Sackcloth and Ashes: Travels with Job (1)

He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21 NASB

Taken away – The story of Job is too easy. I don’t mean to suggest that it isn’t tragic or full of struggle. What I mean is that we don’t really appreciate its personal depth. We read through the book as though it were an O’Henry short story or a Cecil B. DeMille screenplay. It’s just too much over the edge for us. Our imaginations can’t fathom multiple messengers of doom showing up one after another with terrible news. We have Social Security, life insurance, Medicare, and government entitlements. We’re protected. Even after disasters, we’ve got FEMA. We don’t connect to the conversations of Job’s friends in a world where Christianity preaches blessings and love while enthroning celebrity success and status. We don’t understand the torment of the soul because we can read the entire account in less than two hours. The story is much more like watching a television drama without the commercials. We know the good guys will win. It’s another version of tragedy followed by heroic resolve resulting in victorious restitution. We’ve seen it so many times in the movies that we’re immune to its real impact. We live at the top of the human food chain. We don’t know Rwanda, Kosovo or Somalia or a hundred other hellholes in the world where no one cares and no one comes to help. The story of Job is too easy because it is so removed from life as we know it. It is just a story.

My guess is that most of us know nothing about the Job saga except the first few verses and the last paragraph. Job had everything and was a good man. Satan took it all away and Job suffered. God restored him with even more than before. That’s the kind of Job story we want to hear. It’s a Biblical fairy tale. An innocent victim meets terrible tragedy but is rescued by a benevolent God resulting in opulent abundance. We might wonder for just a moment why God seems so fickle and uncaring at the beginning, but since Job wins in the end, we withhold our complaint.

Until it becomes real. Until the bad news arrives at our doorstep. Then Job’s story takes on a different perspective. Then Job invites me to a banquet of sackcloth and ashes.

Why is the story of Job even in the Bible? It doesn’t seem to offer much comfort. After all, it’s about undeserved tragedy. I have often wondered if God’s restoration could possibly mitigate the sorrow of losing all your children. I’m quite sure that is a pain I would carry to the grave, even if I had a new family and a new fortune. Job’s story certainly doesn’t seem to offer any really acceptable answers. What kind of rationale is it for God to say, “I’m God. You’re not. Don’t question me”? It’s a slap in the face of the human idea of fairness without any apologies. It’s an insult to a man who stands before his children’s graves. So what if He’s God. Don’t I still deserve some recognition?

And then there are Job’s friends. They seem so well intentioned. They talk like a lot of friends that I have known. “What do you mean you’re innocent? Look how you’re being treated. God doesn’t bring havoc and misery on the righteous. You must have done something wrong. Stop denying it!” I’ve heard that before. And I’ve heard the corollary preached from one pulpit after another: Be good, and God will bless you. Sin, and God will punish you. It’s the Santa Claus god keeping track of your good and bad deeds and meting out the consequences. That’s a god we can understand. That makes sense. But a God who allows the righteous to suffer and forgives evil sinners? No, that can’t be right!

Job just doesn’t satisfy. Until Job’s story becomes my story.

There are a lot of theological discussions about Job. There are plenty of commentaries and sermons and lectures about the texts. But I wonder if they are all sort of beside the point. Maybe Job’s story is intentionally incomprehensible until we step into Job’s shoes. Maybe the only reason Job is there is to give us a place to go when life turns into something we just can’t get our minds around. Maybe Job is just an introduction to our primal cry when we are swallowed up in catastrophe. Then Job is for everyone who has ever suffered. Then I lay aside all the twisting theological puzzles and simply say, “God, I don’t get it. Life sucks. I need help. Why have You done this?” Maybe Job is just emotional theology.

We need to take Job in longer doses, say a year or two at a time. We need to see that Job is not about a two-hour documentary. Job is about the day-after-day-slow-bleeding-while-life-just-keeps-sliding-down-into-the-pit kind of living. Job is for people who have spent some real time with loss and pain. Job is for the man or woman who has heard the howling silence.

