The most difficult part of being a pastor is regularly walking into situations which are filled with tragedy and brimming with raw emotion. The added pressure for a pastor is that there is a silent expectation in some people’s minds that you are supposed to have some answers — or at least some words of wisdom — and be able to comfort those who are grieving. It is never easy, but I especially remember the first years of ministry when I was green and inexperienced. I was called one evening into the home of a church family because the man had experienced a heart attack. When I arrived, the paramedics were performing CPR and doing all they could, but they finally came out and told the man’s wife that he was gone. She looked at me and wanted an answer. In a shrill voice she demanded: “Why would God do something like this?”
That is just one of countless tragedies in which I have been involved. I have baptized dying infants while they were lying in an incubator. I have buried stillborns and children, and had the funerals of people who committed suicide or were murdered. I assure you there are no words which are adequate for those situations.
During our first assignment in Wintersville, Ohio, Sue and I were expecting our second child: Lisa. Of course, she decided to be born in the middle of night — Saturday night — just hours before I was supposed to preach. She was the third child to be born among four young families in our church. All three had been great blessings and there was much joy among us. The following week the fourth mother went into the hospital. When I checked the records at the main desk I saw that they had a baby boy and had named him Robbie. I went bounding into the room full of enthusiasm, having just gone through the same experience of having a wonderful new little person in our family. As I entered the room, the mother was holding the baby and the father was sitting next to her. I asked how he was doing — expecting an exuberant response from the parents. But the mother looked up at me with enormous sadness in her eyes. “He was born blind — without eyes,” she said as tears streamed down her face. The father was broken and said, “The doctors are not sure how much of his brain actually developed. It doesn’t even show up on the X-rays. And there are several other complications.” I cannot tell you all the emotions that went crashing through me at that moment, but I can tell you that I failed that couple completely as a pastor. All I could think about was how to get out of that room. I wanted to run as far as possible, as fast as possible. I had never experienced anything so tragic. I felt like I should come up with some answers for them and I knew I had none. I felt like I should be able to comfort them in their grief, and I knew I couldn’t.
It is situations like that which send me digging into the book of Job. Job was afflicted with senseless tragedy and, as hard as he tried, he could not understand it. He knew that God was not punishing him, because he had lived an exemplary life. He went out of his way to help the widow and orphan. He fed the poor and was kind to those who were less powerful than he. He worshiped God and loved him. The Bible says, “[Job] was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil” (Job 1:1). His situation did not make sense in light of the popular belief that only people with some great sin in their life suffered like Job. Suffering was seen as a punishment from God. If this was true, then Job knew the sheer magnitude of his suffering was grossly unjust.
C. S. Lewis struggled with the same problems after the death of his wife. He wrote in his journal: “Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.’” Many, like Lewis at this point, begin to wonder if God is not a Cosmic Sadist. The temptation for many is not to stop believing in God, but to resent him and do what Job’s wife suggested: “Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9). Somehow Job avoided that kind of pointless bitterness. But Job did have a lot of questions — and he wanted answers.
Job asked several important questions, but the first question we will consider was: What is the benefit of being good? Job’s friends insisted that he must not be good, even though he appeared to be. They reasoned that he had some secret sin which he had hidden from everyone else, and that was why these things were happening to him. God was punishing him. But Job knew that he had not done anything wrong that even began to match the severity of his suffering. None of the things his friends were accusing him of were true. Job said to them, “I will never admit you are in the right; till I die, I will not deny my integrity” (Job 27:5). He says, “If I have denied the desires of the poor or let the eyes of the widow grow weary, if I have kept my bread to myself, not sharing it with the fatherless... if I have seen anyone perishing for lack of clothing, or a needy man without a garment... if I have raised my hand against the fatherless, knowing that I had influence in court, then let my arm fall from the shoulder, let it be broken off at the joint. For I dreaded destruction from God, and for fear of his splendor I could not do such things” (Job 31:16-23).
Job was caught in an inescapable dilemma: He knew that God was just, but he also knew that he was innocent. At this point he could not reconcile the two thoughts. He continued to believe both things, while also accepting the popular belief that these were mutually exclusive thoughts. His friends were trying to defend the character of God. They were scandalized that Job would try to defend himself. And since God could not be other than completely just, it meant that Job must have deserved what happened to him. A just God would never punish someone who was innocent. They felt that God’s honor was at stake.
