When The Facts Don't Add Up

Philip Yancey
Christianity Today magazine
June 13, 1986; page 19



A just, loving, and powerful God should follow certain rules, shouldn't he?

What is man that you make so much of him, that you give him so much
attention, that you examine him every morning and test him every
moment? Will you never look away from me, or let me alone even for
an instant? (Job 7:17-19, NIV)

IF YOU HAD ASKED ME a few years ago what the book of Job was about, I would
have been quick to respond, "Job? Everybody knows what Job is about. It's
the Bible's most complete treatment of the problem of pain and suffering."

I refer to Job whenever I write about pain. And without doubt, the bulk of
the book (chaps. 3-37) revolves around the theme of suffering. Those middle
chapters render no action to speak of, just five prickly men - Job, his three
friends, and the mostly silent Elihu - sitting around discussing theories of
pain. They are trying to account for the slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune that have fallen upon poor Job.

We cannot get enough of Job's story. Its central motif of undeserved
suffering seems peculiarly suited to our own pain-wracked century, an era
that has included two world wars, two atom bomb attacks, and more than its
share of genocide attempts.

More, the portrait of genial old Job, moaning mournfully while life caves in
around him, seems to fit a favorite modern stereotype. Neal Simon borrowed
the Job setting for his play, God's Favorite, as did Archibald MacLeish
Q.B.), and Robert Frost before him ("The Masque of Reason"). Recently,
novelist Muriel Spark again tried to update the plot of Job in a contemporary
setting (The Only Problem).

All of the takeoffs explore the conundrum posed by the original book. Job
and his friends agreed that a just, loving, and powerful God ought to follow
certain rules on earth. Mainly, he should reward those who do good and
punish those who do evil. Job's suffering, his friends argued, must
therefore have come as punishment for some unconfessed sin.

For Job, who knew his own soul, the facts did not add up. And for us, too,
they do not add up. We see the face of unexplained suffering wherever we
look: the Jews in the Holocaust, famine victims in Africa, Christians in
Communist and Moslem prisons. Those who still subscribe to the neat formula
of Job's friends - and there are many, if religious television is any
indication would do well to consider just one sobering fact: the most
aggressively Christian continent on Earth, Africa, is also the hungriest.
(And, the most aggressively non-Christian region, around the Arabian Sea, is
the richest.)

In short, the questions asked so eloquently by Job have not faded away over
the centuries. They have grown even louder and shriller.

Yet, despite all the echoes in modern literature, despite my own reliance on
Job as I write about pain, despite the fact that all but a few pages of Job
focus exclusively on the problem of pain, I am coming to the conclusion that
Job is not about the problem of pain at all. Details of suffering serve as
the ingredients of the story, the stuff of which it is made, not the central
theme. A cake is not "about" eggs, flour, milk, and shortening. It merely
uses those ingredients in the process of creating a cake. In the same way,
Job is not "about" suffering but merely uses such ingredients in its overall
scheme.

Rather, when seen as a whole, Job is a book about faith. It tells the story
of one man selected to undergo a staggering test of faith. His trial and
response present a message that applies not just to suffering people, but to
every person who lives on planet Earth. Most of the time, our visual
faculties admit a narrow spectrum of "natural" light; Job temporarily lifts
our blinders and reveals the supernatural activity going on behind the
scenes.

A STORY WITHIN A STORY

To understand how the themes of faith and suffering work together in Job, it
helps to think of the book as a mystery play, a "whodunit" detective story.
We in the audience showed up early for a press conference in which the
director explained his work (chaps. 1-2). We know in advance who did what in
the play, and we understand that the personal drama on earth has its origin
in a cosmic drama in heaven - the contest over Job's faith. Will he believe
in God or deny him?

But then the curtains come down, and when they are raised again we see just
the actors on stage. Confined within the play, they have no knowledge of the
"omniscient" point of view enjoyed by the audience. Although we know the
answer to the "whodunit" questions, the star detective, Job, does not.
Obsessed with suffering, he spends his time on stage trying to discover what
we viewers already know. He scratches himself with shards of pottery and
asks trenchant questions: Why me? What did I do wrong? What is God trying
to tell me?

For those of us in the "audience, Job's "whodunit" questions should be mere
intellectual exercises, for we already know the answers. What has Job done?
The answer is easy - he's done nothing. God himself called Job "blameless
and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil" (2:3). Why is Job
suffering? We know in advance that he is not being punished. Far from it -
he has been selected as the principal player in a great contest of the
heavens.God is using Job to prove to Satan that a human being's faith can be
genuine and selfless, not dependent on God's good gifts. Job represents the
very best of the species.

Because of the glimpse "behind the curtain" afforded in chapters 1 and 2, the
author of Job forfeits all elements of narrative tension but one: the
question of how Job will respond. In short, it is the question of his faith.