After awhile, we discover a pattern in the process of long-term suffering. It goes something like this:

Catastrophe

Acceptance

Heroism

Resolve

Belief

Erosion

Questioning

Silence

Despair

Rebuilding

Faith

Trust

Acceptance

Contentment

This pattern does not happen in an hour. This takes a long time. And the longer it takes, the deeper the questions become. If you want to reach the end—contentment—then you must be willing to travel a road that goes beyond the horizon—a road that leads through the valley of the shadow of death. Job is really a story about the grave, in unexpected stages. With that in mind, it’s worth serious investigation.

Catastrophe

The news arrives. Accident. Illness. Injury. Victim. Disaster. A car comes out of nowhere and you end up in a wheel chair. The doctor says, “It’s cancer.” The attorney tells you the embezzler took it all and the IRS still wants its money. Someone shoots your son in a drive by. A hurricane destroys your home and your crops. Terrorists explode a bomb in the mall and your family disappears in the rubble. Every day the news presents us the grist of the Job-mill. Life is a nightmare. All of our human efforts at protection of people and property are only finite. There is no such thing as real security in this world.

When Job visits our own lives, the shocking reality of our vulnerability is uncovered. The myth is shattered. We are not in control. We are at risk. Life is not about eternal safety. It is about faithful response. This is the first emotion of the Job saga. “The Lord gives. The Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” When life mounts a frontal attack and slams us with the fist of finitude, Job points the way. I came here with nothing. I leave here with nothing. What I have in the meanwhile is all on loan. And every loan can be recalled. The first stage is a deep reality check. What made me think I had control in the first place?

Most of us can get past the arrival of the bad news. Most, but not all. Sometimes the news just derails us forever. We are unable to accept the “nothing to nothing” truth about living. Our sense of fairness clouds our perception of reality and we spend the rest of our waiting time angry or depressed or both. We can’t pick up and go on. It’s not the way we thought things were supposed to be. We actually believe we deserve better. We have forgotten that in a totally random universe (if you don’t believe in God), anything can happen. Random means “doesn’t have to have a reason.” And if you don’t like a universe without God, then try the Biblical view where Qohelet says, “Man does not know whether it will be love or hatred; anything awaits him.” Pretty much the same conclusion. The first step is the same for one reason. We need the “life’s supposed to be fair” nonsense kicked out of us.

When we get stuck at the beginning of this road, life becomes a bitter experience. God becomes an unfaithful accomplice. We decide to hold Him accountable for our emotional immaturity and a long battle ensues. We live on the tragic edge, withholding growth as petulant recompense for sorrow. The longer we stay here, the more we succumb to a god of our own design, one who would never have done what was done. In the end, suffering becomes a familiar and comfortable choice to avoid confronting the God Who is. But there is no life in this option. The universe is not interested in our definition of fair. The universe does not bend to our notion of justice and purpose. To hold God accountable for what we consider appropriate property management is to misunderstand completely the difference between Creator and created. Job does not make this mistake. Job sees that there is no guarantee for our right-to-use what God places in our hands. God gives and, because He is Creator and Giver, He can take away. His decisions do not diminish His authority nor impugn His sovereignty. And they do not make Him evil. Lesson Number One: I am not God.

Confronted with tragedy, some of us take the heroic option. Human beings have an incredible capacity for heroic action in the midst of pain. Disasters of natural or human origin are a call to arms. Our deepest sympathies and greatest virtues flow to the surface and reach out to others. Even when the catastrophe is quite personal, we suddenly discover wellsprings of emotional reserve and heroic resolve. Incredible achievements often result. But it doesn’t last. Life is entropic. It slips back toward the valley. Human beings are not designed to permanently occupy the mountaintops in that adrenaline-laced rarified air of the hero. Human beings can climb great peaks but they can only live and grow in the shadowed valleys. They must come down to survive.

Job stands at the side of the mountain trail and points down toward the valley. Acceptance is the beginning of truth. Denial is the pathway to despair. God restructured the fallen universe so that pain has purpose. It might not always seem redemptive. It might not always seem rational. But pain always moves us toward confrontation with divinity. It is precisely the unreasonableness of pain that brings God into focus. Pain confronts us with our finitude, our inability to control the world. We discover that we are thrown into circumstances that are quite beyond us. So pain pushes back the curtain of this world and demands that we stare into the world beyond the human horizon.

Next comes acceptance.

Tomorrow.

Topical Index: Job 1:21, taken away, catastrophe