This year, I'm reading through the Bible chronologically using the Well-Watered Women's In Every Season Journal Set. I'm also listening to BibleProject podcasts as they teach through the Torah. As a measure of accountability to keep reading in every season, I will write a short review on my takeaways from each book.
First up is the Book of Job.
The story's action centers on the tragedy and intense suffering that befalls Job, a righteous man who fears God. It features four friends whose initial support for Job takes a turn for the worst. The book ends with a speech from God that challenges everyone's beliefs about suffering and reminds Job of His knowledge and power.
Suffering, pain, and tragedy are not karmic.
What goes around does not always come around.
Job (and Ecclesiastes) emphasize that those who do bad do not always receive bad; likewise, those who do good do not always receive good. While we can endure suffering and pain due to our sin or another person's sin, many times, it's just not that simple.
We could easily write a list of people and communities in 2022 who have experienced unwarranted tragedy and suffering. Now, you wouldn't rationalize any of their sufferings as the result of individual sin. Right?
Like Job and his friends, we are left to wrestle with the realities of the present world and our assumptions about God's justice.
Karma is an easy belief to cling to when the world feels chaotic. I think it pulls at the God-shaped part of our heart that longs for order, justice, and shalom.
But the world and human hearts are complex; sin still wreaks havoc, distorting everything from its original design. If God were to administer suffering and death as a direct consequence of individual sin, then the whole world would eventually be wiped out.
Is that the justice we really want?
"God instead claims that He runs the universe according to chokmah - wisdom" Tim Mackie, BibleProject
God's justice is wise.
Tim Mackie from BibleProject, in a podcast series on Job, says this: "God's claim is that for Him to be just and good, He does not have to run the world according to the strict principle [of moral recompense]. In other words, micromanage that every good deed is rewarded. What God instead claims is that He runs the universe according to chokmah - wisdom."
In Isaiah 55:8-9, God tells us about His wisdom, saying, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
In the final chapters of Job, God shows us His wisdom using rhetorical questioning and creation imagery. God understands everything from the division of the waters and the land to the strength of Behemoth (40:15-24) with a depth that humans cannot.
Still, it is difficult to trust God's wisdom when you lose your home in a wildfire or when the people you love are in despair.
Suffering is raw and terrifying for everyone involved. The sufferer is exposed physically, emotionally, mentally, financially, or relationally. They are uncovered. If we choose to sit in the ash heap with them, we will likely realize the chaos we cannot control in our own lives.
While walking through a season of suffering with one of my dear friends, I caught myself pulling an Eliphaz, chalking up her circumstances to a lack of decision-making and resolve. Just write a list, get it done, and you won't feel so bad. But, no amount of accomplished tasks or decisions made would relieve all her suffering.
The Book of Job discourages such a simplistic and moralistic view of the world.
If we miss it here, we can't miss it in the crucifixion of Jesus. If it is God's wisdom that Jesus, innocent of any sin, revealing God's love for the world, can suffer and die on the cross to be raised to life, then we must submit our creaturely understanding of justice to God in faith.
"For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." 1 Corinthians 25, ESV
We must submit our creaturely understanding of justice to God in faith. Gabrielle Wenos
The Comfort of God
For anyone enduring an intense period of suffering, this book does provide comfort. But not in the "everything will be alright" and "everything happens for a reason" sort of way (not that either of those is helpful anyway).
The comfort that the Book of Job provides is not found in an immediate solution to our suffering or even swift recompense for injustice. Instead, we can find comfort in God's character.
God isn't depicted as a trickster, playing with our emotions for a certain outcome. He isn't a gambler, choosing Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob as the heirs of his promise just to see what happens. He isn't merciless, ignoring our cries for help and withholding justice.
In the last five chapters of Job, God answers the questions we don't know how to ask when we are in the midst of pain or confusion. Like Job's friends, we all have a working assumption of God's character. If those assumptions don't align with God's true character, we may be hoping for the wrong outcome.
Instead of giving Job a timeline for justice or giving him what he really "deserves" as a righteous man, God reveals His character in word and deed.
God tells Job that He is the creator and sustainer of the universe who "fathered the drops of dew" and "puts wisdom in the heart" (38:28,36). The wild ox serves Him, and He gives strength to the horse (39). He knows Behemoth's emotions and pulls Leviathan with a hook (40-41).
In plain language, God is very near to His creation, especially His image-bearers.
In the final chapter, God does not deal with Job's friends as their folly deserved (42:8). Instead, He displays His great mercy by allowing Job to intercede on behalf of his friends in prayer. Then as a gift of grace, God restores Job's fortunes two-fold.
The theme of the righteous intercessor is emerging. But, how else will the Book of Job illuminate the other books of the Bible?
Until next time...
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