Curse
the Day
Stephen
Terry
Commentary
for the October 29, 2016 Sabbath School Lesson
“Cursed
is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 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.”
Genesis 3:17b-19, NIV
According to the Creation chapters of Genesis, God’s
intent seems to have been for mankind to farm the land.[i] He even gave us a head
start by creating a beautiful Garden of Eden. Tending it with care, they gained
an appreciation for the needs of each plant growing there and of each animal
making its home in the midst of the verdure. How pleasant it must have been to
see every leaf sprouting, every fruit forming. Toiling among the beautiful
blossoms while accompanied by the trusting fauna to the tunes of birds warbling
their happiness must have been a balm for the human spirit. In the pleasure of
one another’s company, Adam and Eve lovingly encouraging one another through
the day’s toil had no cause for depression or anxiety. No wonder we equate an
idyllic paradise with that early Edenic home.
How horrible it must have been to be driven from that
Xanadu to a world filled with pain and suffering. What a shock it must have
been to feel the first prick from a thistle. This harbinger of every pain to
come pierced the flesh of those poor souls, and as blood oozed from the sudden
wound, their trust of the world around them began to crumble. Sadly the pain
came without respect to their intent. The thistle did not care whether their desire
toward it was good or evil. It was simply a thistle doing what thistles by
nature do. As harbinger, it was the vanguard of a whole host of agents of
suffering. The Bible does not tell us about the origin of viruses or bacteria
or of their first hapless victims. It also does not tell us of the origins of
venomous creatures and the sudden death lurking in their bites or stings. But
even without biblical direction, we are all too familiar with these things, all
of them without evil intent simply doing what they do, and in the process
bringing untold suffering and pain. One cannot help but wonder if any of the
early patriarchs ever asked God, “All of this for tasting one fruit?”
Like the Greeks who mythologized Pandora as the first
woman, who was guilty of unleashing evil when she, filled with curiosity,
peered into her box, we trace the blame for all the evil in the world back to
our Eve. We not only look back at our poor choices during our lives with
regret, but we pin the ultimate “if only” on this hapless woman. But in spite
of these early stories describing the source of our current suffering, we have grown
so accustomed to the pain around us that we accept it as normal. Houses burn
down, so we buy homeowner’s insurance to mitigate the loss. People die, so we
buy life insurance to offset the economic impact. Cars, motorcycles, and boats
get destroyed or stolen, so we buy insurance for those hazards. People become
sick or injured, so we have medical insurance. An entire industry has grown up
perpetuating the idea that these are normal occurrences so we must prepare for
them. But why do we feel this way?
Perhaps it is because it is hard for us to accept the idea of a good God who
would allow such suffering and evil. We may feel this way even though that same
God warned mankind in the garden and continues to warn us today regarding our
choices, yet we choose to open the door for the boogeyman anyway. However,
rather than accept the blame for what we have done, we too often find it more convenient
to pass the blame on to God. This started very early on, for Adam blamed God
for making Eve in the first place.[ii] After all, if God is all powerful
who can resist Him?[iii]
Therefore, the reasoning goes, He could step in and stop the suffering but He
doesn’t, so He is either malevolent, or He doesn’t exist. Of course, as long as
we agree that He exists, which the malevolence argument by definition does,
that argument becomes insipid once we understand that God in the person of His
Son gave up His life in order to make restoration of paradise possible for each
of us. While God does not appear to be involved in immediate relief of every
point of suffering, the overall arch of His involvement is established on the
basis of that ultimate restoration. Like Job, we may not even be able to see
that end now, but we nonetheless believe in its existence by faith, and if God
is good, restoration must happen, or there is no justice.
There is a problem with this view, though. Justice
postponed is injustice today. This is the crux of Job’s complaint, the
injustice of his present suffering.[iv] Job had lost all, family,
wealth, and health, and perhaps not knowing the backstory, he asked God for
relief from his suffering. Maybe he felt, as many do today, that God has a
responsibility to speak healing to us, especially to those who have been faithful
to Him. Basing his request on the brevity of life and God’s compassion, he
apparently does not see the equally valid argument for God not to intervene for
those same reasons. Life is brief and it will all be over soon anyway, and this
experience of suffering and pain may be cathartic for the problem at hand, a
problem of willful independence where we trust in our own ability to determine
what is right and wrong. God even chastises Job later for thinking like that.[v]
The Book of Job lays in the dust the commonly heard belief that if one only
does more good than evil then surely God will allow them into paradise when the
time comes. But Job’s suffering is evidence that one’s righteousness is not a
key to salvation. Righteous Job[vi] had to suffer just like
the vilest sinner. It was God’s grace alone that restored Job in the end, and
it is God’s grace that is our only hope of eventually reaching a restored Eden.
Of course all of this is the hope of those who believe that God exists. There
are those who feel that the suffering in the world justifies an argument that
God does not exist. However, this could mean that the suffering is senseless,
without purpose. The problem with that view is that it does not take much
knowledge of biology to discover that everything does indeed have purpose.
Remove one species from the food web and that whole portion of the web may
collapse. The purpose of each creature is to perpetuate its life through
reproduction. That life in turn allows the perpetuation of others. Being at the
top of the food chain, we ourselves depend on so many species, both plant and
animal, for our continuation. All of this speaks to purpose, something that we
are still trying to wrap our minds around. We know of entire species that we
may not be able to spell out their place in the web of life, but we fear to disturb
them for it may cause a catastrophic collapse somewhere due to its damage or loss,
and may threaten us perched so precariously at the top.
If there is purpose, it begs the question, “Why?” For
some, it may be like the child asking “Why?” to everything. Exasperated with
the unanswerables, the weary parent finally replies, “Just because!” Unfortunately,
when we follow that trail of whys back through biological history, we also
ultimately get to the point where those whys can no longer get answered. Too
many of those who want to wish God out of existence because of suffering simply
say, “Because that is the way it is. Therefore you must accept it and stop
asking why.” In other words the ultimate foundation of either believing in the existence
of God or denying that existence appears to be faith.
For Job that faith was in God. He maintained that faith
even in the face of senseless suffering. In that, he is a better man than most
of us. We so easily cast aside our faith at the slightest provocation. This is
especially true if that suffering is brought to us by others whom we have
trusted – friends, family, or even church members. The Bible tells us that
because of the evil that is in the world, people will be reluctant to love one
another, but it also says that those who endure, who can keep on loving, in
spite of the suffering they see and experience, will find salvation.[vii] In spite of their poor
counsel, Job never abandoned his friends, and they played a part in his
restoration. It is perhaps wise to give love and compassion to all, as is the character
of the God we believe in. Who know who will have a purpose to play out in our
lives? Their prosperity may be the key to our own.[viii] Perhaps if we all did
this, suffering would be much less of an issue than it is.
