Scripture can be found here…
How to begin to tell the story of Job? Some of you know it well. Some of you know the phrase, the ‘trials of Job,’ so you know he was a guy who went through some things. And for some of you, well, let me introduce you.
Scripture contains all kinds of writings within it: history, prophecy, poetry, letters. The Book of Job is from the genre known as “Wisdom literature”—which is pretty much what it sounds like. These writings seek to go beneath the “what” to get to the “why?” And there is no more pressing question for people of faith than, Why do bad things happen to good people?
The Book of Job struggles with that question. For 42 chapters, it struggles with it. The book starts with an introduction: we learn that Job is a good man: he’s righteous. He’s God-fearing. He’s devout. He is also successful and prosperous. He’s a family man, married with ten adult children.
Next we drop in to heaven, where Job’s goodness has caught God’s attention. God announces to the heavenly court: “That Job—he’s a really good guy!” One of the members of the court is Satan, which means, Tempter. Satan’s job seems to be to play Devil’s Advocate with God. He says, “Well, sure Job’s good, and fears God. He’s rich. He’s got it easy. I bet he wouldn’t be so devout if everything unraveled on him. Go ahead, God. Throw some trauma his way. I bet he’ll curse you to your face.”
God doesn’t curse Job, but God lets Satan do his best. In the span of a day Job loses almost everything. He loses his flocks and his herds. He loses his servants. And, in the cruelest blow, he loses his seven sons and three daughters, all of whom had been enjoying a meal together. Only Job and his wife are left standing.
Job receives the news of all this from four messengers who come in rapid succession. Job’s response to all this is remarkable.
“Job arose,” the story reads, and he “tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshiped. He said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’” (Job 1:20-21).
So… God’s was right about Job. He is a good guy. He’s a devout guy. But Satan isn’t finished. “Fine,” he says to God. “But what if his we go for his health? Stretch out your hand and touch his flesh and his bone, and he’ll definitely curse you to your face.” God says, “Do your best—just don’t kill the guy.” And Satan afflicts Job with horrible sores, all over.
And Job sits in ashes, in his torn clothing, a vision of misery.
Meanwhile, Job’s three friends hear about all this and come to him. The spend a week sitting quietly with him, silent witnesses to his terrible suffering. This reminds me of the contemporary Jewish practice of sitting shiva, a seven-day period following a death in which the bereaved stay at home and their friends bring food and solace.
For seven days Job’s friends bear witness. Then Job speaks, and pours out his misery. Why was I born? he asks.
Finally his friends can stand it no longer, and all self-justification breaks lose. One by one, each of them preaches to Job some version of the same sermon:
You MUST have done SOMETHING wrong.
And there it is. The central question of this tale. Did he? Did Job do something wrong? Did he earn this horrible series of punishments? Does he deserve all this suffering? Some Christians believe that having faith, and giving their money to God (usually through someone like Joel Osteen or Jim Bakker), Will result in their being happy and prosperous in this life. Mostly this works out very well for people like Joel Osteen and Jim Bakker.
Job’s friends seem to believe some version of this. They believe that Job’s suffering must have been because he failed in some spectacular way—by being unrighteous, or unfaithful, and we happen to know they’re wrong,because we heard God say so—that Job is a good man, a righteous man, a man who fears God.
And, at least, at this point in our story, a man who has lost everything, for no good reason.
Job pushes back—on his friends and on God. He accuses God of torturing him for no good reason—and this isn’t far from the truth. God doesn’t torture Job, but God doesn’t protect this good and faithful servant from torture, either. Job asks that God would just put an end to his suffering by putting an end to his life.
And this goes on—Job’s friends accusing him, Job defending himself. He stands firm. He has not sinned. He has done nothing to deserve any of this. For 24 chapters this goes on, and Job will not budge. And we know he’s right.
And we know his story is a true story. We look around us and we see its truth in the stories of family and friends, in the stories of strangers. We see good people suffering. We have been their witnesses.
And the question remains: Why? We ask this question when we see the suffering of strangers. We ask it when we see the suffering of those we love. We ask it when we suffer ourselves. And when there is no answer, we struggle to make sense of it.
