Sackcloth and Ashes: Travels with Job (4)

He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21 NASB

Taken away – (This is a bit long.  Sorry)  The next stage in the story is the slide from external tragedy to internal trauma. Job heroically proclaims his faith when the world around him collapses. Will he do the same when his own body fails to protect him?

It’s one thing to endure the loss of possessions, even the loss of children. There is no question that those losses are numbingly painful. But when the body breaks, when the skin molds and rots, when there is constant physical pain, that’s the time that suicide begins to remove color from the horizon.

Our civilization has stopped believing in the sanctity of life. We no longer consider the decisions about birth and death to be the exclusive province of God. We extenuate and terminate, ventilate and complicate the issue of living so much so that some judge who has never considered who God is adjudicates in God’s place. As a culture, we firmly believe that our lives belong to us, and when they get too painful to bear (wherever that point might be at the moment), we have the inalienable right (but who gave it to us?) to do something about it. This is precisely the proposal given Job by his wife. “Your life is horrible. It will never be better. Why don’t you just curse God (the equivalent of deliberately issuing a death sentence for yourself) and die?” Why don’t you commit suicide? What is the point of going on? You’ve lost everything you possessed. Now you have lost control of your own body. Is this a life worth living?

If we read this part of the story in Hebrew, we would find something shocking. The word translated “curse” is not qalal (which we see in Job 3:1). It is barak and barak means “bless.” This verse jumps off the page because it seems to say exactly what we don’t expect. Does Job’s wife really say, “Bless God and die”?

What we discover when we realize that the word is “bless” and not “curse” is this: Job’s wife employs powerful sarcasm to get across her point. Job has become a scapegoat of blessing. All his good has been turned to evil. Now his wife ridicules his previous blessed state. “You thought God was so good to you. You constantly talked about His blessings. Now look at you. You’re pathetic. Why don’t you bless your ‘blessing God’ now, and die?!”

Years ago when I had my first face-to-face encounter with Job, when my life suddenly collapsed into ruin, I heard these same sarcastic remarks. “Don’t wait for a miracle. It’s not going to happen.” “You were so stupid. Now maybe you’ll wake up to the real world and take care of yourself.” “Stop living in a fairy tale.” The words of Job’s wife echoed across the centuries. “Look at your life. It’s ruined. What kind of God does this to people? If that’s what God’s blessings mean, then why bother to live?”

Job is a very difficult book to study. It’s not difficult for those who read only the first two chapters and the last few verses. They are the ones who are convinced that God directs MGM studios. Everything turns out good in the end. Job isn’t for the Hollywood believers. Job is for the rest of us who have to live in the middle. Job doesn’t become ours until we hear those sarcastic words, until our faith is challenged by the unthinkable, until we are standing alone, destroyed, under the banner of a God who cares. Then Job is as real as it gets. Job is the theology of pain and it is utterly useless to those who do all they can to avoid pain. Job is only for brave souls who are willing to face life as it is.

The belief that we are owners of our own lives is deeply embedded in the culture’s thinking. This is the fundamental issue with the argument over abortion. It is the foundation of legislation about euthanasia, life-support, Dr. Kevorkian and dozens of other “death” difficulties. When we think that life belongs to us, we are immediately pushed onto the path of determining for ourselves what life really is. When does it begin and when does it end? So Job’s wife comes to him and says, “Curse God.” That is a suicide clause. You did not curse a god and expect to live. To curse God was to commit an act of treason, punishable by death. That is the essence of the Third Commandment. If you cursed the “blessing God,” you would die in retribution. But at least you got it over with. You stopped the pain.

Now Job displays a faith that very, very few people have. He has already lost all his possessions and his closest community. Now he loses interpretive contact with the world. In this world, we exist embodied. Our bodies are the channels of living. We do not enjoy life as spirits. For better or worse, we are here as bodies. All that we experience is interpreted bodily. Our ability to interact with life depends on bodily cooperation. That is why the loss of bodily faculties is such a tragedy. We are designed in a way that expects full body functioning in order to experience all that life offers. Blind men are cut off from vast amounts of worldly experience. So are the deaf, the mute, the physically and mentally disabled. Illness is a form of deprivation from life. It restricts our intended interaction with all of God’s creation. Deep and lasting illness slowly squeezes out the world and in the process, minimizes life.

