| JOB
38: 1-11, 16-18
“WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME?” “Job is a good man and he knows it, as does everyone else, including God. Then one day, his cattle are stolen, his servants killed, and the wind blows down the house where his children happen to be whooping it up at the time and not one of them lives to tell what it was that they thought they had to whoop it up about. But being a good man, he says only, ‘The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.’ Even when he comes down with a bad case of boils and his wife advises him to ‘curse God and die’, he manages to bite his tongue and say nothing. It’s his friends who finally break the camel’s back. They come to offer their condolences and stay around for a week. When Job finds them still there at the start of a second week, he curses the day he was born. He never quite takes his wife’s advice and curses God, but he comes very close to it. He asks some very unpleasant questions.” (F. Bueckner, “Wishful Thinking” NY, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London; Harper and Row, 1973. Page 46) That is an accurate portrayal of the beginning of the book of Job cast in the colourful language of Frederick Bueckner. It raises questions that I think everyone of you here today have asked. If God is good and all-powerful, why do bad things happen to good people? Why does a good person die in the prime of life while an old man who can’t even remember his name linger on and on? Why is an infant born with cancer that has to be treated? Why is an innocent and harmless women raped in her own home? Why do good people whom we know and love contract cancer in their young lives or diabetes or a brain tumor or MS or ALS? Why did the Tsunami happen and why are there destructive hurricanes like Katrina and to a lesser extent Ophelia and more, why is the damage they inflict allowed to hit the poor and needy much more than those who could withstand the problem? These are questions that are very real- questions that have been asked as long as there have been humans on this earth and questions that have been posed in the book of Job. After enduring more than is imaginable, one can almost see Job clenching his fist and saying, Where are you and why are you allowing this to happen? If you want to kill us off, then at least make it quick. There is no reason to break our bones one by one unless you like the sound of it? The problem is given in graphic detail to heighten our questioning. Job has done everything right in this story, yet he experiences incredible suffering. According to the account, Job was the greatest of all the people in the East. He had a loving wife, ten children, seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred pairs of oxen, five hundred donkeys and enough servants to take care of them all. Through no fault of his own, his misfortunes began. The parable describes a deal being made in heaven; a deal between God and Satan. God says to Satan-“see my man Job, he is great believer and follower”. Satan responds, “of course, why shouldn’t he be. He has everything anyone would want. Take that away and then see what a follower he is”. God says, “ OK, do what you want with him, only do not take his life.” So, the persecution in unimaginable severity begins. Let me pause here with a theological diversion. The eternal problem that is occurring here is, how can a good and all-powerful God allow or even condone such horrible things to happen? Throughout history the struggle to understand evil has been a major problem for people, particularly people of faith. Anyone can see that evil exists. Horrible things, beyond explanation do happen. The question that haunts humanity is why? Harold Kushner’s son came down with the disease that causes rapid aging. When his son died, at an early chronological age, Rabbi Kushner wrote he book, Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People.” He hit on a universal problem and the book became an instant best seller. Perhaps many of you have read that book. From Job to Kushner, from Ivan the Terrible to Adolph Hitler, from the Black Death to the possibility of a pandemic disease outbreak, the question has confronted people. Not surprisingly, ancient questioners came up with the idea of at least two cosmic powers or personalities vying for the allegiance of humans. In their cultural understanading, a good power was in competition with an evil power and humans were caught in the middle. In the Bible three words appear all relating to the “Lord of all evil”. The words are Satan, the Devil and Lucifer. While Lucifer appears in the Old Testament, it is a Latin name indicating a later insertion of the term since the Old Testament pre-dated the Latin language. Archeologists and Anthropologists point out that the concept of Satan had its origin in the Babylonian Empire in the Zoroastrian religion around the 6th century BC. This idea, to explain the existence of evil made its way from Babylon to ancient Judaism, probably during the time of conquest when the Israelites were captives in Babylon and finally into Christianity. Like the creation story and several other stories in the Bible, this was adapted from another religious view and placed within a section of our Bible. Elaine Pagals, an excellent and contemporary scholar points out that Satan originally represented an obstacle. It evolved from that meaning to be used to rally a group against its enemy or adversary called “Satan”. The Jews never did create such a being. It was not until New Testament times that the concept of Satan as a being becomes equated with evil. From its inception, Satan has been used, as an external force, to stigmatize those not within the group as enemies who needed to be captured or conquered or converted as the case might be. Thus, one can see that most conservative Christian Churches teach a first century doctrine that Satan is a profoundly evil, fallen angel totally dedicated to the destruction of all human lives. This concept becomes a major plank in the conservative mandate to “convert” non- believers to Jesus Christ so that people will be saved from this all pervasive power. It is my belief, for whatever that is worth, based on the soundest scholarship that I have been able to study, that the idea of a person devil or Satan is a personification of the reality of evil. It is presented in such a way that it is a persuasive argument to make Christianity a missionizing and proselytizing faith-something that these same