Apparently meaningless suffering exists in the world. The Problem of Evil is the OLDEST and still most (and really only) powerful argument against the existence of a Good God worth loving. Epicurus’ original take on it goes like this:
- Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent
- Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent
- Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?
The Book of Job – likely the oldest book in the Bible (ca. 2000 B.C.) – is itself the oldest (far older than Epicurus’ argument above), most eloquent, powerful and poetic solution to the Problem of Evil from a faith perspective. And 4000 years later it still is outraging people.
The story begins: Job was the most righteous man on earth, with great material success to go with it. Satan challenges God to let him strike all his worldly blessings and then see what a fair-weather-friend even the greatest man on earth is to God. Disaster ensues for Job. He fairs well through the first half of the contest with Satan, keeping faith even after all his wealth and family is destroyed. But when his body is wrecked, he finally sinks into misery and self-pity, just like Satan had said he would. Job is then “supported” by three friends who lament with him, but who are utterly unhelpful when they take turns basically accusing him that he “must have done something wrong”.
In fact, the answers that Job’s friends suggest are the exact same two types of pat, just-so answers as to why suffering exists:
- The Moralist says: you caused it yourself somehow and need to do better for God to stop punishing you, the country, humanity etc
- The Cynic says: Life is a crap shoot, God is out to lunch, incapable or detached, or doesn’t even exist, so accept that all life is just circling the drain until oblivion fades us all to black. (But until then…weeeee!)
Both of these answers are totally unhelpful, though they do accomplish one key thing: they keep US in control. There’s no mystery to suffering in these two views. Humans know the answer (whether believing or atheist). It’s an easy formula that a pre-teen intellect and moral sense can apprehend.
The book of Job says something different: hold onto mystery, do not try to get an answer, and stay in a love relationship with a God that you can’t control. And not only do you not attempt to find an answer, you must EMBRACE not having an answer. The book of Job treats the problem of suffering with the depth and complexity and conflicting feelings that it deserves. Other faiths focus on the simplistic pat answer #1 above. Atheists speak incoherence by simultaneously affirming that God and Purpose are illusions but that objective moral standards can still somehow exist, while also doing absolutely nothing to assuage the psychological and emotional impact of suffering and evil.
Satan challenges God in the story by asserting that His people are just pet mammals who merely respond to reward & punishment, and that they only love God when he grants the former and withholds the latter. Take away Job’s blessings, Satan tells God, and you’ll see true human nature soon enough.
Let’s give the devil his due here. Satan put his finger smack onto one of the big problems with the whole human race:
Our selfish lack of constant and unconditional love for anyone.
Any attractive woman has experienced a man’s initial kindness evaporate as soon as he realizes that she won’t sleep with him. Or in business – especially in centers like NYC or LA where this is rampant – people come on as friends but as soon as they realize that they won’t get what they want from you, they ghost you. You weren’t being befriended. You were being “networked”.
Satan is saying to God: “gimme a shot at Job and I’ll prove that NO ONE really loves you” (since exposing the “most righteous man on earth” – Job – would prove a capital case). “No one truly wants a love relationship with you – they want a transactional relationship with you for what they can gain.”
So God allowed Job’s torment. And every emotion and thought and lament and possible viewpoint on the “why” of the tragedy was voiced by the characters. It’s a stunning masterpiece.
And in the end, in God’s speech rebuking Job’s initial proud self-righteousness, God never tells Job about the test that he allowed Satan to conduct. He didn’t say “well, I know this has been hard for you, Job – but I needed to let Satan be proven wrong, for posterity’s sake. And by the way, your example of eventual faith, love and humility in the face of mysterious suffering will be the inspiration for billions of others until the end of time. This is totally going to be in the Bible!”
He didn’t explain himself. He doesn’t need to. He’s God, we’re humans. Hubris and Pride is waiting just under the surface of our souls at all times, to rage against God at the hint of any real suffering..
But Job was a real person, and he suffered, was restored, and never knew the reason why. If he had known, he would have been overjoyed. But that would defeat the purpose, which is to show that God is the one true thing to love in your life that will never and can never be taken away from you.
Many religious people say: “If only God would show me why I am suffering, then I could bear it.”
No! You have no love then! You want God for what He can do for you in the end. And you’ll love him through suffering only if He shows you why you’re suffering. A quid pro quo.
Also – this Job story isn’t the only time that Satan has said “he doesn’t really love you” to someone in the Bible. He said it to God about Job here in this story, and he said it also to Eve in the Garden of Eden, but about God. In the Garden, when Eve says basically “God says we shouldn’t eat of the tree because God loves us, says we will die if we eat of it.” Satan comes to us and says “you’ve got to be kidding. What does love have to do with it? He’s using you, to keep you dumb and un-self-aware. That tree is perfectly good to eat from“.
When Satan said bad things to God about us (in the case of Job) – even though there was some truth in them – God didn’t accept them.
But when Satan said bad things to us about God – and there was no truth in them- we believed them.
The lie of Satan is: if you give yourself wholly and utterly to God, and totally trust Him – he’ll crush you.
This sank into the hearts of our parents (Adam and Eve), and it has sunk into the heart of every human being since.
It torments me still.
We still crave proof from God that he loves us, even through suffering. But how do we get that if we can’t know the reason why we suffer in any given circumstance?
I’ll tell you how: thousands of years after Job, Satan assaulted another innocent sufferer, who died naked, crying out “why, why am I suffering?“, and never got an answer. It was Jesus Christ.
When Job suffered, he was only relatively innocent. And he was never actually abandoned by God. But Jesus was the true Job, the only absolutely innocent sufferer.
Jesus was the only human in history to whom God the Father said: “if you obey me fully, I’ll crush you to powder and send you to hell.” God never said this to any other human being, ever. Jesus is the only person to serve God truly for no gain.
Why did Jesus do it? For us.
That’s the proof for all you Jobs out there that unconditional love exists. Look at the ultimate sufferer, the most innocent person – God in human form – who gained nothing from His suffering, and who died only because He loved us, and was both capable of and willing to pay the penalty for our sins and defeat death. He loved us for who we are in ourselves.
So you go love Him for who He is in Himself.
Several ideas and terms in this blog were borrowed from Tim Keller’s sermon on Questions of Suffering
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