Tag Archives: Suffering

Chapter-a-Day

The Growth Gradient

Leave a comment

The Growth Gradient (CaD Job 14) – Wayfarer

“If only you would hide me in the grave
    and conceal me till your anger has passed!”
Job 14:13 (NIV)

Our neighbor has a willow tree that sits the edge of our properties. I can see it from our patio door. A few summers ago he got out his trimmer and literally cut off every branch so that just the bare trunk was left. Then he walked away. It looked so strange, and I wondered why he didn’t cut the whole tree down as I thought he was doing. Lo and behold, the tree quickly sprouted new branches full of limb and life. It was fascinating to watch.

In today’s chapter, Job continues his discourse of despair. He feels hopeless in his pain and suffering. He can’t envision any end to his suffering other than death itself, which for Job has a depressing finality of its own. Job even uses the metaphor of my neighbor’s willow tree:

“At least there is hope for a tree:
    If it is cut down, it will sprout again,
    and its new shoots will not fail.
Its roots may grow old in the ground
    and its stump die in the soil,
yet at the scent of water it will bud
    and put forth shoots like a plant.”

One of the things that I’m observing about Job as I read his thoughts anew, is the fact that he is a binary thinker. God is the unjust perpetrator of his suffering, period, end of sentence. Things are black and white to Job and he sees no gradient in between. Along my life journey, I’ve observed that human beings like things simplified into binaries. Red or blue, right or left, for or against, black or white. I believe reducing complex issues into simple binaries is one of the reasons our culture is currently so polarized.

As I contemplated Job’s use of the tree metaphor in the quiet this morning, I remembered that Jesus riffed off the same metaphor:

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”

In Job’s mind, he is a flower that quickly fades and is no more. In his hopelessness he dismisses the notion that he is like the tree. He wishes he was like the tree. “If only,” he says. Jesus’ words hearken back to Job. In his black-and-white thinking, Job is blinded to the spiritual gradient of growth that lies between. “You are the tree, Job. You just can’t see it.”

I have observed in my spiritual journey that suffering is, just as Jesus described, part of a spiritual pruning process that can lead to an abundant flourishing of wisdom and spiritual fruit. I have also observed that I, like Job, often respond to suffering with a “Can’t we just get this over with?” mentality. A third observation I’ve made is that, unlike the modern educational system, in God’s spiritual education system I don’t get to move up to the next grade until I’ve learned the lessons of the grade I’m in. I’ve known individuals who appear to have been in spiritual kindergarten their entire lives.

In the quiet this morning, my mind goes back to Job. His simple binary perspective blinds him from seeing that his struggle with his suffering is part of the process of spiritual maturity. The gentleman who designed the landscaping around our house told Wendy and me not to go overboard with watering our young shrubs, and not to be worried if they don’t look very healthy for a season. “They need to struggle,” he told us. “It’s the only way they will put down deep roots that are essential for life.”

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

Chapter-a-Day

Relationship & Communication

Leave a comment

Relationship & Communication (CaD Job 11) – Wayfarer

“Will your idle talk reduce others to silence?
Will no one rebuke you when you mock?
You say to God, ‘My beliefs are flawless
    and I am pure in your sight.'”
Job 11:4-5 (NIV)

Much of my career has been spent in the analysis of conversations between the employees of our clients and the customers who call them. I have analyzed conversations ranging from a receptionist getting a caller to the right department to a collections specialist trying to recover money from a customer who literally owes them millions of dollars. I can tell you with certainty that virtually every customer service problem can be traced back to a breakdown in communication: the message that was given, the message that was heard, the information that wasn’t provided, the information that wasn’t received, and the assumptions that were made. Add human emotion, temperament, and attitude on both sides of the conversation and you’ve mixed yourself quite a cocktail.

In today’s chapter we meet the third of the trio of friends sitting with the suffering Job. Zophar, whom I will refer to simply as Z, is as blunt as Bill was in his response to Job. As with Eli and Bill, Z is contends that Job must somehow deserve the suffering he finds himself experiencing; There must be sins that lie at the root of what’s happened to him. Z even says that God has forgotten some of Job’s sins, implying that if all Job’s sins were taken into account, he deserves worse than what he’s experiencing.

