In the Bible I find several responses to adversity. King David, whom we read about in 1st
& 2nd Samuel and 1st Chronicles and who is considered
the greatest of Israel’s Kings and the “man after God’s own heart,” responded
by fighting. When things got tough,
David got his slingshot, prayed, and went to war.
Fighting was not always an option
and even it when it was available, it was not always the right thing to
do. We also hear the lonely voice of the
prophet speaking God’s judgment, sometimes against God’s own people Israel,
sometimes against Israel’s enemies, and in the New Testament, God’s final
judgment against Satan, evil, and sin.
Amos, Jeremiah, Daniel, and John of Patmos are some examples of people
who responded to adversity with prophecy.
A third Biblical response comes from
the Apostle Paul. He responded to
everything that came up in life the same way: he shared the gospel. Whether Paul
was whipped, kicked out of town, imprisoned, well-received as an honored guest,
or respected, he responded by talking the salvation available to all through
faith in Jesus Christ. Suffering and
adversity brought opportunity.
There are other responses in the
scriptures, but we narrow our focus to the book of Job. Satan challenged God, saying that the most
righteous man, Job, who was a true worshipper, would turn on God and curse God,
if God allowed Job to be harmed. God
took the bait and allowed Satan to destroy all of Job’s property, kill all of
Job’s children, and harm Job’s body.
Job’s three friends Eliphaz, Bildad,
and Zophar come and sit with him and talk with him. They insist that Job’s suffering is from God. Job agrees.
They insist that Job must have sinned terribly to have such pain and
loss. His adversity is his own fault. His suffering came by way of his mistakes and
rebellion.
The three friends in their speeches insist Job
must submit to God. Submission, they
say, is the only acceptable response to pain.
Job must submit to God’s lordship, confess his sin, and repent. Then, he will be made whole.
Job will not submit. He agrees that God brought this on him. His friends accuse him of rebellion and he
does indeed rebel. But his rebellion is
not a sinful rejection of God’s ways.
Rather, he rebels against a shallow theology that responds to real-world
suffering by retreating to long-held theological presuppositions. He rebels against his friends’ insistence
that he confess.
Job’s rebellion produces two
responses. First, he laments. Lamentation is a form of prayer rarely used
or even understood in churches today.
Jeremiah, the prophet, offered lament prayers.
Here’s an example of Jeremiah praying
lamentation:
7O Lord, you have enticed me, and I was
enticed; you have overpowered me, and you have prevailed. I have become a
laughingstock all day long; everyone mocks me.
8For whenever I speak,
I must cry out, I must shout, “Violence and destruction!” For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and
derision all day long (Jeremiah 20:7-8).
And then here is a sample of Job’s lament
prayer.
10“I loathe
my life; I will give free utterance to my complaint; I will speak in the
bitterness of my soul.
2I will say
to God, Do not condemn me; let me know why you contend against me.
3Does it
seem good to you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands and favor the
schemes of the wicked (Job 10:1-3)?
Job expends a lot of energy in Lament
prayer. It is not though, his only response. The lament expresses
injustice sorrow. It is spoken by one
defeated. It is the ultimate in honesty
before God. We are so concerned with
saying the “right thing” from a religious standpoint, we skip the honesty in
lament prayer. We fear it.
The Old Testament invites us to enter this world
of prayer. More Psalms are laments than
are praises. Those Psalms along with
Jeremiah and Job can be read by people today who suffer. To read those words from the heart, “Does it
seem good to you [O God] to oppress, to despise the work of your hands,” is to
say what you feel. This is not a
condemnation of God. It is the reality
that you are hurting so badly, you have to vent. You have to say it. The Old Testament gives words for when we have
to let it out.
Job then goes further. After the Lament, Job will bring protest
right to God. Jobs says to God,
12You have granted me life and steadfast love, and your care has
preserved my spirit.
13Yet these
things you hid in your heart; I know that this was your purpose.
14If I sin, you watch me, and do not acquit me of my iniquity.
15If I am wicked, woe to me! If I am righteous, I cannot lift up
my head, for I am filled with disgrace and look upon my affliction.
16Bold as a lion you hunt me; you repeat your exploits against me.
This movement from lament into protest leads Job to the
language of a legal trial. Job takes God
to court. His is a refreshing approach,
taken by a man in a true relationship with God.
The friends have become people who choose the rules about God over a
relationship with God. They theologize
and come up with rules and then stick to those rules no matter what. Job will not.
He is so committed to the relational nature of God that he is willing to
defy convention and challenge God.
Just as God accepted the Satan’s challenge regarding Job,
God accepts Job’s challenge regarding justice.
This matters because when we respond to adversity through lament, God
will hear our lament prayers as God heard Job.
When we challenge God, God will accept our challenge. God may humble us as God humbled Job. But as hard as that humbling is, we remember
that God humbles those whom he loves; those who treat him as one to be worshipped
and loved in relationship rather than as a distant deity who can be reduced to
a set of rules.
In commenting on Job’s protest to God, Old Testament
professor Sam Ballentine quotes from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov. The second brother, Ivan, is an intellectual
and an atheist. Ballentine feels that
Ivan Karamazov speaks out the very protest against injustice heard from Job. Ivan says, “I refuse to accept this world of
God’s. … Please understand, it is not
God that I do not accept, but the world he has created. I do not accept God’s world and I refuse to
accept it” (Ballentine 172-3).