But Job began to understand that tragedy befell the innocent as well as the wicked, and he struggled with what seemed to be a great injustice. He complained: “It is all the same; that is why I say, ‘He destroys both the blameless and the wicked’” (Job 9:22). “It profits a man nothing when he tries to please God” (Job 34:9). Again he wondered out loud: “What profit is it to me, and what do I gain by not sinning?” ( Job 35:3). Job’s question could be rephrased as, “What is the point of being good if God does not care? What benefit is there to being good if there is no reward for it?”
But this brings into question Job’s motivation, as well as ours, for being good and doing the right thing. Some people look at the Christian life like a business contract: My part is to do the right thing, and God’s part is to bless me and keep me safe. George Barna, who is constantly doing statistical research on our culture, recently wrote: “Most of the growth [in American Christianity] comes from among individuals making $60,000 a year or more, many of whom are living ‘the good life’ and, upon analyzing the salvation proposal, determined that inviting Christ into their life is a smart choice.... For many of these individuals, faith in Jesus is simply a good deal. They are not likely to view their faith decision as the catalyst of a lifestyle that demands sacrifice, selflessness, and service. Faith in Christ represents an eternal insurance policy for them rather than a significant change of heart about the ultimate meaning of life, or how to honor Christ through their decisions, behavior, and resources.”
Jesus scandalizes us when he says, “[God] causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:43-45). The scandal surrounding God is that he treats everyone the same. He does not play favorites. The righteous do not escape suffering, and those who are evil enjoy the same blessings of God as everyone else. He does not hold back the good things of life from them. If you think that Barna is right and that people approach the Christian life like a business deal now, what if it really worked? What if you could manipulate God and get your way by doing all the things he wanted. What if you could keep tragedy away from your door just by being a good person. Would you be good because you genuinely loved God, or would you do it to control him and thereby control the events of your life? If it always payed to follow God everyone would be on the payroll. If Jesus had stayed on earth and kept healing people and feeding them, then everyone would believe in Jesus — but of what value would that belief be?
Job began to wonder if there was any benefit to being good or being obedient to God. Others entertain the same question. Yes, there are benefits to obeying God, but not if obedience is used as a tool to control God and exact from him certain privileges and blessings. The benefit comes as we experience the transformation of our character into the likeness of Christ — the one we love. Obedience involves coming to God on his terms, not getting God to come to us on our terms.
The second question Job asked was: Where is God? Here is the real question of Job: “If only I knew where to find him; if only I could go to his dwelling! I would state my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments. I would find out what he would answer me, and consider what he would say.... But if I go to the east, he is not there; if I go to the west, I do not find him. When he is at work in the north, I do not see him; when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him” (Job 23:3-9).
After the Columbine High School shootings, an L. A. Times headline read: “Age Old Query: Where Was God?” There have been many attempts to answer that question. Rabbi Harold Kushner in his book, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?, says that evil is bigger than God. God’s hands are tied because of the laws of nature and the will of mankind. He is basically impotent and unable to help us. He weeps with us because of the evil and suffering in the world, but is unable to do anything about these problems. Kushner writes, “God, who neither causes nor prevents tragedies, helps by inspiring people to help.” In other words, he would like to help, but he can’t, so he gets others to do it for him. But if there is one thing Job never questions it is God’s power. Indeed it was his great power that made God so terrifying to Job. Job does not question God’s power, he questions his apparent absence. The question that many people ask is: Where Is God When It Hurts?
The question assumes that God does not ultimately care about our suffering. He is dispassionate and has never suffered himself. It is a question that deliberately forgets Calvary. It brushes aside the betrayal, the denial, the desertion, the rejection and the torturous death of Christ as it becomes consumed in its own suffering. Where is God when it hurts? He is right beside us, suffering with us. He is above us, giving meaning to the experiences he asks us to go through and using them in our lives. He is behind us, supporting us so that we can be examples of his strength and grace. He is beneath us, holding us up when we cannot stand on our own. He is in front of us, leading the way, showing that he has walked the way of suffering before us. He is within us, giving us peace and the power to be victorious over our suffering. Where is God? He is in the midst of the world’s suffering, redeeming it, using it, defeating it as he skillfully works out his plan of vanquishing the powers of darkness in this world.
The final question of Job was: What should my response to God be? His wife told him what she thought his response should be: “Curse God and die.” But Job replied to her by saying, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” And the Bible says, “In all this, Job did not sin in what he said” (Job 2:9-10). Job could have become bitter. He would still have believed in God, but he would have hated him. I have known many people who have chosen that option. They accuse God of wrong. They put him on trial and find him guilty. They put him in a prison of resentment and refuse to release him. He has done them wrong... and he will pay.