What I found fascinating about Z’s discourse is that he opens with an accusation that Job is mocking God and claiming that he is flawless and pure. In both cases, Z has heard what Job never said. Job has questioned whether God has acted justly in his circumstances and whether God really cares about him and his suffering, but that’s not mocking God. Job has not cursed God as Satan expected him to, even if he has emotionally questioned what he as assumed to be God’s actions. Likewise, Job has never claimed sinlessness or moral purity. In fact, just the opposite. Job has owned up to being less than perfect. He said he was “blameless” (9:21) of anything deserving the level of suffering he’s experienced.

Ironically, Job’s claim of being “blameless” is the same Hebrew word that God used when telling Satan that Job was “blameless” (1:8).

In the quiet this morning, I am mindful that my observations about what lies at the root of the customer service conflicts I examine and analyze in my vocation also applies to virtually every human conflict and misunderstanding. In what is said and unsaid, done and not done, lies a breakdown in what is being communicated between two parties and what is being received. On top of this is a layer of misunderstanding and assumption between the two parties regarding motives and intentions. By its very nature, relationship is built on the quality of communication between two parties.

Of course we get this in terms of two human beings, but I believe it is equally true of myself and God. My friend, Matthew, has observed in his daily vocation as a therapist: “Everyone is having a conversation with Life.” God says that He is constantly communicating with me through creation (Rom 1:20) and a host of other ways. His stated desire throughout the Great Story is to be in a relationship with me. That relationship, or lack thereof, is also built on the quality of communication between me and God.

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

Chapter-a-Day

Jury Box Pondering

Leave a comment

“Remember that you molded me like clay.
    Will you now turn me to dust again?”
Job 10:9 (NIV)

Many years ago, I taught a class on creativity that was based largely on The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. The lessons and exercises in The Artist’s Way were instrumental in my own journey. God used them to bear the fruits of insight, understanding, and spiritual healing in me. In my class, I simply shared them and facilitated their work in others. I was amazed how the creative process allowed some individuals to express, perhaps for the very first time in their lives, traumatic events that had been a giant, suppressed, spiritual block for many, many years.

I have known individuals along my life journey who have had horrid experiences in life whether it was being the victim of a human perpetrator or the victim of an accident or natural disaster. I have observed many different ways in which people cope (or don’t cope) with the suffering. I have heard many different voices work through the stages of grief, or sometimes spiral into a perpetual cycle of despair.

In the previous chapter, Job dreams of a courtroom drama in which he has the opportunity of taking God to court where he can put the Almighty on the stand and make God defend the suffering that Job accuses God of inflicting on him. In today’s chapter, Job continues to play out his mock trial before his three friends. He questions the heavenly defendant, before concluding, in despair, that whether he was guilty or innocent, God appears not to care.

I pondered Job’s prosecution of God this morning as if I was a juror in his improvisational courtroom play.

I don’t fault Job for his anger. He’s walking through the stages of grief like any other human being. But in his line of questioning, I noticed that Job has made some prosecutorial assumptions.

First, Job is assuming that God alone is the perpetrator of his earthly suffering. This is nothing new. We do that to this day. When a branch of my tree fell on the neighbor’s house and went through their roof the insurance company called it an “act of God.”

God gets blamed for a lot of things, but the Great Story (and the Job story) make it clear that the force of evil is also at play in this fallen world. We could spin into a philosophical discussion, of course, but for now I simply acknowledge that it was Satan who accused Job and was the perpetrator of his suffering. I find it ironic that after Satan afflicts Job he disappears in the story. I believe this to be one of evil’s common tactics, to perpetrate suffering and then pin the blame on God.

Job then asks God an interesting question:

“Remember that you molded me like clay.
    Will you now turn me to dust again?”

It’s ironic because it points directly back to the Garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve sin, God explains the consequences of their sin. They will exit the Garden and live in a fallen world where sin holds sway, evil has dominion, and earthly life ends in death:

“By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
    and to dust you will return.”

