(adapted from Spring Clean: Devotions for Lent, p. 67-69)
Job is a complicated book full of conflicting concepts with which people of wisdom have wrestled for thousands of years. Some believe it to be the written account of a real man’s story passed down through ages of oral tradition; others see more of a prophetic narrative―somewhat along the lines of a stage play―given to challenge the relationship between the Law and life in a world which has fallen from it. One thing we can be sure of is that the book of Job unflinchingly explores our responses to adversity and our connection with Creator in the aftermath.
The story begins with a cold open in heaven during which Satan gets permission from God to afflict a human, Job with trials as a test of his so-far sterling faith. We clearly understand that not only is what’s about to happen to Job not his fault, but that Satan is actually singling him out because of his good behavior. After this setup and a series of calamities inflicted upon Job, the rhythm of the narrative consists of exchanges between Job and his friends, who have ostensibly come to comfort him. Job repeatedly asserts that he did nothing wrong to bring these events upon himself; his friends argue that he must have sinned somehow, because the Law proves the innocent don’t get punished. They know Job well, they obviously care for him, but they can’t accept his testimony because it conflicts with everything they’ve been taught. Job emerges as a voice of lived experience with God, against which his friends are the voices of tradition, legalism, and what we think we know about God. Job doesn’t present God as his adversary, per se; he simply demands to know why this is happening to him. Meanwhile, Job’s friends, because of their own limited understanding and didactic attitudes, are pressing him for a coerced confession, and Job won’t give it to them.
We all have voices which persist in accusing us no matter what we do. They come from external forces (the world, our families, online, even the church) and internal ones (traumas, poor teaching, brain chemistry, etc.), and they may have extensive lists of facts or scriptures to back them up. Job’s determined stand offers us a model of self advocacy and comfort in knowing the voices can never convict us. Wisdom becomes complete only through direct relationship with God; that is the conversation we need to keep pushing for, just as Job did.
When God finally does speak in the end, God does not satisfy Job’s desperate (and valid) question of, “Why me?” Instead, God points Job to look outside of his own head and suffering into the grand scope of creation. Trials and suffering are real, and grief and sorrow are valid responses to them; yet God made every person―indeed, every form of life and firmament―to have value, and many of them suffer every day through no fault of their own. Why does Job think he should be any different? How is his innocence above theirs? Who is he to be immune from the same experience as the rest of the faultless sufferers throughout time on the earth? God loves Job and affirms him worthy of the conversation while not allowing Job to remain in his inwardly focused mindset of self-pity. In essence, God once again answers a question with a question: “Why not you?”
It may not have felt super satisfying in the moment, but then again, Job’s question was beside the point.
header image: “It’s a Delicate Balance” by Christi Belcourt
L.S. Childe 