Job’s first tragedy introduces him to the fragile nature of accumulation and security. Job’s second tragedy introduces him to the absolute dependence of all experience on the grace of God.

Last year a close friend of mine died from a prolonged battle with cancer. As the disease destroyed her body from the inside, her world grew smaller and smaller. She traversed the path from healthy athletics to exhaustion, from weakness to inability and from survival to death. She could no longer enjoy a walk at sunset, a drive to the beach, a party with friends, a favorite dessert, a day with her grandchildren, a time to read. Illness robbed her of life, slowly, day by day, squeezing her into a world confined to the length of her bed and the hand that held hers. External disaster removes our connection to substance. Internal disaster removes our connection to life.

You might ask, “What’s left?”

The answer is, “Resolve.”

Job’s resolve is found in chapter 2, verse 10. “Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” The implications in this statement are enormous. How many of us could stand with Job and proclaim this kind of faith? Very few, I suspect. Today we live in a world that preaches God’s unlimited goodness. From forgiveness without consequences to richer, better lives, we are subjected to an unending barrage of spiritual utopia. When God shows up, life gets better. When God shows up, problems disappear. The reason for salvation is happiness here and heaven later. We have painted God in our own desirable image—the great genie in the sky who is ready to make life wonderful for anyone who believes strongly enough.

Job did not have that kind of God. Job’s God was the God who stood behind the good and the bad. Job’s God was the God who initiated His own purposes even when it put Job in debtor’s prison and the hospital ward. This God is much more difficult to follow. But the other kind of god is worthless.

Suffering is nearly impossible to comprehend. It is one of those theological problems that never finds a truly satisfying answer. No matter what solution is offered, there always seems to be some discomfort in the context. Suffering just doesn’t seem right. Job’s resolve in the face of incredible undeserved suffering deliberately avoids the mental gymnastics needed to bring rational closure. Job is not a theologian. He is a fellow traveler on life’s tortuous road. His answer to this suffering is culled from dirt and thirst. If God is responsible for the good I have experienced, am I going to complain when He brings bad? My life is under His control. The good things in my life came from His hand. I was the passive recipient of His favor. I took all that He gave when it was good. Am I now going to complain when He brings things into my life that I don’t like?

Job does not tell us why God allows good or bad. Job simply points out that it is God’s choice, not mine. It’s not a matter of what’s fair. It’s a matter of what’s given. If the rain falls on the just and the unjust, so do hail storms. When God chooses to favor His children, we rejoice. When He chooses not to bless us, we are still called to rejoice. He is still God and we are still His creatures. Job’s priority is not theology. It is worship.

If we thought that Job’s first declaration of faith (“the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord”) was strikingly heroic, then we will be even more impressed by his statement of resolve. “If I accept what is good, shall I not also accept what is bad?” Who can challenge the justice of God? Not Job! Job resolves to uphold God’s absolute rule no matter what that might mean for his personal circumstances.

Now I know that I am not like Job. I suspected that we didn’t quite share the same perspective when he pronounced that God had the right to take things away. Intellectually I agreed. God is sovereign. But my fear and distrust began to grow when I thought about what that would mean for me. I don’t want God to take things away, and I am pretty sure that when He does, I feel slighted. I complain. I want them back. I hold God accountable. What right does God have to take from me what I earned under great duress and with considerable effort? I am more than likely to be one of the “Why me, God?” people. But Job might convince me that God is sovereign and He does have the right to change my life (as long as I continue to think He is doing it for the best).

Unfortunately, when I get to the point where Job says that I should be just as agreeable to the bad as I am to the good, Job and I start to part company. I see his logic. If I accept God’s gifts, then it follows that I should also accept His chastisements or even His unfavorable acts toward me. But my natural ego reaction is, “This isn’t fair,” by which I really mean, “I don’t like this.” That’s when I need Job’s resolve, not to solve the problem of suffering but to exercise the call to worship. I need to resolve to honor God because He is God, not because of what He does or doesn’t do for me. Job’s answer to suffering is to remind us that worship is not based on what God does but on who God is. It’s a point well taken.

Topical Index: resolve, Job 1:21; 2:10