In accusing God of turning him into dust again, Job ignores the fact that death, suffering, and the consequences of sin has been humanity’s lot since Adam. Job lives on the same earth I do, in which evil exists and leaves innocent victims in its wake as it pursues power, greed, lust, and pride without regard to the pain, chaos, and death that naturally results. We also live in a fallen world in which rivers flood, hurricanes blow, volcanos explode, earthquakes rock, tornadoes spin, and tree limbs fall through your neighbor’s roof.

In the quiet this morning, I continue to feel for Job’s questions, his pain, the anger he feels in the seeming inequities of his experience. He had been living a pretty blessed existence that fit neatly into the box of his simple, contractual “Santa Clause” theology: “Do good and God blesses you. Do bad and God punishes you.” But my own life journey reveals that to be incongruent with what the Great Story actually reveals and what we experience on this earth.

In the midst of my own (relatively inconsequential) suffering along the way, I’ve had to do my own work through the stages of grief. One of the things that I discovered was that blaming of God for my suffering was actually denial of what God clearly reveals as the realities of life in a fallen, sinful world.

Sometimes you do nothing but good, and they crucify you for it.

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

Uncategorized

A Selective Backward Glance

Leave a comment

A Selective Backward Glance (CaD Job 8) – Wayfarer

“Surely God does not reject one who is blameless
    or strengthen the hands of evildoers.”
Job 8:20 (NIV)

I mentioned a previous post some of the different ways people communicate, and I hinted at time orientation. I hadn’t given a ton of thought to this until earlier this year when Wendy and I began to really explore how it affects our relationship and communication.

I have a very strong past orientation. I love history. When I was young adult and really began digging into understand myself, I began to dig into my family history. I am a product of the family system into which I was born and raised. My parents were products of the family systems into which they were born and raised. Human systems have certain ways they function and operate which can be generational in nature. In digging into the past I discovered a lot about my family and myself. Often look back in time to gain clarity on my present circumstances.

Wendy has a very strong future orientation. She appreciates my love of history, but also she rolls her eyes when I geek out on it. Unlike me, she is always thinking ten steps ahead with her internal radar because she knows that future circumstances will go much smoother for everyone involved if things are planned well, prepped for, and executed properly.

We have come to realize that some of our marital strife comes from the different time orientations with which we navigate life, but that’s another blog post.

In today’s chapter, we find Job continuing to sit on the refuse ash heap in his off-the-charts agony joined by three friends. Eli insinuated that Job’s suffering must point to some secret sin that caused the Almighty to punish Job. Job’s response was that he was innocent and did nothing to warrant his suffering, and challenged his friends to prove him wrong. So, his friend Bill steps into the batter’s box to take his swing.

Bill is a straight-shooter. He is direct and gets right to the point. He takes issue with Job’s claim of innocence and anguished cries to the Almighty. To Bill and his theological world-view, this is a black-and-white issue: “Your children sinned. God took them out. Period. End of sentence.”

What follows is fascinating because Bill clearly has a past time orientation. He tells Job to look to the past, the wisdom of the ancients and ancestors. in order to gain clarity on his present circumstances. Bill then shares a Hebrew wisdom poem (vss 11-19) about how the godless suffer the consequences of their godlessness. He then concludes in his black-and-white worldview that suffering is a spiritually natural consequence of godlessness and if Job was really blameless then God would restore Job’s fortunes and blessings.

I pondered Bill’s words in the quiet this morning. As someone with a strong past orientation, I quickly found Bill’s argument ludicrous. Human history is a long string of stories about human suffering, punctuated by certain events in which suffering happened on a massive scale. Within those events are nameless, faceless human beings who did not deserve their fate. My mind immediately reminded me of my trip to the U.S. Holocaust museum and the sight of all those shoes piled up just as they were piled up when their nameless, faceless owners were stripped and sent to the gas chambers.

My brain then provided me with a name, and a face from the past: Corrie Ten Boom and her family. Every other member of her family took of their shoes and placed them in that pile. Their only crime was that their love of Jesus and their desire to do the right thing led them to hide Jews in their home in an effort to save their lives. Her story of suffering in the concentration camp echoes Job’s anguished cries, and rightly so.