THE CONTEST

It is a testament to the genius of the book - and the reason it has endured
as a work of literature - that we can forget chapters 1 and 2 and get swept
up in Job's personal anguish. He struggles with the imponderables of
suffering with such force that, for the duration of the book, his questions
become our questions. But we must remind ourselves that behind the lofty
speeches looms the background setting of those first chapters in which the
director explained in advance the nature of the contest.

Some commentators treat chapters 1 and 2 with a tone of mild embarrassment.
I get the distinct impression they would like the Book of Job much better if
it began with chapter 3. The scene in heaven shows God and Satan involved in
- and you can almost see blush marks on the commentary pages - well,
something resembling a wager. The two have a kind of bet going, at God's
instigation, a contest in which God has stacked the odds against himself.

Satan's accusation that Job loves God only because "you have put a hedge
around him" stands as an attack on God's character. It implies that God is
unworthy of love in himself; people like Job follow him merely because they
are "bribed" to do so. Job's response when all the props of faith are
removed will prove or disprove Satan's challenge.

The remainder of the book weaves together wonderful strains of dramatic
irony, the most prominent being a double-hinged trial of integrity. To Job,
God is on trial: How can a loving God treat him so unfairly? All of Job's
legal briefs, however, are contained within the setting of the larger trial
set up in chapters 1 and 2, the test of Job's faith. From our omniscient
reader's viewpoint, we watch for cracks in Job's integrity as he loses, one
by one, everything of meaning and value.

It says something about our modern culture that we find such sympathy for
Job's point of view. C. S. Lewis put his finger on the reason behind our
empathetic response in his essay, "God in the Dock":

"The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused
person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are
reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a
kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defense for being the
god who permits war, poverty and disease, he is ready to listen to
it. The trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important
thing is that Man is on the Bench and God in the Dock."

The Book of Job may help us form questions about God, but it fails to give
many answers, for a very simple reason: chapters I and 2 have clearly shown
that, regardless of what Job thinks, God is not on trial in this book. Job
is on trial. The point of the book is not suffering - " Where is God when it
hurts?" - that's dealt with in the prologue. The point is faith - Where is
Job? How is he responding?

Do human beings truly possess freedom and dignity? Satan challenged God on
that count. We have freedom to descend, of course - Adam and all his
offspring have proved that. But do we have freedom to ascend, to believe God
for no other reason than, well ... for no reason at all. Can a person
believe even when God appears to him as an enemy? Is that kind of faith even
possible?

Or is faith, like everything else, a product of environment and
circumstances? These are the questions posed in the Book of Job. In the
opening chapters, Satan reveals himself as the first great behaviorist. Job
was conditioned to love God, he claims. Take away the rewards, and watch
faith crumble. Job, oblivious, is selected for the great contest.

JOB

Trapped in the "ingredients" of the drama, Job concerns himself exclusively
with the issue of suffering. Of course, he knows nothing of the cosmic
contest of faith - knowing such inside information would keep his trial from
being fair. As a result, he feels betrayed by God.

How, then, does Job respond? What does his faith look like? His speeches
contain some of the most profound expressions of pain, despair, and outrage
in all of literature. He wanders just to the edge of blasphemy. The first
words in his first speech set the tone for what follows: "May the day of my
birth perish, and the night it was said, 'A boy is born!'" (3:2, NIV). (For
a sampling of Job's expressions of anguish, see 3:24, 6:3, 10:21, 14:18-19,
16:9, 19:7, 30:20-27.)

To Job in his misery, God seems a villain who "destroys both the blameless
and the wicked" (9:22) - the reverse image of Jesus' concept of a Father who
sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matt. 5:45). The same bleak
fate awaits everyone, whether good or evil: "Side by side they lie in the dust
and worms cover them both" (21:26).

In his final speeches, Job marshals every example of unfairness that he can
find in the world. Those of us who know the full story, and rush to the
ending, may easily miss the impact of his words of anguish. One does not
expect to find the arguments of God's greatest adversaries - say, Mark
Twain's LETTERS FROM THE EARTH or Bertrand Russell's WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN
- bound into the center of the Bible.

Yet, in the end, God praises Job, in marked contrast to his verdict on Job's
pious friends: I am angry with you [Eliphaz] and your two friends, because
you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has" (42:7). In
light of Job's vitriolic responses, how does he triumph? To put it crudely,
how does God "win the wager" on Job's faith? Why does Job never follow his
wife's advice at the beginning, to "curse God and die"?

Though it is true that he questions God's fairness and goodness and love, and
despairs of his own life, Job refuses to turn his back on God. "Though he
slay me, yet will I hope in him," he defiantly insists (13:15). He may have
given up on God's justice, but he stubbornly refuses to give up on God. At
the most unlikely moments of despair, he comes up with brilliant flashes of
hope and faith (9:33; 16:19-21).

