October 22, 2006

You Don’t Know the Whole Story
 

by Rev. Dr. Jim Carlson

Job 34:1-7; 34-41

Opening Illustration

Story of Job – book based on a story about a righteous man who suffers catastrophic loss but remains faithful to God.

Job was wealthy – large family, lots of livestock. “Greatest man of his people”.

Job was righteous. Did not sin. Offered sacrifices to God for his children so that God would not punish them for their sin.

Deal between God and Satan.

In one day, four calamities happen in Job’s life: loss of livestock, servants, home and family.

Job stays faithful to God.

God makes second deal with Satan.

Satan causes Job to have a skin disease almost to the point of death. But Job remains faithful to God.

Majority of the rest of the book is a dialogue between Job and his friends.

Main argument is that Job has sinned and must repent. Calamities and sickness are God’s punishment for Job’s sin. (slide)

Job insists he has done nothing wrong. He questions the righteousness of what has happened. And he affirms his faith in the sovereignty of God.

God responds in chapter 38. Passage for today. God asks Job if he can order the universe the way God does.

Job as a human is unable to comprehend why things happen. Therefore he has no place questioning why his children died and his possessions have been taken away.

Now I don’t know about you, but when I’m trying to comfort someone who has just lost a child or has just been notified that their home burnt down or that their retirement has been taken away, the last thing I’m going to say to them is “God gives and God takes away. Blessed be the Lord.”

Most people want a much more comforting answer to the question of “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Part of the answer we get in Job is that God’s ways are beyond us, and that there is no point in challenging God’s role in the calamities and disasters of life.

Now when I was in seminary, they were telling us not to chastise someone who was going through a tragedy and in their anger has the audacity to ask God “Why?”

And I still think as a pastor, and as a Christian who cares about other people and wants to know how best to love my neighbor, that people ought to have the space to do so as a part of their grief process.

At the same time, my experience says that there really are no good answers to questions like “Why did God allow this person to die?” When you’ve gone through the anger and the grief and the sadness and the doubting of your faith, you still end up in the same place. Things happen, there is no infallible explanation, and we’re left to answer again the same old question, “Do I think God is good or not?”

Part of the answer that Job does give us deals with that very question. And the answer Job ends up with is that we can’t decide whether or not God is good based on the ups and downs of life.

For one thing, we can’t understand just how the world works or just how God relates to the universe. And if we can’t understand it, then we have no right to say God is good or God is not good based on what happens here.

If we really believe God is greater than the universe, and that God created the universe, then we have to admit that our own limited perception of things is insufficient to helping us decide whether or not God is good.

Our decision to trust God or not trust God is made on the basis of religious faith, not on the basis of whether or not things go well in our lives. And once you get that straight, then it gets a whole lot easier to be a Christian.

Secondly, Job is insistent on challenging a long held belief the was common in Israelite thought, and still lingers in many peoples’ minds today. Ever since the time this book was written and beyond, people have always interpreted disasters, disease, death, war, and any bad thing in life as evidence that the person on the receiving end has done something to anger God.

Whatever evil things that happen in life are simply God’s punishment for human sin. Now to many of us that sounds like the dumbest thing we’ve ever heard of. At the same time, we have a tendency to blame peoples’ misfortunes on their own choices in life. Even if that’s not really a fair assessment.

There are also many people, deeply religious people, who still see disasters in terms of divine punishment. Let me give you some examples. (Slide)

These are the kinds of things people tend to say when they’re angry, when they’re looking for answers, or when they’re trying to use a tragedy like this to intimidate others into accepting their image of who God is.

The good news of Job is that these kinds of pronouncements are ridiculous at best and destructive at their worst. Job suffered the worst calamities and losses imaginable this side of death itself. And yet he did not sin. And God doesn’t really challenge Job’s claim to be sinless. Job’s sinlessness is a given in this book.

So if these things happened to a sinless person, then the connection between the bad things we do and the tragedies we suffer like heart attacks, cancer, car wrecks, tornadoes, house fires, and terrorist attack, cannot be blamed on a person’s or a society’s sin.

Job challenges us to live in a way that is pleasing to God not because we fear punishment, but simply because our faith tells us that despite all the terrible things that happen in life, God is good. All the time God is good.

We can’t prove it. Things happen that sometimes tempt us to doubt it. The people around us may not believe it. Our friends and family may challenge us to defend it. But the goodness of God is not changed by our doubts, our fears, our grief, our experience, or our feeble attempts to explain it.

It just is. It is more mind blowing than anything we have ever witnessed, from the unleashing of a violent snow storm to the immeasurable power of the oceans; from the manner in which animals sustain their species to the path the moon takes across the sky every night.

How those things happen is beyond us. And so is the explanation for why terrible things happen to us. And yet that same God seeks an intimate relationship with us. We may not be blameless like Job, although we probably all know one who thinks that way about themselves. And yet the God who created the universe offers mercy and grace to anyone who approaches.

When Job questioned the goodness of God, he admits he uttered what he did not understand, things too wonderful for him, which he did not know. But every day we have the chance to know more about this world, about creation, and about this good God who speaks to us out of the whirlwind. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.