There is a danger in lament and protest. It leads to us sitting with Ivan the
atheist. The one suffering permanently
abandons faith and gives up on God altogether.
Ivan’s words become ours. “I do
not accept God’s world.”
In tension with this fallout and drift away from faith is
a movement toward redemption of God’s world and a claiming of the world for the
Kingdom inaugurated by Jesus. This is a
very optimistic worldview that believes in the presence and activity of the
Holy Spirit. Most of the writing in
recent years done along these very positive thought lines comes from
theologians, pastors, and spiritual directors who are not writing from the
perspective of Job’s pain. I don’t mean
all these authors who have such a hopeful outlook have never suffered. I don’t mean they all have easy lives. But the hope that Christians can use their
talents, skills, and experience to positively provoke transformation from
within the world’s systems – education, politics, business – that hope is not
coming from people who are currently suffering as Job suffered.
It is coming from people who live in joy as their very
lives are offered to God. If you are a
teacher, your offering is to be an outstanding, compassionate educator. If you are a waitress – you are diligent in
serving your customers, especially the rude ones. Your equipment in representing Christ through
excellence in your craft is patience, friendliness, and a servant’s heart. If you are a carpenter – one of the ways you
acknowledge the rule of God’s kingdom is to build things that are sturdy, that
last, and are of high quality. Doing
what we do well and with absolute integrity is an offering to God. In this we submit our lives to God’s
lordship.
Some of the leaders in this movement of announcing the
kingdom and transforming culture are Andy Crouch, N.T. Right, Richard Foster,
Gabe Lyons, and Rob Bell. This
hope-filled theology collides with Job’s perspective of suffering, lament, and
protest. How can the church today live out
theologically optimism and at the same time respect and love people who are
going through Job-type experiences?
We’ve got to hold onto that theological hope because that’s the stuff of
Easter. We are resurrection people. But
even as we live in the Kingdom now, we also have to recognize that there is
suffering in the world. This is a fallen
world and we have to respect that people have “Job-sized” problems.
This is where the church, ours and Christians in churches
around the world, can be all that God is calling us and equipping us to
be. In doing what we do best – our
experiences, skills, and training - God’s people band together to create a
culture of compassion and care.
Jesus did this. A
woman was caught in adultery. The law
was clear. She was to be executed by
stoning. Jesus saw beyond the law. He saw a woman who had no voice, who probably
could not have resisted the man with whom she sinned, and who had no hope. He did not deny the sin. Instead he saw the big picture. He invited all those who were sinless to
begin the stoning. No stone was
thrown. Instead of accusing, Jesus
created a new paradigm – a community of forgiveness.
On another occasion he was faced with 5000 hungry people
and only a few fish and loaves, not enough to even feed his twelve
disciples. Yet, he thanked God for the
food and broke it and passed it out.
Miraculously all were filled, there were 12 baskets left over. Conventional wisdom said, send them off. Jesus did not send them off. He asked the people to stay. He had compassion for them. He instituted a system of provision. In Acts,
we see the earliest Christians continuing this practice, not by miracle, but by
sharing.
How can we creatively respond to Job and the pain in the
world today?
I think of my friend Caleb. He visited about a dozen orphan care points
in Africa. At the time of his trip, he
and his brother were running a Christian school and a Christian recording
studio in OK. They had experience taking
students on mission trips to Latin America.
Caleb wondered if he could make a career of guiding church and student
groups on these mission trips. There is
not much money in that! But, he believed
that God was calling him. God shouted to Caleb through a Job-type cry of pain,
the pain of orphans.
Orphans, especially in places like Guatemala, Rwanda,
Russia, and Ethiopia, will end up on the street as addicts. They will become sex slaves. There is little hope that a child who grows
up with no one to care for him or her in a society where the weak are already
stepped on will have any type of positive, meaningful life. Caleb heard this Joban cry and he knew the
answer was provision for these kids from affluent Christ-followers in
America. He just had to do his part –
get those affluent Christ-followers to the poor kids.
Three years and about a dozen trips later, Caleb is
cooperating with God to help kids move from Job-type suffering into the kingdom
of God. Start an organization that caters
mission trips; that’s your full-time job – who knew that was possible? Caleb certainly did not. But, he was following God.
What
skills do you have to care for those who suffer? If you’re in health care or education you can
obviously donate your time to heal or tutor or teach. If you’re someone who makes a lot of money,
you can donate a lot of it, and you should as a part of your life as a
disciple. But what if you don’t have
those types of front-line skills or access to financial resources? What if all you have is time? God will use it. What if all you have is energy? God will put you to work in a creative way,
walking with Job. Caleb did not have
anything really except some experience on mission trips, a heart willing to
listen to God, and a willingness to step outside the box.
Some of
us may be going through a Job-type of experience right now. If you need to, turn to Job’s words of lament
and protest. That’s OK. It is good to be that brutally honest with
God. God can handle it. That response is better than pretending
everything is OK and being theologically dishonest.
Many
among us are doing well, not suffering.
We are called to respond to the suffering around us. From the perspective of Easter, we enter the
suffering applying our skills and experience and passion so that through us God
creates a culture of care that respects Job and also announces that Jesus has
come and there is life in His name. We
are culture makers in the way we reach out to Job.
AMEN
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