In desperation, Job settles on one request, and sticks to it until the end.
He asks only for a personal explanation from God himself (13:3, 31:35). He
wants a day in court, a chance to hear God testify on his own behalf about
what surely looks like a gross injustice.

This last request arouses Job's friends to fury. What right has he, one
insignificant human being, to call God into account? How could a "man, who
is but a maggot - a son of man, who is only a worm" (25:6) oppose the God of
the universe? Job will not back down. To the end, he insists on his right
to question God.

Job ultimately passes the test of faith by clinging to belief in God although
he has no evidence in support of that belief, and much against it. And he
clings to his own human dignity even as it is being assailed on all sides.
One might even call Job the first Protestant, in the fullest sense of the
word. He takes his stand upon individual faith rather than yielding to pious
dogma.

THE FINALE

Ironically, God appears to Job just as Elihu is explaining why Job has no
right to ask for divine intervention. Much has been made about God's
magnificent speech in Job 38-41. I, too, have marveled at the wonderful
images from nature, but along with marvel comes a nagging sense of
bewilderment. Why does God avoid the very questions that have been
tormenting poor Job? His avoidance of the issue of suffering seems shocking
after 35 chapters on nothing else.

God's choice of content leads back to chapters 1 and 2, the "behind the
curtain" context. Job and his friends talked about suffering because they
were trapped in the "ingredients" of the drama; they could see nothing else.
God, of course, knew all along that the real question was the challenge of
the original contest: Job's faith. Would he cling to faith when every self-
interested reason for doing so was pulled away? "He will curse you to your
face," Satan had gambled. And he lost. Job's character held up.

God does have some words of correction for Job, and the message expressed in
splendid poetry boils down to this: UNTIL YOU KNOW A LITTLE MORE ABOUT
RUNNING THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE, JOB, DON'T TELL ME HOW TO RUN THE MORAL
UNIVERSE. God criticizes Job for only one thing: his ignorance. Job made
his judgments on the basis of incomplete evidence - an insight that those of
us in the "audience" had seen all along.

His lecture delivered, God sets about restoring double all that Job had lost.
Some people like to dwell on the good-news account of Job's restored
fortunes. They emphasize that Job underwent trials only for a season before
again receiving material reward.

True, God did reward Job lavishly. But the thrust of the book convinces me
that faith, not rewards, is the main emphasis in Job. I say this carefully,
but from God's viewpoint, Job's material prosperity was insignificant in
comparison with the cosmic issues involved. OH, PAIN? I CAN FIX THAT
EASILY. MORE CHILDREN? CAMELS AND OXEN? NO PROBLEM. Those rewards on
earth were peripheral to Job in exactly the same sense that they were later
peripheral to the apostle Paul, who prayed that "Christ will be exalted in my
body, whether by life or by death" (Phil. 1:20).

FAITH, NOT PLEASURE

Because of the unique angle of vision afforded us in Job 1-2, we can see in
the saga of Job far more than the exaggerated trials of a sad, old man.
Without knowing it, Job played a key role in a cosmic struggle, and his
example has much to teach us.

I began this article by saying that I once thought I knew what Job was about:
the problem of suffering. Now I realize that what I and many others, do to
the Book of Job is a paradigm of what we do to life in general. We take a
book about a battleground of faith and testing and turn it into a book about
suffering.

Job's true crisis was a crisis of faith, not of suffering. And so is ours.
All of us at times find ourselves in Joblike circumstances. We will not
likely face the extreme disasters that befell Job, but a tragic accident, a
terminal illness, or a loss of job may have us shaking our heads and asking
ourselves, "Why, me? What does God have against me? Why does he seem so
distant?"

At such times we focus too easily on our circumstances - our illnesses, our
looks, our poverty, our bad luck - as the enemy. We pray for God to change
our circumstances. If only I were beautiful or handsome, we think, then
everything would work out. If only I had more money. Or at least a job. If
only my sexual desires would somehow change, or at least diminish. Then I
could easily believe God. But Job teaches that at the moment when faith is
hardest and least likely, then faith is most needed.

When tragedy strikes, we too will be trapped in a limited point of view. We,
like Job, will be tempted to blame God and to see him as the enemy. Job had
asked God poignantly, "Does it please you to oppress me, to spurn the work of
your hands?" (10:3). But the view behind the curtain in chapters 1 and 2
reveals that Job was being exalted, not spurned. God was letting his own
reputation ride on the response of a single human being.

At the very moment when Job felt most abandoned, at that moment God was
giving him personal, almost microscopic attention. God seemed absent to him;
in one sense, God had never been more present.

