When Our World Collapses Around Us
Bad things will happen to all of us at one time or another. A medical diagnosis can alter our life in a heartbeat, a divorce, the loss of a loved one, and a thousand other tragedies can rock our world and leave us searching for answers. Life is unfair, and we never know from one day to the next when the ill winds will blow our world apart.
Theologians have long struggled with how a good and benevolent God can allow evil to cripple the lives of both the righteous and unrighteous, the good and the bad. A few theologians have tried to get around this issue by assuming that there are no righteous people, and whatever suffering a person experiences is somehow deserved. I’m not convinced. In my experiences as a pastor, I have been present with too many victims of life’s brutal assaults to think that somehow their pain was justified. A walk through any children’s hospital quickly proves that unjust suffering far outstrips our sinful nature. Basically, in this world we are all more victims than sinners. Tragedy falls with equal regularity on the innocent and the not so innocent.
The biblical story of Job is a case in point. Job, the Bible makes clear, was a righteous man. In fact, his righteous behavior was unequaled, yet, without warning, his world collapsed around him. His children are killed, his property and livestock are destroyed, and Job’s body is inflicted with painful sores. After all these calamities take place, three friends visit the afflicted man and beg him to confess his sins to God. Job stubbornly refuses, claiming that he has done nothing to deserve God’s punishment. Job’s friends are convinced, however, that Job must have offended God in some way and no doubt remind Job of the verse, “No harm befalls the righteous, but the wicked have their fill of trouble” (Prov. 12:21). Throughout the 42 chapters Job resists the pleas of his friends to repent because he believes he has nothing for which to repent. Meanwhile, the friends are beside themselves with frustration.
Not only does Job refuse to admit any wrongdoing, but he lashes out at God, calling God a deceiver of people, and a destroyer of nations, among other slanderous things (Job 12-14). Elihu, one of Job’s friends, has finally heard enough of Job’s complaints against God and tells him that he is of little consequence in the scheme of the universe and matters little to God. Job is not moved and continues to insist he has not sinned.
After Job’s bitter attack against God, we might conclude that Job is treading on thin ice, that God will surely judge Job harshly for his recalcitrant and disrespectful attitude. Even Job appears to be worried that his rage against God might cost him his life (Job 13:14-15).
Finally, God speaks to Job and his three religious counselors, but God’s response shocks not only Job and his friends but the reader as well. God speaks to Eliphaz and the other two companions of Job, who have vainly tried to convince Job to confess his sins: “I am angry with you and your two friends,” God says, “because you have not spoken to me what is right, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7). Are we reading this right? Is the translation somehow faulty? How can God possibly commend Job, who has verbally assaulted God throughout the book, and condemn his friends, who have upheld the traditional view that only the wicked suffer? Thankfully, the verse is correctly translated. Clearly, God is vindicating Job and all the Jobs of the world who suffer undeservedly and cry out in rage to the heavens at life’s injustices.
Even though Job has hurled insult after insult at God, God understands that Job’s angry words pour forth from a heart of faith. Respected Old Testament scholar Samuel Balentine writes: “The very act of speaking in the midst of pain and suffering is an act of faith. It signals fierce resolve to believe that someone will listen, someone will care, someone will come.” In other words, Job’s anger at God for the terrible and wicked things that have befallen him is an act of faith!
God knows better than anyone the often cruel and unfair nature of life. When our world collapses and life falls apart, we, too, may hurl bitter insults toward the heavens. But to hurl those insults implies that we believe God is listening, that God cares, and that in itself is a sign of faith, honest faith, real faith. Luther, the Reformer, realized the inexplicable nature of God’s compassion and grace when he wrote: “The curse of a godless man can sound more pleasant in God’s ears than the Hallelujah of the pious.” God considers our inner most feelings, even when they are rebellious toward him, acts of authentic faith. The ministry of Jesus in the New Testament to tax-collectors, prostitutes, pagans, and even villains proves that point.
Job’s three friends, who played the part of Job’s righteous companions throughout the book, discover that Job’s honest feelings carry more weight with God than their pious platitudes. Job was in the right, and they were in the wrong—surely a lesson for the modern church.
God never explains to Job why he has suffered, why his world has collapsed around him. In this world evil is a mystery that has no answers. It is the price we pay for being human. Jesus sadly admits that in this world we will experience bad things (Jn. 16:33), sometimes through no fault of our own.
We do not live in a fairy tale world. Life can be ridiculously unfair. People of faith are just as susceptible to the inexplicable assaults on life as anyone else. God’s people are ravaged by cancers, suffer heart attacks and aneurisms, die in car wrecks and plane crashes just like everyone else. Faith in God does not build a bridge over troubled waters; rather, faith provides a way through troubled waters, steering us toward hope—the hope that God listens, God cares, and God is with us, even in, especially in, our suffering. And that hope makes a world of difference.