So, all due respect Bill, but in telling Job to take a backward glance to the past, to the ancients and their wisdom, you have chosen to be carefully selective in your stated evidence, so as to justify your simplistic conclusion. History is filled with nameless, faceless individuals who echo Job’s anguished cries in the suffering and death they blamelessly endured. Bill, you told Job that his words were “a blustering wind,” but it is your simplistic, theological world-view that I find as hollow as that pile of old, footless shoes.

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

Chapter-a-Day

Slimy Sympathy

Leave a comment

Slimy Sympathy (CaD Job 5) – Wayfarer

“We have examined this, and it is true.
    So hear it and apply it to yourself.”
Job 5:27 (NIV)

I once had the opportunity to sit under the teaching of a popular speaker and author at a weekend conference. This was probably twenty or more years ago. At the time, he was around the same age that I am now. At. one point, this gentleman has been on the “it” persons in popular Christian culture. I sold a lot of his books over the years when I worked in a bookstore in my high school and college days. His name was instantly recognizable. He was popular. He was influential. He had fame in his circles of influence.

Then, he disappeared.

He was gone from the bestseller lists. He was gone from the Christian publishing circuit. He was no longer part of the conversation. There were no scandals. There were no sensational headlines. He simply checked himself out of the game.

So, when he appeared as an instructor that weekend, I was intrigued. There was one thing he said that weekend that has stuck with me all these years. I’ve never forgotten it. I paraphrase from memory:

“I’d like to share with you some of the things I’ve been thinking about. Things I’ve been learning. You may disagree with me on some of the things. That’s okay. Go right ahead. I no longer feel the need to be right all the time.”

I loved the simple humility with which he said this. I appreciated his experience driven life-and-faith lessons.

The further I get in my journey, the more I’ve embraced life’s mysteries. The more content I am to shrug my shoulders. The less I feel the need to have an explanation for every thing that fits neatly inside a theological world-view.

In reading the last half of Job’s friend, Eli’s, first discourse, it felt kind of slimy from a relational human perspective. I suspect I’m going to be feeling that a lot as Job’s friends try to comfort Job by explaining his suffering.

Eli tries to be encouraging. He points out that God works miracles and wonders. God provides rain for the crops and blesses the lowly. If Job will be make an appeal to the Almighty, God will restore him. But, Eli also passive aggressively accuses Job of being secretly to blame for his sufferings:

“Resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple.”
(You must have resentment hidden in your heart!)

“Hardship does not spring from the soil, nor trouble from the ground.”
(You must have done something to bring this trouble on yourself!)

“Blessed is the one whom God corrects, so don’t despise His discipline.”
(Your suffering is clearly God’s “correction” and “discipline!”)

To make matters worse, Eli’s assured promises make light of the harsh reality of his present sufferings, his lost wealth, and his ten dead children:

“You will know that your tent is secure;
    you will take stock of your property and find nothing missing.
You will know that your children will be many,
    and your descendants like the grass of the earth.“

To add the proverbial cherry on top, Eli ends his discourse by assuring Job of his rightness, even taking the plural form to make his personal arguments sound like corporate, agreed upon truth:

“We have examined this, and it is true.
    So hear it and apply it to yourself.”

It felt slimy. Under the guise of encouragement and promises are passive aggressive accusations and self-righteous assurances that Job’s suffering fits neatly into the box of Eli the apologist’s theological wisdom and understanding.

How fascinating that as I read Eli’s discourse the Holy Spirit brought to mind the reappearance of the disappearing teacher some twenty years ago. The humble acknowledgement that he doesn’t know everything. The shrug and the admission that he’s simply not going to bother trying to prove his rightness to some guy from Kokomo, Indiana whom he’s never met and who wants to challenge his theology.

Some things simply defy easy explanation in this life.

Life gets messy.

It is what it is.

“I don’t know, Job. I can’t imagine. Nor can I make sense of what you’re going through right now. I won’t pretend to understand. I’m so sorry. I can assure of one thing, however. I love you. And, I’m going to sit right here with you as long as you’d like me to do so.”

