It's About Job (Courtney Clark)

Transcript: It’s About Job

2021, following what was a stressful year for the world, was difficult I’m sure for many of us, the pandemic was still going strong and we all have our own lives that come with their own struggles. For our family it was very much a year I’d like to never revisit. I was very sick for most of the year, and spent all of it bouncing from doctor to doctor being told there was something wrong but no one could give me answers as to what, much less help me feel better. Day to day I powered through hoping against hope that I could stay conscious long enough util my husband got home to help me with the kids then spend the evenings under a heating pad crying form the pain I pushed to hard through and made exponentially worse. There were no answers and there was no light at the end of a long dark tunnel. To be honest I often times thought I was dying, my anxiety was through the roof thinking I wouldn’t’ be here for my kids. I went from being mom and wife to just trying to survive. Our whole family was suffering. My doctors were trying, but after running a gambit of tests they would declare they didn’t have the expertise or the tools available to help and would pawn me off onto another specialists. After two surgeries, countless vials of blood drawn, and hundreds of tests still no answers. It started to feel as if I would never be who I used to be, I would never be able to live day to day without constantly fearing I wouldn’t make it without pain, passing out, or both. As of December I finally have a diagnosis but still no treatment. Suffering, we’re still suffering.

The church doesn’t handle suffering well. Growing up fundamentalist suffering was taught as punishment for something we’ve done. Even if we don’t know what it is that we’re being punished for. And though I’ve tried to rewrite that script in my brain, I still scrambled to find ways that I caused this to happen. Maybe it was the years of eating disordered behaviors, or maybe it was the stress from always putting too much on my plate, or maybe it’s from all of the sleep I haven’t been able to get since having kids. My poor husband probably is so tired of having conversations about what if I had done this maybe I wouldn’t be sick. I stopped telling myself god was punishing me for some ominous sin I forgot about. But I was still trying to find a cause, something I did that made my body function less optimally. Which is natural, our brains need to make sense of what is happening around us. And cause and effect are basic laws of the world. It is easier to think we are the cause of our own illnesses than to assume that things happen at random and there is no reason. Illness happening for no reason is a LOT more scary than illness happening for something we caused be it neglect of self or punishment from God. However you want to look at it, when the world makes sense and follows our laws of cause and effect it’s easier to accept. Things happening at random is terrifying because it means it can happen to anyone at any point in time. I think this is why as people we’ve latched onto the idea that people who are suffering/struggling somehow deserve it. You know that whole boot straps thing. Our own actions or sometimes even God causing our suffering is easier to accept than suffering happening at random. Its not a means to help the person who is suffering but a means to help the person who is comforting. This isn’t intentional, but it very much happens regularly. You hear in the very well intentioned why don’t you just try X,Y,Z as if to say you can fix this yourself if you just try.

Of course we can’t talk about suffering and pain without talking about Job. Which is well known within the church and outside of it. Suffering like job is commonly understood. Often this book is used to argue why we suffer, because of the narrative text at the beginning which is a conversation between god and ha-satan. Or to proclaim that suffering should be endured patiently, which is a reference to a verse in the book of James (5:11), but this text doesn’t claim Job  was patient in his suffering but that he had endurance with suffering. These two things are not the same. And I think the text of job itself does not support either of these arguments. Job was not patient in his suffering, he questions and gets frustrated. He endures, but with doubt and frustration, and even impatience with god. Which we’ll see as we go through the text. There are many arguments over the interpretation of this text, so I’ll try to do it justice but know that there are MANY interpretations, this is just one of them.

To begin with it’s important we know that this is not an historical account of an event that happened in history. It is a book of poetry with 2 chapters of narrative capped at the beginning and the end. Jesus taught in parables throughout the New Testament it’s not a large jump to assume this was written in the same light. Using a story to convey a particular message. Viewing the story of Job through this light gives us a little more freedom to see it from a different perspective. We see that rather than a proclamation of absolute truth it’s a dialogue of differing viewpoints around suffering and the character of God. Another aside is that this wasn’t written all at once, it was added to over time. As a means to make sense of who God is to an ancient people. The time period this was written in can’t be pinned down, usually Biblical Scholars can get close, but there isn’t even an estimation with Job.

