purpose hidden in pain

You have granted me life and steadfast love, and your care has preserved my spirit. Yet these things you hid in your heart; I know that this was your purpose.
Job 10:12-13

Job believes in the sovereign wisdom of God. He trusts with an unwavering faith in the purposes of God. He knows that none of his present sufferings are a surprise to God. Somehow God has had a purpose in Job's pain. It might have been hidden from Job, but God knew what Job would face and let him experience it. Nothing is truly accidental from that perspective.

Job's struggle is one we all have. It is what happens when we compare the good times to the bad. It is in that exercise that the challenging questions emerge. Job had been so blessed by God's grace (steadfast love is the poetic Old Testament term for it) for so long. And now in the humble loss of everything he held dear, he has to wrestle through the purposes of God when life is not as good as it once was. And the problem of pain is not necessarily lessoned by the knowledge that God has a purpose even in pain.

The assumption that all pain is bad and is symptomatic of judgment on sin is the stance of Job's friends. But that is not what Job knows by experience. The reality is that pain can be a good thing. God designed pain to save our lives. If my hand did not feel the pain of the fire, I would burn to death. And at times pain is a mark of health and growth. For instance, I woke up a little sore this morning from a workout yesterday. But that is a sign of health. It means that I pushed my body in a healthier direction. And the pain is a temporary discomfort that is a good thing.

God's grace is real in both the good times and the bad times. Loving God and accepting His purposes in my life means that I take from His hand both pleasures and pains. It means that I trust His goodness even when I am not particularly happy about my life circumstances. And it helps me to find the source of my strength, rooted in my faith in the holy purposes of the God Whose face I seek. I can desire God, even in life's deepest struggles.

plea for justice

If it is a contest of strength, behold, he is mighty! If it is a matter of justice, who can summon him? Though I am in the right, my own mouth would condemn me; though I am blameless, he would prove me perverse.
Job 9:19-20

Job is admitting that even a blameless man is still a sinner and cannot stand in comparison to a holy God. In that fact he is in agreement with the assessment given by his friends. In reality he is always accountable to God for his wrong. There is no comparison. God is omnipotent and holy. No man can match that reality.

The heart's cry from Job in this reply to Bildad is for God to be just. He longs to be shown as clear of great transgression. His friends (now his accusers) would be silenced by a pronouncement from God. And that is the agonizing request of Job. He prays for someone to arbitrate this 'difference' with God so that all can see the wisdom of God and Job's innocence of wrong as well by God's declaration. But Job knows he cannot possibly be the person to do this. No man can stand between another man in a dispute with Almighty God!

Job's point is that only God can vindicate him. It is useless for Job or any other person to attempt to do so. Job knows in his heart the facts of his relationship with God, but he is still a sinful man. Only a holy God could initiate a defense of Job that mattered. And that is the appeal of Job's plea for justice.

the thoughtlessness of reductionistic "cause and effect" theology

If your children have sinned against him, he has delivered them into the hand of their transgression.
Job 8:4

Bildad's words come as a direct assault on the most difficult of Job's circumstances. The most painful of his early losses was the tragic death of all his children in a weather-related catastrophe (Job 1:18-19). It was at the loss of his sons and daughters that Job's mourning began. And for Bildad to so blatantly theologize over their deaths is a counseling atrocity! I cringe when I read it.

It assumes that Job's children deserved to die for a specific rejection of God or His commands. But we know that Job was committed to the spiritual welfare of his entire family. Job specifically ministered to his sons and daughters, teaching them to sacrifice to God and plead for His mercies (Job 1:4-5). The text seems to indicate that they willingly participated in this consecration to God. It is a stretch of all that we know to think that the death of Job's children was divine retribution for their sin. Even if they had done wrong (inevitable consequence for all of us sinners), the lifestyle of confession and consecration they willingly practiced with their father would have made such an action by God to seem overbearing and unloving. But Bildad does not care about the implications of this theology in the real world. He wants a simplistic "cause and effect" God to rule the universe in stark black and white terms. It is as if God is only interested in lining up dominoes so that He can start the stream of tumbling consequences.

Bildad's reasoning is still popular. In its most extreme, Bildad's "cause and effect" theology drives the hate of Westboro Baptist Church. It creates a system where vengeful prayers and hatred for sin get mixed up into a hatred for people as well. And it destroys the heart of the gospel which is the love of God in the sacrifice of His Son for us. The reality is that God sacrificed His only Son to atone for all sin WHILE WE WERE YET SINNERS. It was the heart of God to give Himself for Job's children as well, for Job, even for thoughtless Bildad the Shuhite who sinned by making God look small, petty, and overbearing.