But what Job finally discovered in the last chapters of the book was that God was not on trial — he was. It was not God’s response which was important, but his. God was putting him to the test to see what his response would be. Job loved and served God when God blessed him and all was well, but would he love God when God stepped away from him and removed his blessings? Was the devil right when he accused Job, saying to God, “Stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face” ( Job 1:11), or “Strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face” (Job 2:5)? Would Job love and serve God only as long as God was good to him, or would he serve God no matter what? Here is the cosmic drama which is being played out in all our lives. Sooner or later each of us will have to decide whether we will serve God, even if it never seems to pay off in this life. Eventually, we will have to face the devil’s accusation that we only serve God because we think we can get something out of him. And when it seems like it isn’t paying off in safety, health or prosperity, will we still have any use for God?
Job passes the test in flying colors, for he defiantly states in the face of evil and suffering: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15, KJV). Job is suffering, but his head is unbowed. His suffering has not conquered or defeated him. It has not shattered his faith. He refuses to turn away from God; it has only made him more determined to seek him. His response is not to let go of God, but to cling to him even tighter. After all, God is his only hope. If he abandons him, he abandons everything.
The real question is whether or not we will respond to God believing that he really is a God of love who wants the best for us. Sometimes we hold this belief defiantly and in the face of disappointment and even tragedy. Abraham Heschel, in his book The Prophets has called “the astonishing face of God’s love” the boldest assertion of faith we have. It is our gift to the world. Heschel distills the biblical message into one sentence when he says that our God is “a God whose basic and eternal disposition is love... a God of tenderness and mercy... a God with whom healing and reconciliation, not harm and destruction, finally prevail.”
We believe in his love and place our trust in it in the face of the injustice and suffering we confront in the world. We know that he will ultimately triumph over the evil in the world and his victory will become ours. This is why Dr. Kevorkian is so evil. He not only plays God, he does not believe that suffering can be redemptive. He does not believe that there is any benefit to going through it, leaning on God’s strength and learning from it. Just get it over with! But Christians believe that even though God certainly does not cause suffering, he does allow it and can use it in our lives. He can redeem it and use it to draw us closer to him — which is, by the way, our main purpose. It was G. K. Chesterton who said: “One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.” Through suffering we see things we never saw before, learn things we could learn in no other way, and experience the presence of God at a level which we never do on sunny days. And the only way we do that is by going through the suffering — not avoiding it. God honors us by allowing to share in the sufferings of Christ.
There are basically two responses to suffering: 1. Trust God even though we do no understand what we are going through, or 2. Allow ourselves to become full of resentment toward people, life and God. We were all affected by the senseless suffering caused by the violence at Columbine High School. The parents of the students murdered by Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris handled the tragedy in starkly different ways. Carla Hochhalter, the mother of Anne Marie who was paralyzed in the April 20 shootings, walked into a local pawn shop and asked to see a gun. She loaded it with a bullet she had brought and shot herself in the temple. Her rage at the injustice of what happened was finally turned upon herself. She left her husband Ted, her son Nathan and her paralyzed daughter Anne Marie. On the other side, the parents of Cassie Bernall turned the death of their daughter into an opportunity to help other young people, as well as parents who are struggling with rebellious teenagers. Their book and video are full of real grief, but full of hope as well, because they have leaned on God for their strength. The believe that God can use this tragedy and redeem it so that it does not have to be senseless.
The process of asking and answering these important questions boils down to whether we will believe what our faith asserts: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). We need to be able to say with Paul, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35-39).
Rodney J. Buchanan
June 4, 2000
WHEN LIFE TUMBLES IN
Job 1:6-22
“Then the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil’” (Job 1:8).
Job’s questions in the face of his suffering were:
1. What is the ______________________________________ ?
2. Where __________________________________________ ?
3. What should ____________________________________ ?
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION (June 4, 2000)
1. What incidents in life have raised the most serious questions about God in your mind? What is the core issue in these questions?
2. What are some of the many reasons (genuine and disingenuous) that people have for living a moral life?
3. What is the correct motivation for living for God?
4. Why do bad things happen to good people?
5. Why does God continue to permit this?
6. Does God protect us? Can we count on anything at all?
7. Why is it important not to demand answers for everything?
8. After reading the first chapter of Job, explain why he was experiencing what happened to him.
9. Read Job 1:8. What kind of man was Job? What was Satan trying to do? How does this apply to you?
10. What does our response to suffering say about us? Our relationship with God?
11. Are there any benefits to suffering? Read Romans 8:18.
12. What is God’s main desire for us?
13. How do you handle the injustice of this present world? Read Romans 8:28.
