Restoration

Last week I wrote about the book of Job. This is part two. Forty-two chapters and one thousand fifty-nine verses weave a complex tale about the dealings of God with humanity and humanity with God.  Job’s tortured life gives us lots of clues about how we can meet our own trials.

Far from answering the question about why the innocent suffer, why tragedy befalls human kind and just what kind of God is in charge of this old universe anyway, the book of Job compels us to the murkier waters of what it means to have an honest relationship with God and with each other.  The context of the exploration is both set and sharpened by unspeakable suffering and wrenching pain.

Whatever it is that we think we know about God and each other is honed by human pain.  That’s not to say that we get to make up our own notions about God out of the stuff of our days. It means that life challenges our shallow notions about everything, including God, in ways nothing else can. 

The biggest gripe Job had with his friends is that their academic theology and perfect doctrinal constructs were spiritually bankrupt.  If they were seminary trained, their transcripts would reflect good marks in systematic theology and failing grades in pastoral care. 

The major theme of the book of Job is the invitation to authenticity: spiritual and relational.  It begs the question of how we move from the faith of our childhood to an adult faith; how we move from what we think we know to what we believe; how we integrate head, heart and soul.

The witness of Job suggests that one way, perhaps the most powerful way, is through the things that cause us the most pain, the deepest distress and the greatest anxiety.  Without asking or answering the question “why,” Job invites us to meet God on the other side of silence, protest, despair, emptiness and loss.  Job invites us to meet God on the other side of our pain, bearing witness to a promise that we will not be left on our own, even as Job was not finally left on his own. 

Faith is tempered by the stuff of life.

On the other side of Job’s railing and wailing, God shows up. In a Cecil B. DeMille kind of moment God shows up in a whirlwind and call’s Job name. And after all Job’s questioning, God has a few questions for Job. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” And it goes on from there. You can read it in Job 38. It’s some of the best poetry in the Bible.

And when God is done, Job repents in dust and ashes. And the text says he despised himself. This is not about self-hatred or self-loathing. It is about true humility. And humility is not to be confused with humiliation. It means an accurate accounting of who one is, neither self-aggrandizing nor self-deprecating. Job understood something new about himself and it opened the door to an authentic relationship with God.

You may remember Job’s three friends.  Rather than enter Job’s struggle they stayed at the edges and tried to pull Job back to familiar, safer ground.  Their comments reiterated tired notions of three themes: 1) it really is your fault, 2) you must have done something wrong, and 3) you know how God works, Job; it’s an eye for an eye kind of world.  

And when the day of reckoning comes, it’s the friends who are in the hot seat. God says to the friends; “you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. It’s an ironic twist.  Job gripes, groans, wails, moans, protests, screams and demands. His friends are horrified at his cheekiness. They are sure God will come along any moment and finish Job off as punishment for his bold speech.

After God shows up and shows Job a thing or two, God pretty much says, “Well done Job.”  You get it, now pray for these bone heads who don’t.

I’d love to know what Job said in his prayer, but we aren’t privy to that in the text. Suffice it to say Job probably prayed from the new place of his humility and authentic relationship with God.

It seems to me that suffering does one of two things. It either makes us bitter or it makes us better. We can work it through and come to a new place, an authentic faith and a deeper understanding of what it means to be human. Or, we can become angry, bitter, cut off from ourselves and closed down to others.   

If Job had swallowed his rage, sadness and anger, bitter probably would have won out over better. Instead, Job was honest. He didn’t hesitate to take God on. He was authentic with his friends and called them on their theological mumbo jumbo. And when all was said and done, he didn’t hesitate to come to a deeper more honest understanding and faith on the other side of his encounter with God.

The book of Job is, for all its quirkiness, a wonderful invitation to sort through our own trials and traumas with a willingness to be honest with ourselves and with God. Don’t worry; God can take it. Just look at Job.