believers dispise within other faith persuasions. I believe, based on respectable scholarship, that Satan is a principle or concept of evil, not a personality. I am perfectly willing to accept the fact that for Jesus and most of the New Testament personalities, Satan was believed to be a living entity but that belief reflects the level of scientific knowledge of that day. That is why, to me, the Bible is so dynamic. As scientific understanding and scholarship develops, our understanding of the Biblical facts change, yet what the Bible is all about does not. Ass Marcus Borg states correctly, I think, “the Bible is not factual but it is true.” Still we ask the question, why do these things happen? May I propose some ideas that have been helpful to me, for your consideration? I believe that we live in a cause an effect universe. If we are caught in any cause, we will experience the effects. Let me illustrate: if a family is driving down the Sea to Sky highway and the driver falls asleep, or an oncoming vehicle crosses over the line or the brakes fail to operate properly, a crash probably will result. If, in that crash one or more occupants of the car is killed, regardless of who was at fault, death is the result of the cause. We may ask, why didn’t God prevent that accident? The answer is, I think, God created a world, which operates on the orderly laws of nature. Those law show that a car traveling at a certain rate of speed and weighing a certain weight requires a certain number of feet to stop regardless of how good the brakes are or the driver who applies them. This problem doubles if another car is coming in the opposite direction. Any car, person or object caught within that stopping distance would receive the effect of the collision. Given the circumstances I have described, the only way God could have prevented the accident would be to suspend the law of motion for a moment. Now, our earth is rotating at about 1000 miles per hour. If the law of motion is suspended, think of the catastrophe. That would be an immensely greater evil than the loss of a life of one we loved, as bad as that would be. Or, I might state publicly, that I do not believe in the law of gravity. If I were to advertise that fact in “The Chief” and invite people to come to the Logger Sports ground to see me demonstrate my belief, people would come. I climb to the top of the pole that the tree climbers climb in competition, declare my disbelief in the law of gravity and my conviction that God will save me and then jump off of the pole. All I would do, when I hit the ground, is prove the law. Think of the evil if God suspended the law of gravity to save me. You see, Tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires, and earthquakes all have logical explanations. If the cause is right, the effect will result, no matter how great the devastation. It is not the work of an evil one and it certainly is not the will of God but it is the result of a basically good creation that operates with some cause and people who were created with the freedom to do great things or stupid things. Job, in the form of a parable, tells the story of each of us who wrestle with this problem. After speaking about this problem for over 30 chapters, Elihu comes to Job and states many of the wonders of God: and though young in years he states to Job, you are obsessed with evil and judgment and justice obsess you. Elihu urges Job to remember all the greatness of God. Job hears the message, and while he tries, after all that has occurred he has difficulty in finding much good. Then in chapter 38, God comes in this Biblical drama, and speaks to Job out of the whirlwind. In the drama, God asks Job a whole series of probing questions: where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you are so wise? Were you there when I took all the measurements and shut the seas with doors? Have you entered the storehouse of the snow or seen the storehouse of the hail? For four full chapters, the writer has God confronting Job with all the questions that seem to counteract his questions of why is this happening to me? But I want you to notice: after 41 long chapters of description, questioning bewailing and admonition, Job’s questions are not answered. Job seeks answers about justice. God does not reveal answers, God only reveals himself. The truth is, God only knows and none of us is God. Near the end of the drama, in chapter 42, Job states, “I know that you are all powerful; that you can do anything that you want. You ask how I dare question your wisdom when I am so very ignorant. I talked about things I did not understand, about marvels too great for me to know. You told me to listen while you spoke and to try and answer your questions. Then I knew only what others had told me, but now, I have seen you with my own eyes. So, I am ashamed of all I have said and repent in dust and ashes.” With that insight, the story ends with all the fortunes of Job restored even more than before and God blessing Job for his loyalty. Why is this happening to me? I close with the conclusion of Barbara Brown Taylor from her delightful book, “Home Another Way:” “If there is an answer to the problem of unjustified suffering in Job, then it is this; that for most of us, the worst thing that can happen is not to suffer without reason but to suffer without God-without any hope of consolation or rebirth. All other pain pales next to divine abandonment (ask Jesus about that), and what Job wants us to know is that God does not finally abandon us. When there is nothing left-when all the flocks have been stolen and all the children have been burned- when there is nothing left but a potsherd with which to scratch our sores. what is still left is the God of all creation, who laid the foundation of the earth, who has walked in the recesses of the deep, who has made Behemoth and Leviathan and everything that breaths. This is the lord of life, and whom we may always ask for more. According to Job, we do not have to be polite about it either. In the end, God prefers Job’s outrage to the piety of Jobs friends, When in pain, we are allowed to yell as loud as we can, Why is this happening to me? Answer me? Devout defiance pleases God.” (Cambridge, Boston, Cowley Press, Barbara Brown Taylor, “Home Another Way, 1999, Page 166f) So go ahead and ask God, Why is this happening to me? You won’t get an answer but you might find God revealing himself to you! Dr. Doug. Lobb.
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