Old Sandals

“I cry to you, O God, but you don’t answer. I stand before you, but you don’t even look. You have become cruel toward me. You use your power to persecute me.”

Is God really cruel? Has he really afflicted Job just for the fun of it? Is He now ignoring Job’s cries for help?

Does this sound like the same God who walked with Adam and Eve in the garden in the cool of the evening?

Why would God take from Job his wealth, when he used it to help the poor and needy?

Why would God take from Job his family, when he was such a good Dad and a godly role model?

Why would God take from Job his health, when he served God with all his strength?

“The Lord gave me what I had,” Job declared, “and the Lord has taken it away.”

It is doubtless God’s prerogative to give and to take away, but surely the Creator of so great a universe is ultimately a Giver and not a Taker. So, if that is true, what is being given to Job in place of those things the Lord has taken away?

“The fear of the LORD is true wisdom; to forsake evil is real understanding.”

With these words, Job is not trying to explain a mystery; he is testifying to a reality. A mystery intrigues, but a reality obligates.

Every descendant of Adam is personally obligated to God. Mysteries are never personal.

The ancient words that Job spoke are timeless, universal. God is Almighty. In an unseen yet often demonstrable way, He rules over the affairs of men, be they peasants, popes or potentates.

And yet His ways are mysterious; they cannot be reduced to simple formulas.

It is to this almighty, mysterious God that Job renews his personal vows. “As long as I live, while I have breath from God, my tongue will speak no evil, and my lips will speak no lies.” Personal vows to a personal God. How strange, how wonderful.

It cannot be overstated or overemphasized — God is all-powerful; He is Lord of all creation.

It cannot be fully comprehended, yet neither can it be ignored without consequence. “The foundations of heaven… shudder at his rebuke.”

When Adam and Eve were created, they were both human and divine at the same time. When they ate the forbidden fruit and sinned against God, they lost their divinity but not their humanity. Men are sinners, but they are still men; they are not maggots, as Bildad describes them.

“Can anyone born of a woman be pure?”, Bildad asks rhetorically. If the answer is yes, then where is the need for a Redeemer; one who, as Job says prophetically, “will stand upon the earth at last”?

But if the answer is no, and there is no Redeemer, then men are without hope. And although they are much greater than maggots, they share the same eternal destiny.

Job’s words are troubling.

The wicked oppress the poor and are very cruel. Their actions do not go unnoticed, for “God is always watching [them]”. His judgment, though often deferred, is sure.

The poor cry out for help, but there is no justice for them. God ignores their moanings.

How can this be? Is God only concerned with punishing the wicked? Does he not care for those who suffer at their hands? Is God not also a God of mercy?

What kind of inner strength must it have taken for Job to stand up against the withering attacks from those around him, and to maintain his confidence toward God.

“I have stayed on God’s paths; … I have not departed from his commands, but have treasured his words more than my daily food.”

What commands was Job referring to? And which of God’s words did he so treasure? Perhaps he was referring to the ancient book of Enoch, the seventh from Adam. Perhaps in the past God had spoken audibly to Job.

Job complains of an impenetrable darkness, but there was light enough for him to see the faint outline of the Almighty at work – his purifying work. “And when he tests me, I will come out as pure as gold.”

All four of them sitting in the tent would agree on one thing – that whatever God is doing here with Job, it is God doing it. It is not just a terrible run of bad luck. It is not just the way the cookie crumbles.

Life is not a curious, sometimes painful set of cards dealt to us by the blind Hand of fate; we’re left to play them the best way we can.

Life is not a game at all. It is more like a test than a game.

If only it were as black and white as Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar claim. There are, no doubt, many examples of wicked men getting what they deserve in this life. But, Job counters, many more where the opposite seems to be the case.

It is interesting that none of them, including Job, give an example of a godly man who is called to bear up under suffering and calamity for reasons beyond his ability to understand.

This is Job’s complaint against God: If Justice is lacking when evil men live out their lives in ease, isn’t it also lacking when godly men suffer and are destroyed?