Sackcloth and Ashes: Travels with Job (10)

“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You;” Job 42:5

Hearing – What is the difference between hearing God and seeing Him? The Hebrew term shama is a familiar one. Today we often stress the double action of the word shama, i.e., to hear and to obey. But Job must have more than this in mind. He has been a righteous man. He has heard and obeyed. But now something even more important has happened. He sees.

Does this mean Job had a personal visitation from God? Not likely. What Job expresses in a revelatory insight much like those men who later would be called “seers.” Suddenly, all Job’s prior obedience takes on a new dimension. He changes from a man of meticulous rule-keeping to a man of visible relationship. Now we have to re-evaluate what we thought righteousness was.

Job discovers faith. It’s not that Job didn’t practice faithful obedience before. Clearly, he did. But his relationship with YHVH was based on prescribed behaviors. He cared for the poor. He sacrificed. He prayed. He acted honorably with others. He did not lust after possessions or people. He was a model of strict, moral behavior. Many of us think that this is the true meaning of righteousness. We strive to be like the early Job, a man of principle, witness and commitment. Who among us would not applaud Job’s statement at the beginning of the saga? “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job is our model.

But there is more. Rule-governed living assumes stability in expectations. Like Job, we can become servants of the rules, worshippers of the Book, followers of the Way to the exclusion of a God who seeks dynamic interaction. Relationship is a matter of deciding to trust, not a checklist of prescribed behaviors. Relationship requires a certain flexibility, a decision to continue in fellowship when our fixed expectations are being torn apart. Tournier notes, “True personal relationship, of the sort that makes the person, involves both choice and risk; it lays one open to a reply, and to the necessity of replying in turn: it is a dialogue.”[1] Perhaps we have much further to travel than simply Torah obedience. Yes, it’s true that Torah is our guide. Yes, it’s true that it summarizes God’s instructions for living. But Torah can become another list of rules. It isn’t personal until we enter into a dialogue with the One who gave it. “There is no life without fluctuation, without incessant oscillations about a mean equilibrium. Fixity is death.”[2]

“There is scarcely any such thing as a stable spiritual life. In any case it is rather a Hindu than a Christian ideal—the disappearance of the person, absorbed into the great Whole. We do not ‘possess’ God or contact with Him. We find him periodically and this is precisely authentic and living religious experience. It is an adventure, of which the return of the prodigal is an illustration, whereas the elder son, to whom the Father says, ‘Thou art ever with me’ (Luke 15:31), undergoes no religious experience.”[3]

Job discovered the God who is involved, not the God who once gave instructions. Job discovered that relationship trumped everything else, including righteous living. Faith is a journey, and on the road, Job discovered “grace is given drop by drop.”[4]

Topical Index: hearing, shama, seeing, relationship, Torah, rules, faith, Job 42:5

[1] Paul Tournier, The Meaning of Persons, p. 127.

[2] Ibid., p. 89.

[3] Ibid., p. 113.

[4] Ibid., p. 172.