The Non-Answer
Then Job answered the Lord and said, “I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” ‘Hear, now, and I will speak; I will ask You, and You instruct me.’ “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You; therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes.” Job 42:1-6 NASB
Too wonderful– Read it slowly. Contemplate Job’s response to God’s overpowering declaration. Isn’t it something like this: “Okay, I give up. You are God. I don’t understand how this works. So I just have to accept it and repent that I ever thought I could expect an answer.” Just how satisfying it that?
Job is a very ancient book. Perhaps it is the oldest of all the books in the Bible. It reflects something of the pagan ideas of divinity. In the ancient world, gods were the cause behind virtually everything. Good or evil happened to man simply at the whim of the gods. There were rules, of course, but the gods didn’t bother to tell men what the rules were, and how often they changed. So men were at the mercy of the fickle universe. There was no point in asking for answers. Answers were not given. You just did the best you could and hoped that the gods would leave you alone.
The story of Job is a bit like this. God never really gives Job any explanation about his suffering. We, as readers, know it is a power play between the accuser and YHVH, but Job doesn’t know this and YHVH never tells him. Perhaps this story is an attempt to provide some higher explanation to us as readers, but it doesn’t help much when we are actors in the drama. God’s reply to Job is just as mysterious as it is unhelpful. “I’m God. You’re not. Stop asking.” It sounds very much like the kind of thing we would expect to hear from any of the pagan gods of ancient lore. But it doesn’t sound much like the God we have come to know in the rest of the Bible.
Or maybe not.
When you think about it, Abraham wasn’t given much of an answer either. Nor Isaac. Nor Jacob or Joseph. They all sort of operated in the dark. In fact, God never really explains what He is doing for most of the people in the Bible, including Yeshua. Now that might seem odd to say, but re-examine the text. Yeshua asserts that he and the Father are in unison, that he only does what the Father tells him to do, but we don’t have much record about any of that. We assume (on good grounds) that what he says is true, but the actual communication between YHVH and the son is very scant. Maybe that’s just the way God really works: personal, private and subject to interpretation. Except for the prophets (including Moses, of course), God doesn’t seem to voice His views very often. Perhaps we’ve adopted a view of God’s communication with men that isn’t actually biblical, that is, we expect Him to consistently tell us what to do next, but He doesn’t seem to work that way most of the time. I wonder if we need to adjust.
Topical Index: Job 42:1-6, communication, answers
Thought-provoking, I’ve always seen job as… God’s love speaking to. Job’s heart. . Job did not know God was speaking. .Do we know how to to listen through our feelings, through our our brain, through our heart.? oh, that’s it !,! Is the heart the doorway to the soul,?. What explain how everything is connected., and how we need to be Reborn.
Nicely put. I would build upon that and wonder if the focus on original sin should have been on original thoughts / trauma. There sin? isn’t is more related to the who told you and the use of the gift of writing truth on our hearts from the created realm vs the eternal realm? We have touched on Avivah Zornberg’s work and the thought that Adam and Eve were intended to leave the garden yet it seems they were prematurely born.
We also touched on Steenkamp’s work (SHIP) and in simple terms they describe conditions whereby we receive far more than we are able to process and as a result disassociate and / or disconnect. I offer the thought that perhaps they were being prepared to remain joined to YHVH and connected to death as a part of becoming human and expressing / reflecting the character and nature of compassion and chesed to the created realm. Their sin brought them into more than they had matured into and or would be responsible for. Disassociation, disconnection , separation from YHVH.
This seems to open the door to be born again so that we can reenter to redeem the past and restore the capacity to receive YHVH’s thoughts which seem by design to be more than we can think or imagine. I don’t in any way make light of the effects of trauma yet wonder if over time this very process has been associated with evil vs. good, trauma vs. receiving YHVH’s thoughts. What the enemy meant for evil YHVH means for good.
I have suspected that we only need the ‘answers’ when we don’t know the Way and we only need ‘control’ when we have lost our connections: that these are just symptoms that we have already missed the boat. I think our ‘need’ to be told what to do is hardwired: in fact it may be our biggest clue to the fact that our spirits can only operate in conjunction with other spiritual forces, which the Tanakh calls “elohim”. Paul goes further and in Eph. 6:12 he lists these “principalities… powers … rulers of the darkness of this world …and spiritual wickedness in high places” that operate through us in contrast to the Spirit of God. We were created to serve somebody!
