THEOLOGY THURSDAY
WITH DAVE HOLZHAUER
Have you ever asked someone how they were doing and they responded “not good”? There’s something about that response that causes some instant tension in a conversation. This goes beyond the violation of the unspoken societal norm that “how are you” is simply an informal way of saying hello. There’s a discomfort when others are suffering that we dislike dealing with.
This discomfort seems to be there throughout human history. In the book of Job, the protagonist, the eponymous Job, loses everything: all his wealth, property, children, and health. His wife stays in the story long enough to ask him why he doesn’t curse God and die. Through all of this, “Job did not sin with his lips” (Job 2:10). It’s at this point that Job’s three friends hear about all his troubles and agree to go together and comfort him. Commentators have estimated that between the friends hearing about Job, contacting each other, agreeing to comfort Job, and actually arriving where Job was, the whole process may have taken as long as seven years. When they did, they didn’t even recognize him; when they did, they saw how great his suffering was, grieved, and sat in silence with him (Job 2:11-13).
For the next 35 chapters, Job expresses his own pain, confusion, and desire to ask God why all of this happened. As you may already know, his friends spend the next 35 chapters telling him that it was his own sinfulness that brought this down on him and he needs to repent of his sinful thoughts and deeds.
There are a number of different themes occurring throughout these chapters, but I want to focus on the final five chapters of the book (Job 38-42). God speaks directly to Job, asking him if he can do any humanly impossible tasks and asking him if he knows how to create the laws of nature. The implication is clear: if you don’t understand how to create visible things, how are you going to understand God’s plans? Job’s response is surprising:
I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees you;
therefore I despise myself,
and repent in dust and ashes. (Job 42: 5-6)
There is a footnote that says repent may also mean “am comforted”. Job is comforted by God’s presence. This profound: having spent 41 chapters losing everything, expressing his grief, having terrible comforters, and having God show up to tell him that Job knew nothing of what was going on, Job is comforted by God being there. Job may have been able to give mental assent to God’s character and characteristics, but it seems Job did not know God for who he was, not in the way that you know someone after having been through the fire with them. That’s the single biggest takeaway of Job, that no matter how deep or long lasting our grief, even if it’s never made better in this life, only being with God (in the deepest sense of the term) can comfort us. That’s not to say the grief goes away or is made right. But there is joy.
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