Job 2 | Wayfarer

[Job] replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”
Job 2:10 (NIV)

I’m getting to a place on life’s road in which retirement sits on the horizon. I have friends who have already retired, and retirement thoughts and plans has suddenly become a more frequent topic of conversation.

I’ve observed that retirement seems to be a piece of “the American dream.” We’re told to plan for it, save for it, and get ready to “enjoy” life in our golden years. It’s easy to feel that I have a right to those promises of a “good life” in the retirement years like you see on every drug commercial. I put in all of those years of work, and the financial planner promised that my savings and investments will allow me to do the things I want to do.

Over the past decade, I’ve watched my mother suffer and die from Alzheimer’s. I’ve watched my father suffer from cancer as well as a viral infection that almost killed him and put him in nursing care for months. I know it’s not the life my parents envisioned in their seventies and eighties. It’s easy to feel a certain sense of injustice in it all.

The prologue of Job (chapters 1-2) sets up a divine relational triangle. God and Job have a good relationship going. Both are happy and content with one another. Job is grateful and faithful to God, ritually providing offerings even for his children that they would be pure in their relationship with the Almighty (Job 1:5). This is an important piece of the story for me to understand before embarking into the main text of the story.

In the ancient near east, the Hebrews had a very different understanding of God than the other cultures surrounding them had of their many gods and goddesses. The other religions of Job’s day viewed gods as higher beings, like super humans who were very human-like. The notion was that the gods got tired of providing for themselves, digging irrigation systems, raising crops, building homes for themselves, and et cetera. So, they believed that the gods created humans to serve them, provide them with a home and daily needs (a temple or shrine, with food (offerings and sacrifices), and to care for the gods in every way. Humans were essentially a slave labor force. The gods provided for humans in order that humans could provide for them. This is referred to as “The Great Symbiosis.”

In contrast, the God of Hebrews revealed Himself in a covenant relationship of His own prompting. He asked for ritual offerings and sacrifices like the other gods, but not because He needed humans for anything. God promised to provide and protect the Hebrews, but not because He desired anything other than relational fidelity from them. God simply wanted to be in a faithful covenant relationship with His creation, a covenant relationship very much like a marriage. Marriage is used as a metaphor for the relationship of God and humanity throughout the Great Story, especially by the prophets and later by Jesus.

The third member of this relational triangle revealed in the prologue of Job is Satan. The Hebrew word satan means “accuser” or “adversary.” Satan attempts to drive a relational wedge between God and Job (I can’t help but see a literary parallel to Iago driving a wedge between Othello and Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello). Satan’s accusation is that Job is faithful to God only because of a “Great Symbiosis” type relationship like the other gods of the near east. Satan contends that Job is only faithful because God has provided for him, protected him, and blessed him. Take away his wealth, the blessing of his children, and (in today’s chapter) his health, and Job will certainly lose his faith and curse God.

We’ll never know a certain diagnosis of what Job was afflicted with, but within the rest of the story he describes symptoms of festering sores from head-to-foot, nightmares, hallucinations, fever, weight loss. His physical appearance was frightening. The fact that his three friends put ashes on their heads (an ancient sign of grieving for the dead) when they saw him basically meant they considered Job as good as dead. Job’s wife certainly believed that Job would be better off dead, and urges him to essentially commit suicide by cursing God and prompting God to finish him off.

Despite his agony, Job refuses to do abandon God or curse him. He asks his wife another one of the big questions that resonate throughout the entire story, and that resonates with me in my own life: “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”

In the quiet this morning, I focused on the fact that Satan exits the story upon his affliction of Job and Job’s refusal to curse God. We’ll neither see nor hear from the Accuser again in this story. Job will question God, plead with God, and complain to God, but never will he curse God. The accuser is proven wrong. Now the questions that remain for next 40 chapters are how on earth did Job endure? How does Job make sense of his circumstances? Why would God allow this suffering?

In the quiet, I’m also reminded that Jesus never promised His followers an easy life. Quite the opposite, He said: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Then [Job’s three friends] sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was. Job 2:13 (NIV)

Along life’s journey we all have times of tragedy and of suffering. I have observed and experienced that our western culture, by and large, does not handle these stretches of life’s journey well. In a culture that celebrates temporal success and material excess, suffering of any kind tends to be approached with ignorance (“I have no idea what to do or say”), with discomfort (“I don’t want to be around him/her. It will just depress me”), and even with outright suspicion and derision (“They must have done something wrong. I don’t want to be associated with him/her.”).

For several years, Wendy and I aggressively attempted to bring a child into this world together. I have not shared very openly about it. Some day I know I will write more about my experiences. Not yet. Though Wendy and I have pressed on in our journey together, at times the soul wounds feel acutely fresh.

I will share, however, that this period of our lives was a very lonely time. My heart and soul were taken to places on life’s road that I did not desire to go. Even among our family and our closest friends I observed the struggle to know how to approach the subject, what to say, or how to help. Because of ignorance, discomfort, or suspicion there were many who simply avoided the subject around which our lives were painfully centered.

In today’s chapter, I was struck by our initial introduction to Job’s three friends. We will learn more about them in the days ahead, but for the moment I found myself impressed by two things.

First, Job’s friends showed the courage to put aside whatever discomfort, confusion, or suspicion they may have felt to consciously step into Job’s presence. They were not deterred by Job’s suffering but seem to be compelled by their friendship to be present with Job in the midst of it. That simple act of being present with someone in their pain is the evidence of love.

Second, I observed that for seven days Job’s friends said nothing. Wise King Solomon tells us that there is a time to speak and a time to be silent. It sometimes takes Solomon’s wisdom to discern between the two. I believe that Job’s friends initially choose the path of wisdom in their silence. There is nothing to say at this point that will be of comfort to Job.

I am reminded this morning of conversations I’ve had with grieving family members after the funeral of a loved one. People have often spoken to me of the comfort and encouragement they took by an individual’s presence at the funeral, despite the fact that they did not talk or interact with that individual. It was that individual’s choice to be present in their dark hour of grief which was meaningful. No words had to be spoken.

Today, I am taking stock of family and friends who have been faithfully present along the dark stretches of my journey. I am also confessing my own fault at letting discomfort, confusion, and suspicion deter me from being present with others whom I love in their own dark hours. I want to be a better, more courageous and more loving friend to others as I understand what it means to do so in difficult times.