I’ve tried to capture the main themes of Job but that is difficult. The book’s logic twists around and around and is highly repetitive. A major point might be made and if you miss it you are lost. There are also a lot of cultural references and stylistic devices that confuse us. I’ve selected the passages that we read so that we could get a little feel for the dialog between Job and his friends.
For our sermon I want to pull out two of the biggest themes. We’ll spend some time with each.
The first is our sense of powerlessness. I touched on this briefly last week. None of us chose to be born. None of us had any say as to who are parents would be, what race or culture we’d be born into, what our intelligence level would be, or what our skills and talents would be. We were just born. At some point in our development we became aware of our existence. We became aware that we are humans. We came to sense our consciousness. We also became aware of God.
We discovered that we have some amount of control over our living conditions and environment, but not a whole lot. We have some control over our houses, our clothes, our food and the like. But we have no control over the weather, volcanoes, earthquakes, sunspots, etc. And we discovered that vast as the earth may seem, it is actually a small planet orbiting an average star somewhere relatively near the edge of a galaxy and it is among billions of galaxies and trillions of stars in a universe that is, as far as we can tell, infinite.
Who are we in the vastness of it all? What control do we actually have? Who, or what, is this God that we sense? And what is the nature of that God? We are told that we are given the promise of eternal life, and that it can be excellent. That’s good, but we still live largely in the face of mystery; and we know that at some point we will die. Even after death, we will forever be dependent upon the goodness of the God to exist.
It doesn’t seem fair. If everything of significance is not actually under our control, then what are we to do? Why am I given no say in a reality I that I did not ask to be a part of and which I cannot escape?
I know that’s a quick and deep philosophical dive into our existence, but it is true. The character Job does not ask questions like that outright, but he explores that sort of thinking. He points out the fundamental unfairness of it. How is he to escape pain when he is so powerless? In segments of Job that we did not read Job asks to go to court with God. There he can argue for fairness. But he knows that no such thing is possible for God has him hemmed in in every way and place.
So that takes us to the second major theme – the idea of justice and fairness.
I think we all have a sense of justice that is action and consequence related. If I put my hand on a hot stove I will get burned. And I will not do it again. Depending on how hot the stove was and how long my hand was there I might get burned very badly, even doing permanent damage to my body.
This is action and consequence. They are directly linked and the amount of pain I feel is directly connected to what I did.
But what if someone accidentally spills something slippery on my floor in front of the stove? Then I slip when walking by and in an automatic reaction I reach out to steady myself, with my hand landing on the hot stove. There’s still action and consequence. That make sense. Yet somehow I’ve suffered an injury and it is not my fault.
Or what if someone deliberately pours something slippery in front of my stove? I slip when I walk by and I reach out my hand and touch the hot stove. Should there not be some sort of consequence to that person for what they did? Surely they cannot continue to do things that injure other people with nothing happening to them in return!
This would be a crude form of justice, but it would be justice, if that person’s hand were also forced on a hot stove. They would then experience the consequences of what they made happen to someone else.
These are not nice thoughts, but we are ultimately okay with them. They make sense. It is a sense of justice where actions lead to consequences.
It gets messy very fast. When you have billions of people interacting, some deliberately, some accidentally, some carelessly, some carefully, consequences happen to people far from the source. The consequences may not come about for quite some time afterwards. Perhaps the people who set something in motion have died before the consequences present themselves. Or perhaps it is something on a global scale.
This time last summer there were serious wildfires in Cananda. Our skies were smokey and air quality was bad. We’re told that all of that accelerated by the dynamics of human caused climate change. If true, then what are we to do with it? And what about justice that happens at a national or global scale and not an individual one?
Even so, this sort of justice has a chain of action and consequences links. We may not like it. It may not seem fair, but it is something we fell we can do something about. We are ultimately okay with it. We know that things aren’t fair.
But what about natural disasters? I referenced some things earlier in the sermon. What about volcanoes, earthquakes, sunspots, asteroids, etc. We humans are puny compared to those things! We have no way of controlling them or even managing them.
In the midst of forces over which we have no control we have a dilemma of justice. Actions and consequences do not connect at all. Our desire for some sort of control in this reality into which we have been born is broken and unmendable.
In our Bible readings Job insists that he has done nothing wrong. He has three friends who visit him to comfort him. They also criticize him. They tell him that the natural and man-made things that have happened to he and his family must be God’s punishment for something that he has done. We read about them last week. Enemies attack and take and kill his livestock and possessions. Natural disasters kill all ten of his children. He is left with nothing. But then things get worse. His health is inexplicably ruined. He is suffering. He is in pain that he cannot escape. Job’s friends insist that this is divine justice. They insist that Job must have be doing wicked things – either unknowingly or that he’s been doing them secretly. Job vehemently insists that he is innocent. And we the readers know that he is indeed innocent.
In one of the passages we read Job points out the way wicked people get away with it without any consequences. And if the consequences of their actions are divinely brought upon their children, how is that justice? Shouldn’t the one who did the bad thing suffer the consequences and not someone else? Job says that all die the same – some being wicked and living good lives and some being righteous and never experiencing anything good.
Job is not a nice book of the Bible to read. It is not fun to read at all. But Job dares to dive into these questions and fears that exist in our lives.
We have more of Job to read, so I’m not going to say too much this week. But lets conclude by quickly noting two related things.
First, Job is not the only book from the ancient near east that brings up the idea of innocent people suffering wrongly. Other cultures have similar writings. Job even seems to be somewhat dependent upon them. What is distinct about Job, and Hebrew scripture in general, is the understanding of God. In other cultures they explained bad things happening by saying that the gods had created humans as basically playthings and servants. The gods would do things to humans for their own entertainment. Ancient Hebrew writings don’t go that way. Ancient Hebrew writings insist that God does not play games with people. And while some things are not possible for humans to understand, God holds humans in high regard and is ultimately fair and merciful.
And two, from a Christian perspective, we always view justice through the lens of the cross. In the life of Jesus God made Godself vulnerable to the forces of the world, and even vulnerable to the forces of human beings. Jesus did not die an accidental death from a force of nature. Jesus did not die as part of a riot that got out of control. Jesus dies because he leaves himself powerless to an unjust sentence of death at the hands of humans to whom he had done nothing wrong.
It is perfectly fine to cry out to God when you feel you are suffering unfairly. It is perfectly fine to cry out to God when you feel justice is not being done. It is perfectly fine to cry out to God when you feel the forces of this world are just too big and you can’t do anything to change them. In other words, it is fine to cry out to God with your feelings of powerlessness. Those are all faith-filled things to do.
And know that God knows exactly what it feels like.
Ultimately God’s justice is not our own. We do not understand. But God does love us. God respects our integrity. God desires our good intentions. And God treats us with mercy. Because of those things we can continue to live in confidence.
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