Sin trains us to be shoved around: to be treated like slaves or animals or property: to be ‘told what to do” (as per that list), but that was not our original design: we only think it is our design because we have already been damaged: our spirits have already been hijacked. We were created to be sovereign: not only in our own spirits but also over the planet we were designed to steward. I think we look for the list in Ephesians in our political, social and religious lives because we think that’s just the way it ‘posed to be’: that we ‘need’ our world to be controlled and that we ‘need’ the ‘answers’ to do it with, so we make millions of laws and thousands of denominations to paste over the fact that only evil needs a script: the Creator and His little images can make it up as they go (together).
It may be one of the best-kept secrets of righteousness (reconnection with heaven) that life is actually meant to be an open-ended dance with a Partner. Nothing in the world of the flesh gives us any clues to this, for the flesh can only perceive what has been: what is already fixed, so it guesses that we must therefore ‘need’ things to be ‘fixed’, with plenty of ‘fixers’ to do it! Without the Spirit of God pouring the will of God into our lives like a river for our little stream of consciousness to merge with, we desperately cast about for some other will – any will at all (even our own) – to agree with – to serve.
I think the big difference between the spiritual forces not of God and the Holy Spirit is that all other forces want to take over (trespass) our sovereign space: to literally BE US (take our power of choice as their own); but because we were created free we have to be convinced to hand that sovereignty over to somebody or something other than God: we have to be deceived into surrendering our birthright. Because we misjudge God as just another force wanting to subsume us into Himself (like all false gods do), we miss the fact that, unlike all those other forces, He does NOT force: He attracts. Further; He does not enslave: He partners with His servants by leaving their will intact. He wants to agree with us: not be us.
I think we are only afraid of an open-ended future when we are not partnering in the moment with the will of God, and we only want control or to be told what to do in the places that have not been returned to the freedom of choice by redemption. Let us stand in those places where evil is shoving us around and repent for “staying upon” those that “smote” us and return to putting our “stay upon the LORD” (Is. 10:20).
I so enjoy getting to read all the comments especially yours. I always enjoy your perspectives. The open ended dance, I love that. Being lead seems so simple but as you say you must stay in the moment. As I recall moving in the spirit and actually doing something of value I didn’t even know it until afterward or sometimes aware but knowing it was Him taking me across the dance floor. Staying out of HIs way, letting Him lead and paying attention to Him not where we are going.
Hi, Sharon: please write more! You blessed me with your last summation: keep my eyes on my Partner, and not on where I am going. That is a keeper!
I think all of us need everything from all the rest of us. The more we share with each other, the more we have. Thank you for sharing, and please do it again.
Wow I needed to see that last sentence -thanks !!
Laurita, You noted that “sin trains us to be shoved around: to be treated like slaves or animals or property: to be ‘told what to do’”. That very much sounds like the historical description of woman’s relationship with fallen man. Worldwide, many men, dare I say most throughout history, dominate, control, abuse women- wives, daughters, sisters, strangers-shoving them around, treating them like slaves or animals or property. And many, I dare NOT say most, women seek to counter “control” men by one form or another, often involving their beauty, charm and sex. I agree that “our spirits have already been hijacked”, and that we handed “that sovereignty over to somebody or something other than God”, but I wonder if it necessarily has to be to an external supernatural force? We have submitted our spirits to the spiritual component or “spirit” resident inside other human beings. These “alien” spirits (to our own spirit) reside in our own homes, families, and cultures; they are our parents, our spouses, our families, our neighbors and bosses. I’m not sure if we learned our wicked ways from these “other spiritual forces, which the Tanakh calls “elohim”’ or they, in fact, learned it from observing us? No doubt they have cultivated their occult skills for untold millennium and they are now harvesting a bountiful crop, but we too have practiced our preternatural ways and are the worse for it. We have met the enemy and he is both these “elohim” and us.
Michael, too true about the sexes. We are tied together, so of course there is a natural corollary: if one goes down, they drag the other with them.
It is clear that we are designed to be extremely porous, spiritually, to all other spirits. It is also clear that (at least sentient beings anyway) were created with spirits so as to access other spiritual beings. Lovers will tell you that “one flesh” also means “one spirit”, too: one agreement. This is how love operates, but evil operates on the same spiritual channel. We can be in agreement with evil (“one with”) in our spirits, too. This must be why that agreement is equated with adultery in the Bible. Now, tell me: is adultery something we do on our own, or is it with another spiritual entity? Sin is unholy alliance with spiritual forces not of God, but are other people the sum total of those forces, or are they just vectors of evil?
