Tuesday
Tuesday
Job and God
Job answered the LORD: “I am unworthy—how can I reply to you? … I spoke once, but I have no answer—twice, but I will say no more.”
Job 40:3–5
Several possible attitudes toward suffering are brought before us in the book of Job. Job’s own combination of self-pity and self-assertion is clearly to be rejected. So is the comforters’ recommendation of self-accusation. The attitude proposed by the young man Elihu could be called self-discipline, because he represents God as a teacher (36:22) who speaks to us in our affliction (36:15) in order to “turn man from wrongdoing and keep him from pride” (33:17). But even this explanation is only partial.
The right attitude that human beings should adopt toward God is that of self-surrender. God invites Job to look afresh at the creation and bombards him with questions. Where was he when God created the earth? Can he control the snow, the storm, and the stars? Does Job supervise the world of wild animals and birds? Above all, does he comprehend the mysteries and subdue the strength of behemoth the hippopotamus and of leviathan the crocodile?
If it was reasonable for Job to trust the God whose wisdom and power have been revealed in the creation, how much more reasonable is it for us to trust the God whose love and justice have been revealed in the cross? The reasonableness of trust lies in the known trustworthiness of its object. And no one is more trustworthy than the God of the cross. The cross does not solve the problem of suffering, but it gives us the right perspective from which to view it.
So we need to learn to climb the hill called Calvary and from that vantage point to survey all life’s tragedies. Since God has demonstrated his holy love in a historical event (the cross), no other historical event (whether personal or global) can override or disprove it.
For further reading: Job 38:1–11