FWIW: Today’s featured image “Job and his three friends covered in slime” was created with Dall-E2 AI image generator.

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

Chapter-a-Day

Eli and the Santa Clause

4 Comments

Eli and the Santa Clause (CaD Job 4) – Wayfarer

But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged;
    it strikes you, and you are dismayed.
Should not your piety be your confidence
    and your blameless ways your hope?
Job 4:5-6 (NIV)

Along my life journey, I have noticed that humanity has a certain base belief that is woven into the fabric of our DNA. We inherently believe that doing good is a good thing and doing bad is a bad thing. Pardon me for borrowing from a Hollywood movie title, but I often think of this as “The Santa Clause” because in Santa we boil it down to its pure form and feed it to our children. If you’re naughty you get coal in your stocking. If you’re good you get presents, or as comedian David Sedaris puts it, “if you’re good and live in America, you pretty much get whatever it is you want.”

As an adult, I’ve observed that the Santa Clause often gets hard-wired within us. If we live right and do good things then life should be filled with goodness and blessing. If we are selfish and a bad person then certainly we will reap the consequences of our self-centeredness and bad actions.

In today’s chapter, we hear from Eli, the first of Job’s three friends who have been sitting with him and contemplating the terrible suffering Job is experiencing. Eli begins and jumps right into Santa Clause world view. He recounts how Job, in his goodness, has encouraged and counseled others in their troubles, so Job should take a bit of his own advice not that he’s on the other side of the troubles. Cheer up!

Eli then recounts his observations of the Santa Clause principle at work. God blesses the upright and doesn’t kill them, while evil doers reap trouble and God wipes them out. As I read, I couldn’t help but wonder if Eli is trying to say: “You’re a good guy. God won’t let you die” while the subtext of his words is: “People don’t suffer like this unless they brought it on themselves.“

After this, Eli goes into the classic “I had a dream about you,” which I consider a variation of “God told me to tell you.” Dreams, visions, and words from the Spirit-realm carry an air of authority from beyond. The messenger isn’t responsible. Eli isn’t source. He is simply retelling what the “hushed voice” in his dream told him. I have written before about my thoughts on dealing with “God told me to tell you” statements. It’s not that I don’t believe in the prophetic, because I certainly do. I have a number of experiences with the prophetic that have been mind-blowing. I have also had experiences with those playing fast and loose with the “God told me” card. I have always found that a certain wisdom, discernment, and openness is required.

Today’s chapter are just the first half of Eli’s words for Job. Tomorrow’s chapter will contain the second half. Nevertheless, I can’t help but feel that he’s wading in the shallow end. Along my own life journey there have been stretches and experiences in which a Hallmark card poetry and “buck up li’l camper” platitudes feel like salt being rubbed into my wounds. While there is truth in the Santa Clause view of life (that’s why we use it with children), it certainly falls far short of addressing the messy circumstances we experience along this life journey.

In the quiet this morning, I can’t point the finger at Eli without three fingers pointing back at me. I am mindful of my own terrible Eli-like attempts at encouragement to others over the years. I’m embarrassed by some of the silly, shallow, and unhelpful things I know that I’ve said to people in the worst moments of their lives. The Sage of Ecclesiastes wrote that there is a time to speak and a time to be silent. The further I get in on this earthly journey, the more I embrace the latter. I wonder sometimes if simple, loving presence with open ears, an open heart, and a willing spirit aren’t the best thing for those suffering like Job. There are moments when keeping my mouth shut might just be the most gracious thing I do for others.

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

Book Summary List, Chapter-a-Day

Job (Jul-Oct 2023)

3 Comments

Each photo below corresponds to a chapter-a-day post and podcast for the book of Job published by Tom Vander Well in July through September 2023. Click on the photo linked to each chapter to read the post or listen to the podcast.