Lord,
Save me from reductionistic, simplistic theology that only sees adversity as judgment on sin. The reason Job's story exists is to teach me Your sovereignty in human suffering. You are not vengeful, but merciful. And even in our worst pains, Your grace and mercies can call us to worship You from the ashes.
Amen.

sleeplessness

When I lie down I say, 'When shall I arise?' But the night is long, and I am full of tossing till the dawn.
Job 7:4

Job's anguish is compounded by sleepless nights. The agony of his physical suffering stretches through every day and continues through countless hours of tossing and turning through each night. His is a weary soul. The relentless pain of no relief wears on him with a constant driving friction.

Having had my own bouts with a sleep disorder, I empathize with Job's fears. Nothing matches the mental agony that accompanies the dread of another night's sleeplessness. Bed and pillows become instruments of torture. Blankets become strangling restraints. And the minutes tick by like hours as sleeplessness slows time to a painful and excruciating crawl. And all the mind can dwell on is the lack of rest. Sleep is the easiest and most natural of activities... and it will not come. The misery compounds each night that this pattern continues. Pretty soon the capacity to function at all slips away. Days and nights morph into a gray, drowsy, zombie haze.

Depression is inevitable as the body wears down in sleeplessness. That explains a great deal of Job's negative perspective in his lament. He is innocent of the charges that Eliphaz has accused him of doing. But his mind is not at its sharpest defense. In the end, his best argument is to complain about his bitter circumstances and insist upon his blamelessness. The complaining may be the insomnia talking. The blamelessness is his integrity holding out some limited hope despite his circumstances.

useless words

For you have now become nothing; you see my calamity and are afraid.
Job 6:21

We are powerless
to understand
all the situations
from God's hand
that pour down on us
sunshine and rain
how human experience
is both joy and pain

but people try
to give meaning
to circumstance

Words are the tools
used to convey
hope or purpose
and what we say
is meant to make sense
of the senseless
we interpret experience
often words are worthless

we only try
to find meaning
in nothingness

We are usurpers
beyond limits
of understanding
we explain it
incorrectly assuming
we know God's ways
when silence
would better ponder our days

only God can
give true meaning
to our suffering

born to trouble

For affliction does not come from the dust, nor does trouble sprout from the ground, but man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.
Job 5:6-7

To a degree, Eliphaz is right to make this observation. When difficulties, trials, afflictions, and pains arise, they are not random matters. They are inevitably part of human life in a fallen and cursed system. There is an ancient observation here that is still part of all human experience. Trouble is always a part of living in this world. It cannot be avoided.

God will not let us waste our pains. He wants us to learn from them and to trust His sovereign hand. In that sense Eliphaz is right in counseling his friend Job. It is just his insistence that Job admit that God was judging sin in him that twisted this advice too far. Job was not being reprimanded by hardship. He was getting a chance to continue in his faithfulness. And that is the perspective that God and Job knew. None of Job's friends could fathom it. They were too rigid in their view of pain and suffering.

God has purpose in our pain. And all of us will without fail find times of suffering. It is up to us to let that purpose drive us into the deep love of God. We may not immediately know why we suffer. That is not important at all. But we do know God is always good even as we navigate through a life that is "born to trouble".

experiential dangers

As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.
Job 4:8

This is the summary of the counseling methodology of Eliphaz. It is certainly not about comfort. Really, all of Job's friends do not stray away from this sort of thinking. They want to convince Job that suffering is the result of sin. Their rationale is not based on their knowledge of Job, but on their strict adherence to an unbendable works theology. It leaves them judging Job rather than comforting him.

The logic of Eliphaz is summed up in a sowing and reaping equation. And it is generally the case. It is a principle confirmed even in the New Testament. At issue though is whether every case of suffering is always the result of sinful sowing. It is true that sin always reaps trouble and pain. However, it is not true that all pain is the result of personal disobedience to God. That is the whole point of the "inside story" of the first two chapters of Job. In them we learn that God may have testing purposes in our trials.

So Eliphaz is in dangerous territory. He dares to speak for God about Job's situation to Job. And interpretation is a human trait... we want to make sense of our world. But we need revelation from God to get it absolutely accurately. Job's friends don't have the benefit of that revelation. They are winging it.

Nonetheless, Eliphaz tries to lend credibility to his analysis and argument by appealing to experiential spookiness. He desperately needs authority, so he describes a ghostly visitation (Job 4:13-17) in the night in which this reasoning that suffering is always the result of sin is expounded to him by a spirit. But I find the vision itself suspect. It smells bad from the very beginning. There is false theology in it. From the onset it is weak on God's grace and mercy (Job 4:17). It assumes that God does not even fully trust His own angelic messengers (Job 4:18), which is self defeating since Eliphaz claims a spiritual being came to him in the night with the message! The vision is obsessed with the finality of death (Job 4:19-21) as if God enjoys mortal punishment on sinful humans and that death is the end.

My conclusion is that Eliphaz is a blowhard, airbag, false prophet. He has to be right and he has no problem inventing a 'vision' from thin air to make his point. He is wrong about Job, but his greatest error is that he is very wrong about God.