The Cure for What Ails You

Then, indeed, you could lift up your face without moral blemish, and you would be firmly established and not fear.  For you would forget your trouble; like waters that have passed by, you would remember it.  Job 11:15-16  NASB

Forget your trouble – Zophar may be the ultimate optimist.  He’s probably related to Pollyanna too.  His view is that once you align yourself, confess your sins, seek forgiveness, and align yourself with God’s instructions, then you can forget your troubles because God will shower you with good things.  If you’re experiencing heartache, trauma, or trials, then that means, of course, that you haven’t finished confessing and you haven’t been fully forgiven.  Take care of those steps and all the rest is heaven on earth.

Ah, if it were only so!

The Siddur suggests the same approach in the prayer of Tachanun.

O God—You are slow to anger, You are called the Master of Mercy, and You have taught the way of repentance.  May You remember this day and every day the greatness of Your mercy and Your kindness to the offspring of Your beloved Ones.  Turn to us in mercy for You are the Master of Mercy.  With supplication and prayer we approach Your Presence in the manner that You made known to the humble one [Moses] in ancient times.  Turn back from Your fierce anger as it is written in Your Torah.[1]

Perhaps Zophar is right—about all of us who are unforgiven sinners.  I’d like to think so.  But the evidence doesn’t support even this diminished claim.  Some sinful people seem to thrive.  Some righteous people, fully forgiven as far as they know, seem to suffer.  We might hope for the Zophar/Pollyanna world, but our reality doesn’t match up.  And since Job is righteous and innocent, he is the outstanding exception of Zohar’s rule.  His cure doesn’t work.

Is there a cure for our condition?  Well, Yeshua seems to address this question in his discussion with the disciples about the man born blind.  Perhaps you remember that one.

And His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him”( John 9:2-3 NASB).

How long does it take for God to use us as a display of His work?  Apparently longer than we think.  Imagine that you are that blind man.  Blind from birth.  How many times would you ask, “Lord, why did you have me born blind?”  Like Job’s query, there seems to be no reasonable answer.  Yeshua invalidates the disciples’ suggestion that this blindness has anything to do with sin.  That was the mistaken conclusion of Job’s friends too.  You and I have the same short-sighted vision with our “Why, Lord?” questions.  We just can’t understand how life could be so unfair, especially since we trust a good and righteous God.  If you have ever asked “Why, Lord?” then this incident along the road is especially important for you (and for me).

Notice that Yeshua is simply passing by.  Does that sound familiar?  “As you are going” starts the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19).  Yeshua is just going – somewhere.  And a blind man is inserted into His path.  Notice that the blind man doesn’t even ask for healing.  He is resigned to his blindness.  He does not see it as God’s opportunity.  He sees it as just the way life is.  Do you wonder how many times he asked “Why, Lord?” before he came to the place where he gave up asking?  Is he like you and me, hopelessly surviving on our own understanding in God’s world?  Are we resigned to our fate, consigning ourselves to those whom God no longer bothers?

Notice that it is the disciples’ inappropriate conclusion that causes Yeshua to act.  Can you imagine that Yeshua would have simply passed by if it were not for His disciples’ mistaken theology?  After all, there were many blind men.  And He had places to go, things to do.  Why stop?  Perhaps Yeshua recognized the opportunity to display God’s good works when most of us are really focused on excuses or rationalizations.  The disciples wanted to play the “blame game.”  But Yeshua saw something that they could not see.  They were blind, just as blind as the man alongside the road.  And they were born blind because they refused to recognize God’s opportunities.  They were resigned to the way of the world too.  So are we.  How many have we passed by simply because we did not see what God might do?

Finally notice that the healing of this blind man doesn’t answer any of the important questions.  Job doesn’t get answers to his questions either.  Does that provide us with a clue about the nature of our questions?  Maybe God isn’t interested in questions that really don’t matter.  The healing of the blind man isn’t about answers for our questions.  It’s about the nature of God, displayed (Greek verb phaneróō) in good works.  This is a particularly interesting word since it means “to reveal, to make visible, to show openly, to make conspicuous.”  It assumes that the substance of what is now revealed was there all the time; we just didn’t see it.  The blind man was constantly under the care of God; he just didn’t see it.  The disciples were being lead by the Spirit to examine their view of the world; they just didn’t see it.  Yeshua reveals what was right in front of their eyes.  He heals the blind man and the blind disciples by making God’s goodness manifest.  He could see what we cannot see without Him.

We are called to be like Him.  We are commissioned to bring others to see Him “as we are going.”  We are expected to “see” the world with the eyes of the Lord.  How will we do that if we don’t understand the opportunities?  How will we reveal God’s good works if we ask such distracting questions?  Let us pray for eyes that see more than what the world presents to us.  Like the men on the road to Emmaus, we need to have our eyes opened.[2]

Topical Index:  blind, display, phaneróō, John 9:3, Job 11:15-16

[1] The Complete ArtScroll Siddur, (Mesorah Publications, Ltd., 1985), pp. 273, 275.

[2] The previous Today’s Word was 26 December 2010, and another on 9 February 2009