Chapter 23
58 Baffled to Fight Better
humbly accept the revelation of God given by Jesus Christ."
his conceptions. God allows things in the cosmic world which are a refraction, they do not continue in the straight, simple line my mind tells me they ought to take. Job says, in effect, "If God chooses to be almighty against me, where am I? If he will contend with Him, he cannot answer Him one of a thousand." The eccentric old poet, George Herbert, has a poem in which this phrase recurs—
2. The Conscious Resurgence of Goodness ( Job 9:13–20) How much less shall I answer Him, and choose out my words to reason with Him? Whom though I were righteous, yet would I not answer, but I would make supplication to my judge. ( Job 9:14–15)
Be not Almightie, let me say
"Resurgence" is used here to mean the re-consideration of a former judgement. The majority of us start out with the belief that God is good and kind, and that He prospers those who trust in Him. Job believed this, but he has a conscious resurgence against that belief now, and it is Job's goodness, not his badness, which makes him reconsider things. There are things in the experience of us all which call for a revision of our credal findings about God; there are other elements that will not come into our declaration as to the kind of Being He is.
Against, but for me.
The reason for Job's agony and distress is not a temperamental one; he has been brought to the heart of things and finds tragedy there, and a gap. The only way out is by means of the Redemption; in the meantime Job is stating the perplexity as it appears to a man who is really beginning to think. Every one of us in our day and generation whether we have ever thought deeply or not, has faced this problem: If God is love, why does He allow the hawk to kill the sparrow? As Tennyson puts it—". . . Nature, red in tooth and claw." Why does He allow one animal to feed on another? Why are nations allowed to fight each other? These are not passing perplexities but real puzzles, and the only thing to do is either to deny the facts or to confess we are agnostic. Job is up against the problem that things do not look as they should if God is the kind of God his implicit belief constrains him to declare He ought to be. Job's friends deny the facts; they won't have it that there is any perplexity, and they say to Job, "The reason God appears refracted is because you yourself are refracted."
Eliphaz and Bildad have no problem along this line; their one aim is to convict Job of being a blackguard. The sign of dishonesty in a man's creed is that he finds out defects in everyone save himself—"It is not possible for me to be mistaken in my view of God." Bildad and Eliphaz would not admit that they could be wrong; they had the ban of finality14 about their views. Trouble always arises when men will not revise their views of God. Bildad tells Job that if he was upright he would not suffer as he did. Job maintains—"I am upright, and yet everything has gone wrong with me." Job stuck steadily to facts, not to consistency to his creed. Over and over again a man is said to be a disbeliever when he is simply outgrowing his creed. It is a most painful thing for a man to find that his stated views of God are not adequate. Never tell a lie for the honour of God; it is an easy thing to do. Job refuses a presentation of God which does not face the facts; he has no scepticism about God, no hesitation about His existence, but he does tirade all the time against the way in which He is being presented.
The cosmic force makes God appear indifferent and cruel and remote, and if you become a special pleader of any particular creed you have to shut your eyes to facts. The only revelation which gives a line of explanation is that there is something wrong at the basis of things, hence the refraction. The apostle Paul says that creation is all out of gear and twisted; it is waiting "for the manifestation of the sons of God." In the meantime, the problem remains.
Look at the world through either a microscope or a telescope and you will be dwarfed into terror by the infinitely minute or the infinitely great; both are appalling. When you touch the cosmic force, apart from the blinkers of intellect, there is a wild problem in it. Nature is wild, not tame. No man is capable of solving the riddle of the universe because the universe is mad, and the only thing that will put it right is not man's reason, but the sagacity of God which is manifested in the Redemption of Jesus Christ. A Christian is an avowed agnostic intellectually; his attitude is, "I have reached the limit of my knowledge, and I
3. The Concentrated Reaction of Grief ( Job 9:21–35) For He is not a man, as I am, that I should answer Him, and we should come together in judgement. Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both. ( Job 9:32–33)
Job is giving expression to a new conception of God; his hope is that an umpire, a daysman, will arise who will not only justify God, but also justify him. "My
14. ban of finality: the limitation or "curse" of having one's mind made up, unwilling to consider new information.