Can We Call God To The Bar Of Justice?

Friday of the 26th Week in Course 2024

Jb 38:1, 12-21; 40:3-5/Lk 10:13-16

The Book of Job has been summarized in this brief statement: Job says, “Lord, all this awful stuff is happening. I don’t understand.” God answers, “You are right, Job. You don’t understand.” Here in a late chapter of Job, we are getting an OT perspective on God’s sovereignty and unimaginable wisdom. God Himself asks a series of questions to Job, who is standing in for all of humanity. The question series is a bit sarcastic, isn’t it? True, in the twenty-first century we have seen men and women enter the springs of the sea in pressure-resistant submersibles, and we can measure to the millimeter the expanse of the earth. But God is immense, and I don’t mean He’s huge beyond our imagination. It means—that word immense—that there is no human instrument that can take the measure of God. He is immense because He is immaterial, and has no length, width, height, mass, temperature, or any other property of matter. He is beyond anything we can measure or even imagine.

Indeed, the only measurement that can be used in the interaction between the Lord and us weak, sinful humans is a measurement that God can use of that human frailty and sin. We can see it as well. If we hold our own behavior up against the Ten Commandments, we see that our whole culture and people have abandoned faith in Christ and His simple Law to love God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves. We routinely see, and even participate in, disobedience. Millions of babies not allowed to be born, physically torn apart or discarded through the corruption of pharmaceutical medicine. Blasphemy in our movies and print. My subscription service routinely recommends for my Kindle novels that would have caused D.H. Lawrence to faint, let alone our grandparents. And in and out of our schools our children are exposed to ideas and tales that would rip them out of their precious innocence and try to convince them they are misgendered. There are even U.S. states that will facilitate this culture of lies, this butchery of the latency period. Yes, Job, God is correct. We have no business questioning His divine justice and wisdom.

Our Gospel shows this in the triple condemnation of the towns by the Sea of Galilee—Chorazin, Capernaum and Bethsaida. Jesus did uncounted healings, exorcisms and other mighty works, as well as invaluable teachings in those towns. Did they believe? St. John tells the story of Jesus revealing Himself as the Bread from Heaven, and the nourishment of spirit and body to be provided through His Body and Blood, right there in the synagogue of Capernaum. It was too much for the people of that town; most of them left His company. On the day of judgement, those people would envy the citizens of Sodom, who perished in flames.

As usual, this Scripture is not all that easy to accept. But Jesus requires us to choose—we either take Him at His Word, He who is the Word, or we reject Him. But how could we do that? Remember that Jesus has the words of eternal Life. Jesus is the one all men and women are looking to follow, even if we don’t understand all the implications of that wonderful, immense Truth.