The Goodness of God and the Power of God: Part 7

So--what is our choice?  Are we faced with annihilation or oblivion?  Is there no refuge found in God, only a harsh questioning, as Job faced?  Do we see a great lion, who makes no guarantees on not eating us, guarding the water of life?

No, the story does not end there.  Both with the blind man and with Job, there is more.  The blind man in John 9 is healed--though even that is not the end.  Not just healing--there is more; and not all of it is pleasant.  He is questioned by the religious leaders, twice.  His own parents do not stand up for him.  Finally, he is excommunicated.  Cast out of the people of Israel.  Abandoned from all he has ever known, the covenant people of God, the holders of divine revelation.  Physically whole, is he now to be spiritually empty?

Remember, this is not 21st-century America.  This is not a case where there could be some mild social awkwardness when someone changes churches, some strained Thanksgiving dinners and a few friendships lost.  This is 1st century Palestine, where a Jew's religious identity was literally everything to him.  Cast out of the people of the covenant, God's chosen nation on earth.  Cast off from the faithful, those who have kept the flame of faith in the One God burning for centuries, through persecution and exile.  The great heritage of Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David, the Prophets--cut off.  Abandoned to a sea of pagan darkness, cast off from the rock of Israel.  This is progress?

So what does the man do?  Despair?  Does he tell Jesus "Thanks for nothing!  I've lost everything because of you!"  Does he curse God and die?

He does not.  He now can see! 

35 Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in qthe Son of Man?”3 36 He answered, r“And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” 37 Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and sit is he who is speaking to you.” 38 He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him. 39 Jesus said, t“For judgment I came into this world, uthat those who do not see may see, and vthose who see may become blind.” 40 Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, w“Are we also blind?” 41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, xyou would have no guilt;4 but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains. --John 9:35-41

He does not bemoan the loss of what he had; he worships the One who gave him sight.  He now sees what is real...he does not yearn for an illusion.  He has completion--he does not wish for the partial.

Born lacking what most have; gaining it, and losing everything else.  And in the process, gaining all that truly matters.

And what of Job?  So many of us moderns are disappointed with the ending of Job--it's too neat, too nice.  Job regains more wealth, more children, more everything.  We--that is, hipster Americans--like the complicated, we like the ironic, we like the deeply symbolic.  We don't like a happy ending that involves material wealth--we're much too gnostic for that.  It's gauche to consider material wealth a blessing from God.  We think of the story of Job as offering too simplistic a lesson here: Job was good, he suffered, but God restored all that he lost because he was faithful.  Do the same.

But that's not the lesson of Job.  Remember, Job's lament was not answered--at least, not with words.  God gave; God took away; God restored.  In it all, God was God, making His sovereign choice.  And sovereignly, He gave Job wealth, took it, and gave it back.

There is no set formula.  The book explicitly disallows formulaic thinking that bad things only happen because you're bad, or because Satan is too strong (remember, he had to ask permission before striking Job), or even "we live in a fallen world."  God doesn't offer a dissertation on free will.  No--these conclusions are not allowed in the text.

Job suffered real loss.  He did lose his children.  He did suffer great pain.  Nothing would change that.  I suppose Job could have said, "No, God--not good enough!  You killed my children!  I will not accept your consolation--you caused my pain!"  I'm sure that's what Christopher Hitchens would have done, and many of us are proud--oh, so proud!--to shake their fists angrily at the God who could end their pain, but did not.

No; Job responds in faith:

4  “Behold, I am zof small account; what shall I answer you?

aI lay my hand on my mouth.

5  I have spoken bonce, and I will not answer;

btwice, but I will proceed no further.” --Job 40:4-5

We don't want a sovereign God.  If we want God at all, we want one who is either too weak to stop our pain, or one who speaks so sweetly that we avoid the question of our pain.  But these images of God can never truly comfort--for they are as false as an image of Baal.

In the end, we are faced with an inescapable fact: if God exists, then yes, He could stop our pain--but He doesn't.  The God who holds the oceans in His hands is in control.  And that frightens us, shakes us to the core in the midst of our pain.

There's another story in the Bible that might shed more light on our dilemma.  The story of Joseph...another one of those incredibly unfair stories, but one that again, has unexpected twists and turns, and an unexpected ending.

But that's for another day.