Job is introduced in the beginning as someone who is wealthy and well revered. He is described as pious. Giving up offerings even for his children in case they sin. We’re immediately faced with the question is Job pious because of his wealth. The narrative then turns to a conversation between God and ha-satan which is not the same as Satan how it is usually translated in English. Think of this character as more a prosecutor, ha-satan means the accuser. In this conversation ha-satan claims that Job is only pious because of what he gets out of the deal. In response god allows ha-satan to take everything away form Job so as to prove that job is not faithful only because of his wealth. Through test after test Job continues to remain, but not without questioning, frustration, and impatience with his friends, his wife, even God.

First we are given a number of tests job faces, he loses everything. His home, his children, and then lastly he becomes ill, covered in boils. Then his friends come and join him. They sit Shivah which is 7 days of silence while one is mourning. After the 7 days of Shivah Job cries out in chapter 3, what is the point of my life if it is going to end like this? Then we are introduced to his friends as they each try to explain to job why he’s suffering. They take turns asking him, what have you done to cause this? Which is oh so helpful of course. Job after each person’s monologue continues to defend his own character insisting that he didn’t do anything wrong. In chapter 6 Job even berates his friends, saying friends are supposed to stand by you in thick and thin but once things get hard you’re here telling me I deserve this? I didn’t ask you to come.

 In chapter 7, he questions God. Saying he is not ashamed of his questions he will shout them from the rooftops, I’m bitter and honest. Through Job’s questions to them and to God the friends continue to hold onto they know exactly who God is, and spend lots of text trying to convince Job onto their way of thinking. This isn’t far our heretical thinking. There are plenty of texts to support a transactional God throughout the Old Testament. Job’s friends are right in line with theology of ancient Israel. Job is the one who is pushing the limits of what would have been the common understanding of God. But he holds steadfast. I WILL question, this is ridiculous that any God would do this to someone he is supposed to love. He says I know the religion, but I can’t hold onto it anymore. Often this is the case in our lives. We hold fast to what we know until some experience pushes us to question and reshape that belief. Suffering is very good at this. Until we are the ones bearing the weight of pain, we think we know how the world works. We think we know that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people, pull yourself up by the boot straps kind of mindset. Until you’re the one struggling, when you can see your own humanity in the story and question what did I do to deserve this? I try to be a good person, I do what is required of me, yet here I am and I’m being beaten up by the world around me. I can’t pull myself out of this situation no matter how hard I try. These moments of raw humanity and desperation push us to question our theology, our relationship with the world around us, and our relationship with god. My own suffering has shaped and morphed me as it’s gone on. At first I was angry at God, questioning why he would allow something like this, then I blamed myself and was angry at the trauma in my past that lead me to create these unhealthy coping mechanisms that have destroyed my body. Now, I’m existing in a space between. Accepting that suffering is an experience of life, that may not have a known cause. Maybe God doesn’t cause suffering or even allow it, it just is. Grappling with the cause of suffering has been painful, and I hated god for a long time. Part of me wanted to even deny his existence at times. A good God wouldn’t allow so much pain, suffering, inequality. Yet here we are, I can’t walk away. Something I can’t explain always draws me back. But in order to hold onto my belief in God and understand my experience of suffering I had to separate the two. The story of Job morphs around these messy emotions. Job is broken, angry, frustrated. At times he is screaming at god, other times he’s telling his friends you have no idea who God is! Job is a person existing fully within his humanity, experiencing the roller coaster of emotions that exist in our process of grief.

This conversation between Job and his friends goes on for a while. Each friend is given 3 speeches. All of which are followed by a response from Job. Each individual remains steadfast on their position, and no one is willing to entertain the other’s thoughts/ideas.

Then, finally God shows up in chapter 38 as a storm. He gives this very long eloquent speech basically asking Job, do you know how to run a world? Pete Enns says it’s almost as if God is filibustering, If you know so much why don’t you do a better job. Kind of like a parent yelling at a teenager “I keep the lights on, put food on the table, clothes on your back do you even know what all of that takes?” Job responds in chapter 40 with:

“I’m speechless, in awe-words fail me.

I should never have opened my mouth!

I’ve talked too much, way too much.

I’m ready to shut up and listen.

