Hope

One of the overwhelmingly frequent seen reactions to reading the Biblical story of Job, especially from people who have themselves suffered, is loss of hope. It is fatalism. It is this beleaguered sense that there is no way out. This is not the only reaction to Job I have come across in literature, but it is a popular one. Archibald MacLeish and Elie Weisel both present Job from a beaten down perspective.

Job’s initial cries, recorded in Job 3, are from a weary, defeated man. ‘Let the day perish in which I was born. … Let that day be darkness! … Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds settle upon it. … Yes, let that night be barren; let no joyful cry be heard in it. … Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and expire? … I am not at ease, not am I quiet; I have no rest; but trouble comes” (3:3, 4, 5, 7, 11, 26).

I had a professor who described conditions like Job’s as being “lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut.” The quip is glib but the story is real, both for Job and for many who have read Job. Sometimes life deals terrible blows – blows that are seemingly impossible to overcome.

And yet …

I was reminded in a Bible study that another man in the Bible suffered terribly and without hope and for no reason. Jesus. He plaintively cried out, “My God, my God, why have forsaken me” (Matthew 27:46)? Jesus maintained his reverence for God even as he desperately reached out to God, only to receive silence for Heaven. God turned Jesus’ tragedy for good. In his death, there is salvation for all.

Maybe God accomplished much for the good of many in Job’s story. It is not as clear to me, but I think it possible. The voice of Job’s sorrow that is heard in chapter 3 and throughout the dialogues is not the only voice. The reaction of anger aimed at Heaven or satirizing God (in MacLeish’s J.B.) is not the only reaction. There has to be more. I have felt this as I have read Job most intently and intensely than every before, and I have felt is I have talked to others about Job.

Maybe our hope is God’s sovereignty. I share two stories to illustrate.

Recently, a man went for gastric bypass surgery. He was supposed to be in the hospital less than a week. Everything that could have gone wrong did, and six weeks later, he is still in the hospital and fighting for his life. Before this surgery, his faith was somewhere between indifference toward God, and a chip on the shoulder toward either God or the church. During the early days of his hospitalization, when it was clear things weren’t right, the man became angry.

He and his wife were both angry at the hospital. They know UNC is a teaching hospital, but they did not want students practicing on him. The man was becoming bitter. Then things got worse and he began to really fear for his life. Around that time, the pastor of his wife who is a woman of faith came to visit. It came out that as a kid, this man has accepted Jesus. His “faith” had been dormant (or it never existed) for 50 years. Now, staring at death, this man told the pastor he wanted to accept Jesus.
When I visited, I rejoiced with him, his wife (whose anger was completely gone), and his sister. I asked them what they would rather have: (a) a surgery that went by the book, no complications, and no “come-to-Jesus” moment, or what they got, (b) all the complications but also the salvation of his soul. Of course they all chose option b. Then his wife said, “Isn’t neat how it seems like God has always been in control? We’ve been through a lot, but God always knew he’d get us here.”

What struck me about her comment was it was similar to something my sister Christy said recently. She was pushing my son 2-year-old son around my parents’ neighborhood in stroller. She said she would go wherever H__ wanted to go. He had no idea where he was or where he wanted to go, so he just randomly called out and pointed. When he got tired of that and just trusted Christy, she got him home just like she always knew she would.

Christy said God is like that. He lets us make choices, but he knows where he wants us to arrive. When we stop going our way and go God’s way, we get there – just like God always knew we would. Another interesting point Christy observed is that things were harder on her when the two-year-old was calling the shots because she had to be with him and protect him from himself.

Maybe it’s harder on God than on us when we mess up because He loves us and stays with us even in our wanderings. Maybe Job wasn’t hit the hardest in the story of Job. Maybe God suffered even more because he had to watch His beloved Job go through it. People praise Job for staying engaged with God. Let’s praise God for sticking with Job and for sticking with us. Is there hope? In the end, Job is restored to prominence and health. In the end, Jesus rises from death. In the end, God gets us home.

Recommended Reading

In seminary, I took an elective class on the Old Testament Book Job. Much to my chagrin, I cannot find my folder that contained my notes and the class syllabus. One of the things on Samuel Ballentine, our professor, included was an optional reading list. At the time, it was all I could do to motivate myself to do the required reading. Now, 14 years later, I wish I had that optional reading list. I remember some of the works on it, and I am tackling them as I study Job.

And so, I present these selections and I will add to this list as I come across more works that may be of interest.


The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
This is Solzhenitsyn’s memoir of being arrested and imprisoned in the Soviet Union after World War II. It is long (over 800 pages). And it is graphic (Solzhenitsyn cites 31 different torture methods used interrogations). But it is worth reading because Solzhenitsyn is a good writer and his work absolutely raises the basic question people feel in reading Job – WHY? Why does God allow this suffering?


J.B. by Archibald Macleish
This play was written in the late 1950’s. God and Satan are portrayed as actors who decide to put on a play about the Biblical book of Job. The line between what is dramatic presentation and what is really happening is intentionally obscure. The interplay between the two, both in their direct dialogue and as it plays out in the affairs of Job and his family, is intense and compelling. The play absolutely opens up the characters in Job. However, Satan and Job’s wife have considerably larger roles in this play than in the Biblical account.


The Trial of God by Elie Wiesel
I just started this one. This play is a metaphor of both Job and of the way Nazis arrested and murdered Jews during the Holocaust. The setting for play/metaphor is 19th century Ukraine, where an innkeeper and his daughter are the only Jews left after a murderous pogrom has ravaged the village. Three traveling minstrels come wanting to perform for Jews on the occasion of the Jewish celebration of Purim. They are shocked to learn there are only two Jews in the village, and also to learn that the innkeeper’s personal suffering has led him to forsake God completely. This is a powerful play, but I must alert you that it is not written from a Christian perspective but from a Jewish perspective; more specifically, it is written from the perspective of a Jew who has gone through painful persecution at the hands of Christians. It’s a moving account, but it helps set expectations to know that it is Jewish and not Christian.


The consistent theme among these works and the question that always comes up in studies of Job is WHY? Why, why, why? And faithful to Job, the answer is never easy or obvious. In fact, usually there is no answer to WHY in the face of suffering. Still, why is always asked and it must asked.