I hesitate to write this, because it is a hard truth, and one I do not want
to acknowledge. BUT JOB CONVINCES ME THAT GOD IS MORE INTERESTED IN OUR
FAITH THAN IN OUR PLEASURE. That statement does not fit with the cloying,
teddy-bear image of God often preached in evangelical churches. And I would
not reach such a conclusion if Job stood alone. But think back to how God
allowed some of his other favorite people to be treated.

Abraham had a test of faith surely as severe as Job's: he himself was called
upon to commit the tragedy, to sacrifice the son for whom he had waited many
decades. David? One need only read Psalm 22 for an insight into his
experience with the silence of God. The pattern is defined in a comment from
2 Chronicles about the favored King Hezekiah: "God left him to test him and
to know everything that was in his heart" (2 Chron. 32:31).

OF COSMIC SIGNIFICANCE

Why does God permit, even encourage, such tests of faith? Could it possibly
matter to God whether one man or one woman accepts or rejects him? Elihu,
the last and most mysterious of Job's comforters, voiced such a question
scornfully to Job:

If you sin, how does that affect him?
If your sins are many, what does that do to him?
If you are righteous, what do you give to him,
or what does he receive from your hand?
Your wickedness affects only a man like yourself,
and your righteousness only the sons of men.
(Job 35:6-8, NIV)

The opening chapters of Job, however, reveal that God had much at stake in
one man's wickedness or righteousness. Somehow, in a way the book only hints
at and does not explain, one person's faith made a difference. A tiny piece
of the history of the universe was at stake.

And that, to me, is the most powerful lesson from the Book of Job. Like Job,
we live in ignorance of what is going on "behind the curtains." Job teaches
us that the little history of mankind on this earth - and, astonishingly, my
own little history of faith - is enclosed within the drama of the large
history of the universe. We are foot soldiers in a spiritual battle of
cosmic significance.

For Job, the battleground of faith involved lost possessions, lost family
members, lost health. We may face a different struggle: a career failure, a
floundering marriage, sexual orientation, a face or body shape that turns
people off, not on. REGARDLESS, THE MESSAGE OF THIS BOOK CALLS FOR THE HARD-
EDGED FAITH THAT BELIEVES, AGAINST ALL ODDS, THAT ONE PERSON'S RESPONSE OF
OBEDIENCE DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

Job presents the astounding truth that our choices of faith matter not just
to us and our own destiny but, amazingly, to God himself and the universe he
rules. The Bible gives further hints, only hints, into this mystery:

* A statement by Jesus in Luke 10 that while his followers were out
announcing the kingdom of God, I saw Satan fall like lightning from
heaven" (10:18).

* An intriguing whisper in Romans 8 that we on earth will be agents for
nature: "The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be
revealed" (8:19).

* This phrase from Ephesians: "His intent was that now, through the church,
the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and
authorities in the heavenly realms (3:10).

* A simple assertion from the apostle Peter that "Even angels long to look
into these things" (1 Peter 1:12).

Such veiled hints echo THE CENTRAL MESSAGE OF JOB: HOW WE RESPOND MATTERS.
By hanging on to the thinnest thread of faith, Job won a crucial victory in
God's grand plan to redeem the earth. In his grace, God has given ordinary
men and women the dignity o participating in the redemption of the cosmos.

No one has expressed the pain and unfairness of this world any better than
Job. But behind those words of anguish lies a dimly shining truth: Job - and
you and I - can, through obedience, join the struggle to reverse that
suffering.

The pleasure that Job enjoyed in his old age is a mere foretaste of that
which is to come. Job's doubts were silenced by a vision of God answering
him from a whirlwind. Ours, too, will be silenced by revelation, when we see
him face to face.


SIDE ARTICLE: JOB'S FRIENDS
===========================

Does God send suffering as punishment for sins? Ask a hospitalized Christian
you know whether he or she has ever heard that suggestion.

I hear the most vigorous assertion of Job's friends - that God makes good men
prosper and evil men stumble - virtually every time I watch religious
television. I do not hear much about Job's kind of faith on those programs:
faith that believes God when nothing works the way it is supposed to. Rather
I hear about faith that finds its inevitable reward in the relief of
suffering.

At one point, in order to impress the other listeners with his religious
authority, Eliphaz appeals to a mysterious vision in which a "spirit"
restates Eliphaz's own line of argument. In the next chapter he hints that
Job should turn to God for a miracles (5:8-10).

In short, Job's friends emerge as self-righteous dogmatists who defend the
mysterious ways of God. They are properly scandalized by Job's outbursts.
The very idea of him questioning God, even demanding an audience with him! A
modern-day bumper sticker captures their condescending tone succinctly: "If
you feel far from God, guess who moved."