Church Historian Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke and an expert on the Prosperity Gospel, on which she has written extensively. She is also the author of “Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved.” She shares the story of her own embrace of the Prosperity gospel. Following a start to her life in which everything seemed to fall seamlessly in place. She writes,
Married in my twenties, a baby in my thirties, I won a job at my alma mater straight out of graduate school. I felt breathless with the possibilities… It was certainty, plain and simple, that God had a worthy plan for my life in which every setback would also be a step forward. I wanted God to make me good and make me faithful, with just a few shining accolades along the way. Anything would do if hardships were only detours on my long life’s journey. I believed God would make a way. I don’t believe that anymore.[i]
At 35 Bowler was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer, and she realized that she had been an adherent of the Prosperity Gospel, without even realizing it. He conviction that a blameless, faithful life would also be a smooth one was shattered. This set her on a journey, one that unfolded alongside her cancer journey, to reckon with and unteach herself the lies that had, to her surprise, had actually formed the foundation of her faith.
This is the journey of Job. In our passage, Job is about midway through his journey. He has been fighting, fighting to justify himself, to convince his friends and God that he does not deserve this, when suddenly, it occurs to him. He doesn’t understand, but surely God does. God has wisdom—O the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! And suddenly he is on an urgent search, not for self-justification, but for that elusive wisdom.
Where is it? he wonders. Where is the place of understanding? Where is the wisdom of God? And he quickly realizes that it might not be available to mortals, to those of us on this side of the grave, even if we could explore the depths of the sea or the endless expanses of the sky. There is nothing that can buy that wisdom… he reels of a list of precious metals, precious stones and jewels… and he knows. You can’t buy it.
And then it hits him: Destruction and death may offer hints. Suffering may offer hints. But it is God alone who knows. It is God alone who can look at the fullness of the earth and all that is in it, and see it and comprehend it with a glance. It is God alone who possesses the wisdom to truly understand everything, including suffering. God’s judgments are unsearchable. God’s ways are inscrutable.
And the only reasonable human response is to stand in awe of God. Or as Job puts it,
Truly, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom;
and to depart from evil is understanding… ~Job 28:28
Which, in a sense, brings Job back to the point at which he started. A good man, a righteous man, a God-fearing man: This is wisdom’s starting point, but not it’s ending. Wisdom begins and ends in God, and we can only begin to approach it by the lifelong journey of learning to rest in God.
In an interview, Kate Bowler talked about where she landed on her path to understand God’s wisdom regarding illness, suffering… all the unanticipated unraveling she had experienced. She said,
I think the great surprise for me was that God is there no matter what… it’s not [something] that requires effort, even, or correct belief, always, or the right kind of prayer. When I was in the hospital, God was somehow there. And in the worst moments of my life, for some reason there is more than enough. And that's just the Holy Spirit. That’s the only prosperity gospel I'm super into — it’s the one in which, for some reason, God chooses to fill in the cracks. And sometimes we get that experience, and sometimes we don’t, but we know it when it is happening.[ii]
God is there, no matter what. Halfway through his journey, Job begins to understand—for certain things, there is no understanding apart from the confidence that we are held in God, held by God… even when we don’t feel it, even when we aren’t aware of it. That our trust in God’s wisdom has to stand in place of our own acquisition of it.
Job is a person of faith who honestly struggles with suffering. He doesn’t abandon his faith in God. Instead, he wrestles with God—he is one of that line of Biblical figures who show us that it can be completely faithful to argue with God, to say, Hey God, WHAT GIVES? when it seems the world is unraveling around us. At this moment in his story Job begins to understand that his only way to God’s wisdom may be to wait until he and God are able to have that conversation face to face.
Thanks be to God? Amen.
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[i] Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved (New York: Random House, 2018) xiii-xiv.
[ii] Catherine Woodiwiss, “You’re Not That Special, and Other Lessons from Kate Bowler,” Sojourners, May 9, 2018, https://sojo.net/articles/youre-not-special-and-other-lessons-kate-bowler.