Along with much of the West, I was horrified by the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7. After being there more than 30 years ago, Israel captured my heart in a way few places can. The holiness of the place is unmistakable with so much of my faith wrapped up in the land. I recently re-read The Source by James Michener and am reminded that antagonism to God's Chosen People is an incessant refrain from the beginning of recorded history and probably longer. Wars and attacks on Jewish people are a physical reality within a spiritual war between the Holy One and the fallen angels whose pride would make them gods themselves.
Jewish history waxes and wanes between faithfulness to God and rejection of Him. Blessing and judgment follow in a cycle of obedience and attempts to do the work of God outside his will. Perhaps God allows tragedy to awaken a sleeping people and to remind them that His sovereign will still stands. Or perhaps times like these in the Holy Land are the natural result of human politicking. I don't know. I do know that as long as there is evil in the world, there will be wars and that civilians will be in the line of fire. And it's awful.
And then there is always the question of why bad things happen to seemingly good people. Like Job. While there are people who believe Job is an allegory referring to the People of the Book, I think there is sufficient evidence to consider him a real person living during the times of the patriarchs.
I struggle with the story of Job. The idea that Satan gets permission to attack a righteous person doesn't connect to my image of God as both just and merciful. When Jesus tells Peter that Satan demanded to have Peter to sift like wheat (Luke 22), I get it. Peter's character as being impetuous and quick to fight needed a sifting. Over the next several events, readers see the sifting, the guilt, the repentance, and the restoration. The end result of Peter's transformation from fisherman to fisher of men can be directly attributed to that sifting of faith, character, and loyalty.
But Job was blameless and upright, fearing God and turning away from evil (Job 1). So when God responds to Satan's taunts about Job's blessings, it just feels wrong for God to say, "Have at him," not once, but TWICE, the only limit being Job's life. Ironically, Job wished he had never been born, not in an "It's a Wonderful Life" kind of way, but in an "I don't want to be alive" desperation that made God's limitation on Satan seem even worse than it was.
Throughout the book, Job's friends, thinking that being cruel to be kind was merciful (?), offer suggestions, counsel, and interpretations of Job's situation. He had a secret sin, he wasn't honest enough, he didn't really love God, he failed to appease God's demands, God was punishing him, God was humbling him, he didn't fully rely on God, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. None of the accusations or interpretations were accurate. God Himself said that "There is no one like him in the earth, a blameless and an upright man, one who fears God, and turns away from evil. He still maintains his integrity, although you incited me against him, to ruin him without cause" (Job 2:3). Why God allowed Satan to incite him against Job is a whole other matter that my brain is far too small to understand. But the story of Job is in the Scriptures for a reason and up until a few days ago, I couldn't comprehend it. In most of this story, evil triumphs and the most righteous among men is beaten down to dust and ashes (Job 42.)
The lesson of Job is not that God is capricious, inflicting evil on the righteous, although it can seem like it sometimes. Nor does it teach that Satan operates on his own agenda without the knowledge of the Omnipotent One. Job isn't even teaching about the problem of evil in the world; we all already know about that. What I read last week was that Job is really about the limits of human wisdom. Russell Moore wrote of a friend whom he called "a wise Jewish thinker" who noted that "God does not respond to Job's complaints with a syllogism, but with his presence." Russell went on to write that there is evil both outside of us (crime, terrorism, disease) and within, summarized by John as "the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life (1 John 2: 16). While Job was righteous, he was not sinless.Â
Even so, the evil perpetrated against Job was not designed as a punishment. It was allowed as a test, one that Job may have passed (Job 2:10) until his friends came along and tried to explain that his suffering was the result of some sin. Furthermore, Elihu tells Job that God is so great that humans cannot find him (Job 37:22-24) no matter how righteous a person may be. That last statement is the one after which God broke His silence. From a whirlwind, He answered Job's complaint about his suffering not being fair because he was righteous AND the friends who insisted that Job harbored some secret sin and that God was too glorious to bother with trivial humanity.
“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Dress for action like a man;
  I will question you, and you make it known to me.“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
  Tell me, if you have understanding.Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
  Or who stretched the line upon it?On what were its bases sunk,
  or who laid its cornerstone,when the morning stars sang together
  and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"(Job 38:2-7)
By the end of chapter 41, Job understood two things that his friends never did. First, human blamelessness is not equivalent to God's holiness. And second, God is present in the middle of trouble, even if He is unseen and unheard. Job's friends were rebuked for trying to use human wisdom to explain evil. God was so angry with them that he said he would only hear Job's prayer for them because their words were pure folly. Spurgeon wrote about pride like theirs saying, " So they shut themselves out with a sin which is as great as the sin which they condemn; for he that sets up his rags in preference to the robes of Christ, he that prefers his own righteousness to the precious blood of the Only-begotten, has insulted his God with an arrogance so terrible that no sin can equal it in blackness" (Spurgeon, 1866). It was pride that drove Job's friends to speak as they did. It was also pride that made Job regret being born (Job 3). But when God revealed His presence, Job dried up his pride, saying, "I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know" (Job 42:3).
Over the next days and weeks, the war in Israel will unfold and pundits will act like the friends of Job, explaining who is at fault and why the attacks began. If we are not careful, we may get caught up in the speculation of blame and miss the presence of God even in the midst of the awful chaos. God is not unaware of the facts; He knows them better than any worldly expert. Our response is not to question God's goodness nor His trustworthiness, but to remember that He is present with His people and that no purpose of His can be thwarted (Job 42:2). There are some things in the heavenly realms that we cannot understand, however, we must recognize that the spiritual battle beneath the physical war belongs to the Lord.Â