had to know he was a righteous and honorable man. So Job goes searching for God. He wants to make his case, but God is nowhere to be found. Instead, he finds himself in darkness.
Getting back to Job’s friends, they present to the reader what theologians call the “retribution dogma.” Some people call this karma. That is, you reap what you sow. If bad things happen to you, then you got what you deserved. It makes sense on the surface. If you do the right thing, then good things should come your way. In fact, that’s a message we find in the Book of Proverbs. While there’s great wisdom in doing the right thing, that’s no guarantee that things will work out for us.
Back when I was teaching at Manhattan Christian College, two of my students died in a car crash while they were out representing the college during the summer break. The student who was driving the van fell asleep at the wheel, and two of the three students died that morning. Their deaths hit the college hard, but none of us were as grief-stricken as the student who survived. She had to deal with the loss of her friends and survivor’s guilt. She kept asking why she survived while her friends didn’t?
I had another student at the college. His name was Eric. Not only was he my TA but Eric became part of our family. He was a lot of fun, which made him a popular youth minister. Unfortunately, a few years after graduation Eric developed a brain tumor that took his life. He was only in his early thirties when he died, leaving behind a wife and children, along with a community that loved him. Yes, why do the good die young?
Job asks the questions of God that many of us want to ask. Like Job, we might want our day in court and we may feel as if God is hiding from us. At the same time, like Job, we might be terrified of the thought of standing before God (Job 23:15). Job wants his day in court, but he must be thinking: Who am I that I can actually challenge the wisdom of God?
With this mixture of emotions and feelings, Job finds himself in a place of darkness. He just wants to disappear. Perhaps Job is looking for what Eric Elnes calls the Dark Wood. The Dark Wood is “a place where the good, the bad, and the ugly in our lives can be embraced and explored rather than avoided.” Eric writes that if we learn to live in this Dark Wood then “eventually we are able to look back over the path we’ve trod and make an affirmation that is unthinkable when sticking to the Adversary’s broad streets of certainty and highways to success.” [Gifts of the Dark Wood, p. 142]. The Dark Wood can be a place of learning about who God is and who we are in relationship to God and to one another. That doesn’t take away the sting or lessen the challenges, but perhaps it can be a place of grace.
Job tried to live a righteous life. He did everything that was expected of him. We might even call him a saint. And yet that didn’t keep him from experiencing what some call a “dark night of the soul.”
As Christians, we profess our faith in a loving and gracious God. At least that’s the message I try to preach. This is the God who I believe is revealed to us in the life and teachings of Jesus and witnessed to by the Holy Spirit. While I affirm with my whole heart, the message that God is love, there are events in our world that make little sense to me. I have found some answers in the course of my life, and yet, like Job, I still have questions for God.
The Book of Job raises difficult questions. It makes it difficult to assign blame or find easy answers. Sometimes when a child dies suddenly we want to offer words of compassion, but the words we utter can sometimes be anything but compassionate. I don’t think it’s comforting to tell a mother who has lost her child that God needed another angel in heaven. While that child might be in the arms of God that doesn’t take away the loss we feel.
We enter the Dark Wood seeking a fuller answer to our questions, even though we seem to know that a fuller answer lies beyond our grasp. I believe that God does welcome our questions even when we feel as if God is hiding from us. When we go before God and honestly ask our questions, even when, like Job, those questions are wrapped in bitterness, we can find a word of grace and peace that brings healing even if not all our questions are answered!
Preached by:
Dr. Robert D. Cornwall
Acting Supply Pastor
First Presbyterian Church
Troy, MI
October 17, 2021
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