Job 1: Big, Uncomfortable Questions
Job 2: The Spiritual Triangle
Job 3: Birthday
Job 4: Eli, the Santa Clause
Job 5: Slimy Sympathy
Job 6: Judgement & Appearances
Job 7: Brooding
Job 8: A Selective Backward Glance
Job 9: The Plea for a Mediator
Job 10: Jury Box Pondering
Job 11: Relationship & Communication
Job 12: Beyond the Blame
Job 13: A Spiritual Stake in the Ground

Job 14: The Growth Gradient

Job 15: The Two Core Questions

Job 16: You’ve Got a Friend

Job 17: Busy Livin’

Job 18: Demonizing: Then and Now

Job 19: Will the Circle Be Unbroken?

Job 20: Unrelated
Job 21: The Gift of Listening

Job 22: Ass-u-me

Job 23: Peeps and Projections

Job 24: Life’s Injustices

Job 25: Worm Theology

Job 26: The Thread

Job 27: Morality Tales

Job 28: Wisdom & Foolishness

Job 29: Nostalgia

Job 30: Generalities and Perceptions

Job 31: Closing Argument

Job 32: Wisdom & Age

Job 33: Young Eli’s Approach

Job 34: I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know

Job 35: Eli’s Unintended Lesson

Job 36: Two Lessons

Job 37: Holy Shift

Job 38: The Last Word

Job 39: Answers in Questions

Job 40: Job Almighty

Job 41: Sharks and Leviathans

Job 42: Seen and Heard

You’re all caught up! Posts will be added here as they are published. Click on the image below for easy access to other recent posts indexed by book.

Chapter-a-Day

Birthday

2 Comments

Birthday (CaD Job 3) – Wayfarer

“Why is light given to those in misery,
    and life to the bitter of soul,
to those who long for death that does not come,
    who search for it more than for hidden treasure,
who are filled with gladness
    and rejoice when they reach the grave?”
Job 3:20-22 (NIV)

One of the things that Wendy and I have noticed in our marriage is that birthdays are treated a bit differently in our families. In essence, the siblings in my family don’t really pay much attention to each other’s birthdays. I never expect to hear from them on my birthday, and I feel no expectation to do so for them. In our family system, birthdays are a thing between parents and children, but it doesn’t extend to siblings and their families. Wendy’s family, on the other hand, experiences an explosion of activity on the family text string whenever anyone in the family has a birthday. Everyone is in. Everyone celebrates, even if it is simply a text of good wishes.

Today’s chapter is the first we hear of Job’s thoughts as he sits on the refuse pile of broken pottery and the ashes from people burning their garbage. In one day he lost every one of his earthly blessings. His wealth was stolen by enemies. His children died in a natural disaster. Then, he lost even his health. As we begin what will be twenty-four chapters of conversation between Job and his three friends regarding his suffering, we find the emaciated, disfigured Job covered in his festering skin sores from head to toe, scraping at the sores with pieces of broken pottery. His friends have sat silently in commiseration with Job for seven days.

When Job finally speaks, the first thing he does is curse his birthday. The day that friends and loved ones gather to celebrate each year. The one day each year when every person is celebrated and made to feel special. Job, in his intense suffering, laments that he was even born only for his life to lead to this intense loss and affliction. What Job longs for, he says, is death. He wants an end to the pain.

“Why is light given to those in misery,
    and life to the bitter of soul,
to those who long for death that does not come,
    who search for it more than for hidden treasure,
who are filled with gladness
    and rejoice when they reach the grave?”

This past year, a nurse sat down with my Dad and me to discuss my mother who was in memory care. What they shared with us is that my mother, painfully thin and living in the increasingly bitter reality of memory loss, showed all of the signs of someone who had “given up” on life. Like Job, she was on her own ash heap of life. She refused to eat, she began to sleep more and more, and she was increasingly life-less during her diminished waking hours. We agreed with the nurses recommendation to allow Hospice to take over her daily care.

I learned so much in the few months that followed. The wonderful nurses of Hospice taught me that there is a certain pattern and cadence that a person in my mother’s condition takes in the final stretch of her earthly journey. One of the hardest adjustments for me to make during this period of time was embracing her loss of will to live. When she refused to eat, I wanted to force feed her. When she slept all day, I wanted to get her up and make her take a walk with me. When she was awake yet seemed uninterested in engaging with me, I wanted to find some way, any way, to get some signs of involvement in conversation from her. The Hospice nurses taught me that forcing food, waking, and engagement was actually the worse thing we could do. I had to force myself to be content with reading Psalms to her when she was asleep, sitting silently with her and holding her hand when she was awake, and allowing her and her body to dictate what she needed each moment.

