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Each day this month we’re looking closely at one of the 1:1 verses of the Bible – exploring what we can learn from chapter one / verse one of various Old and New Testament books.
Job 1:1
“In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.”
So begins what is quite likely the oldest book in the Bible.
Not that the happenings of Job’s life precede the events of Genesis. Rather, this reflection-like-no-other appears to have been circulating before any other Old Testament composition.
In the minds of most scholars, it is the most significant conversation about the meaning of evil and suffering that has ever been set to paper.
In the very first sentence, we learn four important things about Job: He is blameless. He is upright. He shuns evil. He fears God. This is a classic Jewish way of saying, “This is a high-integrity human being. He’s not perfect. He messes up, just like everyone else. But, by and large, Job is a walking, talking picture of what it means to abandon oneself, as best one can, to the things of God.”
That’s why the disasters that come crashing down upon his head before the end of the first chapter are so startling.
In rapid succession, Job suffers the loss of his children, his net worth, the support of his wife, and even his desire to go on living.
Perhaps worst of all, he’s never told why.
The author (who is unknown to us) makes it clear that there is no cause-and-effect between Job’s spiritual track record and the pain he’s enduring. The book of Job, from the get-go, has no patience with the age-old notion that if God exists, “good people” are guaranteed they will never experience bad things.
In the words of theologian John R. W. Stott, “The fact of suffering undoubtedly constitutes the single greatest challenge to the Christian faith, and has been in every generation. Its distribution and degree appear to be entirely random and therefore unfair. Sensitive spirits ask if it can possibly be reconciled with God’s justice and love.”
Darwinists like Richard Dawkins pounce. The universe has “precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
How should people of faith respond?
On this Veterans Day, gratitude flows for the courage and sacrifices of those who have accepted the call to stand on the front lines of conflict around the world.
November 11 commemorates this date in 1918 – specifically, the armistice that terminated the fighting in World War I. That conflict was widely assumed to be “the war to end all wars.” But the first World War did not turn out to be the war to end all wars.
If there really is an infinite-personal God of love and justice, why are there still wars? Why, in the Old Testament, does God sanction – even more than that, command – his people to go to war against other nations, only to rescind that strategy through the New Testament teaching of Jesus?
What followers of Jesus have concluded is that God isn’t merely a spectator to history.
In a sense, when it comes to suffering and evil, he “puts himself on the hook” – the hook of Jesus’ cross on Calvary.
Peter Wehner, senior writer for The Atlantic, notes, “From the start of my journey as a Christian I realized faith would not come easily to me… The crucifixion didn’t put an end to suffering; what it meant is that God entered into suffering. He is a God of wounds.”
Wehner quotes Philip Yancey, an author who frequently wrestles with the so-called problem of evil: “No one escapes this life unmarked by suffering. We are broken people who live on a broken planet, and grief is part of the price we pay.”
A few years ago he asked Yancey why he thought God allows so much suffering, especially for the young and innocent. Philip answered, “I don’t know why God allows for suffering. All I know is that God is on the side of the sufferer.”
Those words echo the Christian philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff, who has spent most of his adult life reflecting on the day in 1983 when he got the news that his 25-year-old son Eric, who had his whole life in front of him, had died in a mountain-climbing accident on the other side of the world:
“Things have gone awry in God’s world. I do not understand why, nor do I understand why God puts up with it for so long…
“God has not told us why there is natural and moral evil in the world, has not explained to us why we do not all flourish until full of years. I live with that. What we are told is that God is engaged in a battle with evil and will eventually win the battle.”
So, what do we learn from the book of Job?
Many find the Bible’s primary discourse on suffering to be oddly deflating.
Yes, Job gets his Hallmark Channel happy ending. That’s nice. But readers want so much more. We want answers. Why is there so much pain?
Over the course of nearly 40 chapters, Job begs God to show up, just to show his face, to respect him enough to at least tell him what in the world is going on.
Then it actually happens. At the end of the book, God appears to Job “from out of the whirlwind.” It’s what so many suffering people have wanted – a private audience with the Almighty. But instead of delivering a term paper on the meaning of pain, God basically says, “I’m in charge of the universe, and you aren’t – and that’s all you really need to know.”
In other words, even as we long with all of our hearts for answers, what the Bible offers us the Answerer – the One who addresses our pain by sharing it, and dying for it, on the cross.
Or to put it another way, we don’t always know why.
But we know why we trust God.
And he knows why.