"Doth
Job Fear God for Nought?"
Stephen
Terry
Commentary for the October 15, 2016 Sabbath School Lesson
“In
the land of Uza there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and
upright; he feared God and shunned evil. He had seven sons and three daughters,
and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen
and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the
greatest man among all the people of the East.” Job 1:1-3, NIV
Some might consider Job the ultimate gospel of
Prosperity Theology. He starts out in the story as the “greatest” or richest man
of the East. In fact, the Devil acknowledges the whole idea of Prosperity
Theology when he declares that it is God that has made Job rich, protecting him
from every adversity. Once the Devil has had his due and the tribulations of
Job are over, everything and more is restored to the suffering servant as
reward for his faithfulness. It is hard not to come away from this story
equating faithfulness with wealth, a wealth that is poured out from God’s
coffers into our waiting arms. The entire Bible seems to be bookended by the
same story only on a larger scale. It begins with creation of an Edenic
paradise filled with everything desirable. It ends with that paradise restored.
In between there is a lot of suffering that extends even to the Son of God,
incarnate on this woeful planet. But is this the story that we are to take away
from Job and the Bible? If you are faithful, God will make you rich, here and
now like Job and even more later, when Jesus returns?
Perhaps there is an answer to be found in the 23rd
Psalm.[i] “The Lord is my Shepherd,
I shall not want.” No want? That sounds a lot like prosperity. Along with that
comes rest and healing. (vs 2-3) Why? “He leadeth me.” Apparently all this is a
reward for following God. But wait a minute. In the very next verse I am
walking through “the valley of the shadow of death.” If following God makes me
rich and He is leading me, how did I end up here? Did God lead me into this dark
place? There He is right beside me. Did we walk in together? Even though my
enemies may be gloating over my misfortune, God is anointing me, and making me
wealthy again with more than I can hold. But this time it will last forever,
and I will go to live with God. This Psalm is a miniature Book of Job it
appears and by extension a miniature Bible as well. From Eden through suffering
to restoration, it is all there. But why do we need the suffering? Why can’t we
just have the prosperity? Is there some idea that we won’t appreciate the
paradise, the wealth, if we do not have the suffering on the way?
In some ways we have a hard time with the story of Job.
We live in a day of easy credit, where it seems many are outwardly wealthy,
even though they may be slaves to a lifelong servitude to pay for that wealth.
Over my six and a half decades of life, I have seen those chains grow longer
and stronger for so many. When I was a child, most families in our middle-class
neighborhood made do with a single car. This was not challenging because usually
only one parent worked outside the home, most often this was the father. There
were no “soccer moms” ferrying children to after-school events. Instead
children walked or rode bicycles in order to participate in sports or other extra-curricular
activities. The venues for such events also tended to be located closer to the
neighborhoods because the city planners recognized the need for neighborhood
facilities as opposed to city-wide sports complexes.
Homes were smaller and more affordable then as well. Instead of every child
having their own bedroom, complete with their own bathroom, or at least a
Jack-and-Jill bathroom, the entire family made do with one bathroom, and children
of the same sex shared bedrooms. Of course this was more challenging at times.
Imagine in a family of several girls all vying for control of the single
bathroom to prepare for Saturday night dates. At other times it might be Dad
trying to get ready for work while the children are trying to get ready to catch
their bus or walk to school, all wanting to use the single bathroom at the same
time. Somehow it all worked, and we managed to develop routines that rarely
conflicted. But the pressure for more space and more mobility was there all the
same. When zero down mortgages, zero down car loans, and revolving credit
became available, that made it possible for many to chase the American dream of
ever larger houses, multiple cars and all the luxury goods that increased
consumer spending brought to the marketplace. Few of us could afford the
ubiquitous smart phones, tablets and computers without revolving credit. However,
while it may have become much easier up front to secure those goods, the
monthly payments still had to be made. As those payments grew, the pressure for
both parents to work outside the home grew with it. Somehow the purpose for the
wealth became lost in its pursuit. Somehow we continue to tell ourselves this
is how it is supposed to be, but never ask, “Why?”
We get an idea that Job suspected that things were not
quite right, in spite of his prosperity, because he offered atoning sacrifices “just
in case.”[ii] Perhaps he felt this
unease because his wealth obscured his vision for what might be going on spiritually
in his family. When everything was swept away, faith was able to return to its
rawest and purest form. Quickly it was revealed that all was not right. His
wife, who should have been one with him, demanded that he turn against God and
seek death.[iii] Then his friends came
and joined him as he suffered. They were convinced that Job deserved what was
happening, and encouraged him to repent.[iv] Perhaps they also saw in
wealth God’s blessing and in poverty and suffering, God’s rebuke. But Job’s
response was to deny this and to maintain his suffering has nothing to do with
anything he did. Not knowing the backstory, he felt that the suffering was
random and unjustified. These are not modern ideas. Far too many today, equate
prosperity with faithfulness. Sadly, the only answer they have for suffering in
the world is to declare the sufferer a sinner, deserving what is happening and
lacking the faith to do anything about it. This almost amounts to religion by
Darwinian natural selection. Those who have the strongest faith will rise to
the top. Those who don’t will sink and eventually perish.
But what if faith and prosperity have nothing to do with
one another? What if like Job, suffering occurs in spite of the level of our
faith? Or what if suffering is intended to increase our faith, to make it
stronger? If the latter is true, wouldn’t we be wise to seek it out, or
alternatively wouldn’t God tend to lead us into suffering to make us stronger?
Could this be why Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness?[v] Could it be that the
suffering and the temptations were necessary to solidify His faith to be prepared
for the path that would take Him to the cross? Our natural inclination in the
face of random, apparently senseless, suffering might be like Job’s, to
question the justice of it all. Even to assert our innocence. But if the
suffering is truly random, it makes no sense to protest. It is simply the lot
of each to suffer randomly when evil happens. In some cases, we might learn to
avoid certain activities if we deem they contributed to our falling into
suffering in the first place, but if suffering is truly random then it may
simply come by another path in the future. In that case we may only be able to
trust in God that everything will all work out in the end like it did for Job,
and paradise will be verdant and lush once again. However, the Book of Job doesn’t
seem to sit well with the idea of randomness either.
While his suffering may have seemed random from Job’s
perspective, from the perspective of heaven, it was not. The Devil sought
permission to torment him and that permission was granted, the only randomness being
the Devil’s whim. So how do we deal with that? Habakkuk in the Old Testament
and Paul in the New Testament ultimately came to the same conclusion. There is nothing
we can do except trust God that He will vindicate everything eventually.
Habakkuk decided we need to be silent and let God rule from His temple.[vi] Paul questioned our
ability to say anything about our lot. He likened it to a pot questioning the
work of the potter forming it.[vii] This may mean that at
times we may feel that we are serving God for naught, but it may also deliver
us from errors like Prosperity Theology. God blesses both the just and the
unjust.[viii] Suffering visits both as well.