In the quiet this morning, I can’t help but think that in those few months I was not unlike one of Job’s friends. I read one commentator who, in referencing Job’s friends sitting with Job in silence for seven days, shared the opinion that they should have remained silent, foreshadowing the foolishness and unhelpful words they will utter in the following chapters.

Just this past week, my dad and sister and I spent a few days at the lake together. It was this past St. Patrick’s Day when our family celebrated mom’s life. Her body was cremated. She and dad have a cemetery plot where both their ashes will be buried, but we felt no rush to do this in the cold Iowa spring weather. We decided to put this off until it was warmer and we could gather as a family around the grave and celebrate to celebrate her and remember all the life and goodness she gave us.

While at the lake we decided on August 18th as the day we will lay her remains to rest.

August 18th is her birthday.

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

Chapter-a-Day

The Spiritual Triangle

2 Comments

The Spiritual Triangle (CaD 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.

Chapter-a-Day

Big, Uncomfortable Questions

Leave a comment

Big, Uncomfortable Questions (CaD Job 1) – Wayfarer

“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied.
Job 1:9 (NIV)

As a child, I remember my concept of God was that of a omnipotent source of all blessings and suffering in my life. The relationship was transactional in nature. Every strongly felt desire prompted an internal debate about what good I had to do, or what wrong I had to avoid or atone for, in order for God to grant my wish. Likewise, any experiential suffering in life was, of course, the result of my fatal flaws. Surely, I did something to warrant all four Vikings Super Bowl losses in the 1970s. My sins were just that bad.

I grew up. My relationship with God became very real, and I began to realize how foolish and vainglorious was my childish belief that I was solely responsible for every perceived fortune and misfortune in life. Nevertheless, there is a thread of wisdom throughout the Great Story that lays out a seemingly contractual system. Follow God’s ways and be blessed. Follow the path of evil and painful consequences will follow. While this is generally true, the human experience reveals that there are, and always have been, exceptions to the general rule. Good people suffer horrendous evils they don’t deserve. Evil people seemingly prosper and escape any earthly consequences for their actions. Both of these earthly realities are humanely unjust. How do we reconcile these exceptions?

That’s the question that Job grapples with.

The story of Job is one of the oldest and most difficult stories in all of the Great Story. The basic plot is well-known. A godly man who has done nothing wrong is allowed to suffer in what appears to be a spiritual test-case, to determine whether or not the man will lose his faith and curse God. My experience is that very few people have actually waded into the text itself which is an extensive exploration of human suffering and the theological arguments that ultimately fall short of explaining a justification for it.

The opening chapter is a prologue to the main story. The scene is set in God’s counsel chambers as God points out what a good man Job is. Satan then asks a pertinent question: “Does Job fear God for nothing?” It goes to the heart of my childish spiritual notions. Do we fear and serve God in exchange for security and blessing? The accuser even seems to implicate God in the question and give some credence to my perceptions of a tit-for-tat, quid pro quo relationship between faith and blessing: “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land.“

God allows the adversary to put Job to the test, and Job experiences the worst day of his life. His wealth is stolen or destroyed and all ten of his children are killed when the house they were feasting in collapses from a derecho wind.

The result?

Job, in his sudden grief, utters his famous faith-filled lament:

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
    and naked I will depart.
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;
    may the name of the Lord be praised.”

In the quiet this morning, I find myself entering this latest trek through Job with mixed feelings. My previous journeys through Job reveal it to be a story that asks big, challenging life questions that test the human limitations of understanding. I have always found it both uncomfortable and humbling. At the same time, I have also found beauty in the struggle of wrestling with Job’s core questions, which I have found to be ironically consistent with the experience of suffering itself.

The first challenging question: Do I fear God for nothing?

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