{"id":5031,"date":"2025-11-11T09:15:58","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T14:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5031"},"modified":"2025-11-11T09:15:58","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T14:15:58","slug":"job-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/11\/job-11\/","title":{"rendered":"Job 1:1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n


\u00a0Each day this month we\u2019re looking closely at one of the 1:1 verses of the Bible \u2013 exploring what we can learn from chapter one \/ verse one of various Old and New Testament books.<\/em>

Job 1:1<\/strong>

\u201cIn the land of Uz\u00a0there lived a man whose name was Job.\u00a0This man was blameless\u00a0and upright;\u00a0he feared God\u00a0and shunned evil.\u201d

So begins what is quite likely the oldest book in the Bible.

Not that the happenings of Job\u2019s 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, \u201cThis is a high-integrity human being. He\u2019s 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.\u201d

That\u2019s 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\u2019s never told why.

The author (who is unknown to us) makes it clear that there is no cause-and-effect between Job\u2019s spiritual track record and the pain he\u2019s enduring. The book of Job, from the get-go, has no patience with the age-old notion that if God exists, \u201cgood people\u201d are guaranteed they will never experience bad things. \u00a0

In the words of theologian John R. W. Stott, \u201cThe 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\u2019s justice and love.\u201d

Darwinists like Richard Dawkins pounce. The universe has \u201cprecisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.\u201d

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 \u2013 specifically, the armistice that terminated the fighting in World War I. That conflict was widely assumed to be \u201cthe war to end all wars.\u201d 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 \u2013 even more than that, command<\/em> \u2013 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\u2019t merely a spectator to history.

In a sense, when it comes to suffering and evil, he \u201cputs himself on the hook\u201d \u2013 the hook of Jesus\u2019 cross on Calvary.

Peter Wehner, senior writer for The Atlantic<\/em>, notes, \u201cFrom the start of my journey as a Christian I realized faith would not come easily to me\u2026 The crucifixion didn\u2019t put an end to suffering; what it meant is that God entered into suffering. He is a God of wounds.\u201d

Wehner quotes Philip Yancey, an author who frequently wrestles with the so-called problem of evil: \u201cNo 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.\u201d\u00a0

A few years ago he asked Yancey why he thought God allows so much suffering, especially for the young and innocent. Philip answered, \u201cI don\u2019t know why God allows for suffering. All I know is that God is on the side of the sufferer.\u201d

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:

\u201cThings have gone awry in God\u2019s world. I do not understand why, nor do I understand why God puts up with it for so long\u2026

\u201cGod 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.\u201d

So, what do we learn from the book of Job?

Many find the Bible\u2019s primary discourse on suffering to be oddly deflating.

Yes, Job gets his Hallmark Channel happy ending. That\u2019s nice. But readers want so much more. We want answers<\/em>. 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 \u201cfrom out of the whirlwind.\u201d It\u2019s what so many suffering people have wanted \u2013 a private audience with the Almighty. But instead of delivering a term paper on the meaning of pain, God basically says, \u201cI\u2019m in charge of the universe, and you aren\u2019t \u2013 and that\u2019s all you really need to know.\u201d

In other words, even as we long with all of our hearts for answers, what the Bible offers us the Answerer \u2013 the One who addresses our pain by sharing it, and dying for it, on the cross.

Or to put it another way, we don\u2019t always know why.

But we know why we trust God.

And he knows why.<\/em>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here \u00a0Each day this month we\u2019re looking closely at one of the 1:1 verses of the Bible \u2013 exploring what we can learn from chapter one \/ verse one of various Old and New Testament books. Job 1:1 \u201cIn the land of Uz\u00a0there lived a man whose name was Job.\u00a0This man was… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5032,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1029,749,520,112,501],"class_list":["post-5031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-11-series","tag-cross","tag-evil","tag-suffering","tag-theodicy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5031"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5033,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5031\/revisions\/5033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}