Chapter 8
The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers 49
is where the scourge of suffering lies. When I suffer and feel I am to blame for it, I can explain it to myself; when I suffer and know I am not to blame, it is a harder matter; but when I suffer and realise that my most intimate relations think I am to blame, that is the limit of suffering. That is where the scourge of suffering lashed Job, the power of the sneer of Satan has come now into his most intimate relationships.
as their own hearts told them he was, where was their creed? They were dumbfounded with agony, and Job was left without a consoling friend. The friends came slowly to the conclusion that their view of God was right, therefore Job must be wrong. They had the ban of finality7 about their views, which is always the result of theology being put before God. The friends suffered as well as Job, and the suffering which comes from having outgrown one's theological suit is of an acute order. Job's attitude is—"I cannot understand why God has allowed these things to happen; what He is doing hurts desperately, but I believe that He is honourable, a God of integrity, and I will stick to it that in the end it will be made absolutely clear that He is a God of love and justice and truth."
(c) The Solitariness of Sorrow ( Job 2:11–13) Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place. . . . And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice, and wept. . . . So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great.
Nothing is taught in the Book of Job, but there is a deep, measured sense of Someone understanding. This man was buffeted and stripped of all he held dear, but in the whirlwind of disaster he remained unblameable, that is, undeserving of censure by God.
Job's friends were hit desperately by the calamities that had overtaken Job because their creed was the same as his had been, and now if Job was a good man,
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the passIon oF pessImIsm
Job 3
The world sits at the feet of Christ Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled; It yet shall touch His garment's fold, And feel the heavenly Alchemist Transform its very dust to gold.
1. The Irreparable Birth ( Job 3:1–7) After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day. . . . Let the day perish wherein I was born. ( Job 3:1, 3)
It is a sad thing that Job is facing, and it seems that the only reasonable thing he can do is to mourn the day of his birth. With some people suffering is imaginary, but with Job it has actually happened, and his curse is the real deep conviction of his spirit— "Would to God I had never been born!" The sense of the irreparable is one of the greatest agonies in human life. Adam and Eve entered into the sense of the irreparable when the gates of Paradise clanged behind them. Cain cried out—"My punishment is greater than I can bear." Esau "found no place of repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears." There are things in life which are irreparable; there is no road back to yesterday.
Whittier
Optimism is either a matter of accepted revelation or of temperament; to think unimpeded and remain optimistic is not possible. Let a man face facts as they really are, and pessimism is the only possible conclusion. If there is no tragedy at the back of human life, no gap between God and man, then the Redemption of Jesus Christ is "much ado about nothing." Job is seeing things exactly as they are. A healthy-minded man bases his life on actual conditions, but let him be hit by bereavement, and when he has got beyond the noisy bit and the blasphemous bit, he will find, as Job found, that despair is the basis of human life unless a man accepts a revelation from God and enters into the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.
Job's sense of the irreparable brought him face to face with the thing God was face to face with, and when a man gets there he begins to see the meaning of the Redemption. The basis of things is not
7. ban of finality: the limitation or "curse" of having one's mind made up, unwilling to consider new information.
50 Baffled to Fight Better
rational, common sense tells him it is not; the basis of things is tragic, and the Bible reveals that the only way out is through the Redemption. In Job's case it was not a question of his being over-satiated with the pleasures of life, he was suddenly hit without any explanation; his days of prosperity and conscious integrity came to an abrupt end, and, worst of all, his belief in God was assailed.
and on the basis of the Redemption men find their personal way out and an explanation.
3. The Invincible Blackness ( Job 3:13–22) These verses are not an indication of pain and suffering, but simply of blackness and a desire for quietness.
Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul; which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures; which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave? ( Job 3:20–22)
Real suffering comes when a man's statement of his belief in God is divorced from his personal relationship to God. The statement of belief is secondary, it is never the fundamental thing. It is always well to note the things in life that your explanations do not cover. Job is facing a thing too difficult for him to solve or master; he realises that there is no way out.
In the invincible blackness caused by Job's condition death seems the only way out. In every age which has seen a great upheaval the initial stage has always been marked by the advocacy of suicide, which is an indication of the agony produced by facing things as they are. The basis of things is wild. The only way you can live your life pleasantly is by being either a pagan or a saint; only by refusing to think about things as they are can we remain indifferent.
2. The Irresponsible Blunder ( Job 3:8–13) If you read a book about life by a philosopher and then go out and face the facts of life, you will find the facts do not come within the simple lines laid down in the book. The philosopher's line works like a searchlight does, lighting up what it does and nothing more, daylight reveals a hundred and one facts which the searchlight had not taken into account. There is nothing simple under heaven saving a man's relationship to God on the ground of the Redemption; that is why the apostle Paul says, "I fear, lest by any means, . . . your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ" (2 Corinthians 11:3).
4. The Inherited Baffling ( Job 3:23–26) The sense of being baffled is common, and Job is feeling completely baffled by God's dealings with him.
Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in? [rv] . . . I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came. ( Job 3:23, 26)
Reason is our guide among the facts of life, but it does not give us the explanation of them. Sin, suffering, and the Book of God all bring a man to the realisation that there is something wrong at the basis of life, and it cannot be put right by his reason. Our Lord always dealt with the "basement" of life, i.e., with the real problem; if we only deal with "the upper storey" we do not realise the need of the Redemption; but once we are hit on the elemental line, as this war has hit men, everything becomes different. There are many men today who for the first time in their lives find themselves in the midst of the elemental with no civilised protection, and they go through appalling agony.
We may not experience the sense of being baffled by reason of any terrific sorrow, but if we really face the teachings of Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount honestly and drastically, we shall know something of what Job was going through. The teachings of Jesus Christ must produce despair, because if He means what He says, where are we in regard to it? "Blessed are the pure in heart"—blessed is the man who has nothing in him for God to censure. Can I come up to that standard? Yet Jesus says only the pure in heart can stand before God. The New Testament never says that Jesus Christ came primarily to teach men: it says that He came to reveal that He has put the basis of human life on Redemption, that is, He has made it possible for any and every man to be born into the Kingdom where He lives (see John 3:3). Then when we are born again His teaching becomes a description of what God has undertaken to make a man if he will let His power work through him. So long as a man has his morality well within his own grasp he does not need Jesus Christ— "For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners," said Jesus. When a man has been hard hit and realises his own helplessness he finds that it is not a cowardly thing to turn to Jesus Christ, but the way out which God has made for him.
The war has put an end to a great deal of belief in our beliefs. Coleridge's criticism of many so-called Christians was that they did not believe in God, but only believed their beliefs about Him. A man up against things as they are feels that he has lost God, while in reality he has come face to face with Him. It is not platitudes that tell here, but great books, like the Book of Job, which work away down on the implicit line. There are many things in life that look like irresponsible blunders, but the Bible reveals that God has taken the responsibility for these things, and that Jesus Christ has bridged the gap which sin made between God and man; the proof that He has done so is the Cross. God accepts the responsibility for sin,