Reflection -- The Problem of Evil

The picture of God painted in this ancient epic is not flattering.  God seemingly permits Job to suffer for no reason other than determining if a good man can withstand merciless and unjust suffering and remain faithful.  Some commentators talk of the book of Job depicting a kind of divine insecurity.  Others suggest a way out by arguing that Satan (which means the “accuser” in Hebrew) is really attacking God by attacking someone God describes as blameless and upright.  Satan taunts God by asking indirectly if God can inspire human love of such depth that it can withstand any test.  Under this argument, God’s allowing Satan to torment Job is an expression of God’s trust in Job’s character.

I am not sure that such arguments are not evasive and too easy a way out.  Job is a troubling book.  It brings us face to face with the problem of how evil and an all-powerful, all-knowing, and loving God can exist simultaneously.  It stirs up things from forgotten corners of the soul we may prefer not to think about.  Our relationship with God and the world is not just some simple system of reward and punishment.  Sometimes good looses while evil wins.  We see heart-rending examples of that reality every day in our morning newspaper.

The book of Job confronts us with the reality of the struggle “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” that the apostle Paul describes in Ephesians 6.  It raises the simple, but most difficult of all human questions -- why do bad things happen to good people?

I have no clear answer to the continuation of evil in the world and the problem of human suffering.  It may be beyond our knowing.  I do observe that the writer who tells us of Job’s wrestling with the problem of good and evil lived in a far distant time.  The author was one who did not know the revelation of God’s true nature in the person and work of Jesus, the Christ.  He or she did not know of an anguished cry from a hillock in a rock quarry outside the walls of Jerusalem at 3 o’clock one Friday afternoon ¾ “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?"  "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

When I experience or see suffering, I know that God too has known what it means to be human and has drunk the dregs of emotional and physical human pain.  I could not survive without the sustaining grace of a sense of God’s presence in the middle of suffering.  My God is not the source of my suffering.  My God understands and suffers with me.  That knowledge sustains me until that day, described in Revelations 7, when the One who is seated on the throne will shelter us and we will hunger no more, and thirst no more.  The sun will not strike us, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be our shepherd, and he will guide us to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.

revclay

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Job 1:1 and 2:1-10

There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job.  That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.

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One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord. 

The Lord said to Satan, "Where have you come from?" 

Satan answered the Lord, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it." 

The Lord said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job?  There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.  He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason." 

Then Satan answered the Lord, "Skin for skin!  All that people have they will give to save their lives.  But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face." 

The Lord said to Satan, "Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life." 

So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.  Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes. 

Then his wife said to him, "Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die." 

But he said to her, "You speak as any foolish woman would speak.  Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?" 

In all this Job did not sin with his lips.