Now this could be interpreted as Job admitting he’s been wrong and will stop trying to question God, but it doesn’t really line up with the character of Job through the rest of the text. Just a few chapters earlier in Job 23 he says “I’m not letting up-I’m standing my ground. My complaint is legitimate. God has no right to treat me like this.”  He’s held his ground throughout, it’s entirely possible he’s giving up after an angry storm started yelling at him, but let’s pretend just for a second that this might be sarcastic. Like Job saying, “oh okay yeah you didn’t answer my question so I’m done with this conversation.” I say this because of God’s response. If job was forfeiting and giving up his position god has no real reason to keep going. But immediately following God buckles down and says “No I have some questions for you!” With another very long speech.

In chapter 42, we see what might be a submission from Job. Repenting for his questions. But what if it’s not. What if instead of saying I despise myself for asking these questions. Job is saying I’ve heard about you from my friends and from Elihu. They painted a terrible picture of you, I held onto hope that maybe it was different. But now I’ve heard it form you first hand, and I know the truth. You won’t listen to my questions. The little quotations around the text indicate Job is repeating back passages spoken earlier. I get a sense he’s saying here, “Do you realize what you sound like?” He’s being honest, and vulnerable. Not necessarily accepting God’s answer that god is god and this is happening because I said so. But more saying; I know this is what everyone has been saying about you, I expected better. But now here you are saying the same thing.

From the first paragraph God looks like the bad guy, like life time in prison levels of bad. So maybe, the book was never meant to be about god at all. Maybe the book was written by a people group who intimately knew suffering and were grappling with the vary reality of what it means to be human to experience a myriad of messy emotions. Maybe we aren’t being taught how to suffer, but we’re being given a picture of what it looks like to be wholly human. To question our suffering and pain, to give us permission to express frustration at the insistence of absolute certainty, to give us permission to express anger at a God who may or may not allow our suffering. To give us permission to feel no matter how dark or scary it might be, even to see God as the bad guy. Because those feelings, those doubts, those questions are the reality of being human.

In the narrative portion at the end of the book of Job, God restores everything job lost even doubling it, but right before this God commends Job for his honesty saying in vs 7:

“I’ve had it with you and your two friends. I’m fed up! You haven’t been honest either with me or about me-not the way my friend Job has.”

So in the end, Job refusing to put up with the because I said so answer, connected God and Job in a way that religion couldn’t connect Job’s friends with God. Job’s insistence that suffering in its messiness doesn’t have to ruin the goodness of God or the goodness of humanity. Once in the midst of suffering it can break us entirely. Our faith, our hearts, our minds. There have been countless times I’ve wanted to walk away all together. Maybe Job once believed like his friends, that suffering was black and white that God caused or allowed only the wicked to suffer. Until he was the one bearing the weight. Rather than question his own goodness, he began to question the theology. In chapters 13 he tells his friends “aren’t you afraid to speak cheap lies before him? Your wise sayings are knickknack wisdom, good for nothing but gathering dust.” Your theology on suffering makes sense when you don’t need it, but it does you no good covered in dust. Then in Chapter 21 Job complains about the wicked getting it good. The very antithesis of the theology of his friends. His friends insistGod only punishes the wicked and here Job is saying the wicked have it easy, they get away with everything while he’s tried his best to be his best and he is the most miserable of them all. How many of us have asked this question? How many of us have felt like justice doesn’t come for those who deserve it, how many of us have felt the pain of suffering and thought we didn’t deserve it? This chapter ends with Job asking his friends “so how do you expect me to get any comfort from your nonsense? Your so-called comfort is a tissue of lies.” My experience has been that the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer, so you’re wrong! Your words are no comfort.

Maybe the writers, which there were many, of Job knew what it meant to suffer and it made them question everything. And in that questioning they found freedom to explore a god bigger than the box. And in that God they were able to experience the full spectrum of emotion in grief and suffering. Because the reality is when we are set in our ways of black and white suffering we cut ourself off from the questions and even the pain. Which causes more suffering in the end. When we ride the wave no matter how messy we find ourselves on the other side of it, with a new ‘life’ (mindset, world view) better than the one we started with.

So may we suffer like Job. Accepting that we may never know the reason or cause of our suffering, and holding onto the goodness of God and the goodness of humanity. May we be honest, questioning black and white thinking. May we see the story of Job as not a picture of who God is, but as a picture of the journey of growth and maturity through grief and pain. May we always be raw and honest in order to connect more deeply not only with ourselves but with the world and with God.