Think carefully. The doctrine of original sin posits that we are the source of evil, but that cannot be true, for we were designed – hardwired – for love/life. The only way we would fall for evil is if it convinced us it was love. Do we convince (tempt) ourselves? What does the Bible say? James says we are “drawn away of our own lust”, but lust is not temptation: lust is just what falls for that temptation, or, lie about love. I think it all boils down to who is the liar/tempter (source)? You? Or, not you? This is another way of asking if our Example, who we are told was tempted all the ways we are, tempted Himself? What does the Bible say?
It’s my thinking that God picked Job because he knew that Job would pass the test. God showed creation the power of a man’s love towards God.
This message gives me encouragement as I have never “heard” GOD. I hear people say often that GOD told them this or that but the best I experience is a feeling of assurance that I’m headed in the right or wrong direction. As I have no choice, I’m perfectly satisfied with this level of communication. Blessings all.
Bob, someone once told me I do not hear God’s voice because I listen with my head and not my heart… I sometimes get the listening right but more often I am left dumbfounded because I think too much… If this will help, it takes letting go and not holding on to, to hear God’s voice.
How does one listen with one’s heart?! I have heard that said as well.I always want to see how someone does that 🙂
I tend to believe it is more of a conscientiousness awareness that leads me. I can’t say that I have ever “heard” Gods voice “speak” to me. I don’t live my life waiting for a sign or some such thing to move on along my journey either. We know the difference between right and wrong and life surely is not static. Mistakes will be made for sure but the journey continues till the day we breathe no more!
As I get older I find a lot of unanswered questions are found when I go “lower” and I am embracing vulnerability….. yet the process to get there can be a resistant clumsy sad broken ugly messy voyage…….
A Father shouldn’t have to tell his adult children how to live (he already taught them).
Of course, this is not something Christians like to hear, but they need to adjust.
Even applied to Moses… “The secret things belong to the YHVH our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” Dt 29:29.
The word wonderful is pala (פָּלָא). When you look at each letter the Peh represents the mouth or to speak, Lamed represents to learn or teach aka some kind of instruction (looks like a shepherds hook to guide the sheep), Aleph represents the head or Yehovah. How many times does someone share a tidbit or a testimony about Yehovah and we go WOW! It is an insight a glimpse of the Creator. Pala is a sermon or a testimony about Yehovah and that is always wonderful. Job’s friends were doing the opposite of recognizing Yehovah’s true nature or character, so not so wonderful. If we could sit down with Yehovah for only a day and ask Him anything, what would it be about? At least we have some context to go by, we already know some things about Him. Job started with only hearsay. Pala also means to carve up like a sacrifice or to do a hard thing. What if it were translated “therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things “carved up like a sacrifice” for me, which I knew not.” Think of all the sacrifices carved up at the Temple… they were carved up for me, but I really didn’t know why until Yeshua came on the scene and let me know why He had to go to the cross to separate me from my sin nature, because Abba wanted Him to go get the kids back. Abba wanted His family back even if it killed Him.
For me, Job is the book that is both THE question and at the same time THE answer. The question being, God’s existence. Where is the evidence of God’s existence in the world? How does He interact with us? Where is the PROOF of His existence in this reality? Job is suffering in a very real and relatable way. People he knew and loved are dead, all of the structures he sees are collapsed, boils are physically painful (along with all of the other ailments). So why doesn’t God transcend space and time and intervene? Especially since Job had done nothing to warrant such suffering.
I’m a logical thinker, in order for me to engage emotionally with anything, I need to understand HOW it works first. My husband tells me, “Amber, I don’t have to dissect a frog to appreciate the fact that its a frog.” My reply “Dissecting the frog and understanding how it works, is where the awe and wonder of it’s existence is found.” (Okay, not that we actually go around dissecting helpless animals, but you get the idea).
Again, for me, the book of Job is THE answer of how God exists within our reality. We think of everything in terms of how we interact in the world, physically. We are entirely corporeal and therefore everything we experience is with this understanding. However, God is not human, He is not in any way corporeal. When God answers Job, none of His answers are things that are physically relatable. “The foundations of the world, measuring the seas, the way an ostrich is careless with her young….” The reasons why a tree is a tree and doesn’t randomly explode or turn into a cow, what governs this behavior? Why does the sun rise in the morning and set in the evening? How do electrons know when to jump across to other atoms to form a new molecule? There are a trillion processes going on in your body right now that you are not cognitively aware of, how do they know when and how to do those things that are necessary for you to be alive? The wisdom that is built into the physical world, that defines our reality, that incorporeal ‘force’ is that God?
Every time I’m grasping for answers, I go back to the book of Job. God is in charge, I am not, I OFTEN need to be reminded of that fact.