ULDAH MINISTRY

No,80　　JUNE. 2002

【SOLUTION TO SUFFERING】

　 In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. …"Does Job fear God for nothing?" Satan replied. …"But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face." The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger." Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD. …
At this, Job …said: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised." In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing. … When Job's three friends, …heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathise with him and comfort him. …Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No-one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was. After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. …
JOB chs. 1~3.

ELIPHAZ (chs. 4~5, 15, 22.) 　
Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can a man be more pure than his Maker? If God places no trust in his servants, if he charges his angels with error, how much more those who live in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, …! Blessed is the man whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty. For he wounds, … but his hands also heal. From six calamities he will rescue you; in seven no harm will befall you. …Can a man be of benefit to God? Can even a wise man benefit him? What pleasure would it give the Almighty if you were righteous? What would be gain if your ways were blameless? ...Submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way prosperity will come to you. Accept instruction from his mouth and lay up his words in your heart. If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored; …
BILDAD (chs. 8, 18, 25.)
Does God pervert justice? Does the Almighty pervert what is right? When your children sinned against him, he gave them over to the penalty of their sin. But if you will look to God and plead with the Almighty, …he will …restore you to your rightful place. …Surely God does not reject a blameless man or strengthen the hands of evildoers. He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy. … Dominion and awe belong to God; he establishes order in the heights of heaven. Can his forces be numbered? Upon whom does his light not rise? …
ZOPHAR (chs. 11, 20.) Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than the heavens -what can you do? They are deeper than the depths of the grave- what can you know? Their measure is longer than the earth and wider than sea. … Surely you know how it has been from of old, even since man was placed on the earth, that the mirth of the wicked is brief, the joy of the godless lasts but a moment. Though his pride reaches to the heavens and his head touches the clouds, he will perish for ever, like his own dung; … Such is the fate God allots the wicked, the heritage appointed for them by God.
ELIHU (chs. 32~37.) Why do you complain to him that he answers none of man's words? For God does speak -now one way, now another- though man may not perceive it. …God does all these things to a man -twice, even three times- to turn back his soul from the pit, that the light of life may shine on him. Pay attention, Job, and listen to me; be silent, and I will speak. …Far be it from God to do evil, from the Almighty to do wrong. He repays a man for what he has done; he brings upon him what his conduct deserves. … Look up at the heavens and see; gaze at the clouds so high above you. If you sin, how does that affect him? If your sins are many, what does that do to him? …But those who suffer he delivers in their suffering; he speaks to them in their affliction. … Listen to this, Job; stop and consider God's wonders. Do you know … those wonders of him who is perfect in knowledge? …
The book of Job deals with a puzzling theme: Why does man suffer if God is in control? Therefore, it is usually read as a good text exemplifying inexplicable sufferings, especially emphasising Job's righteousness and faith in contrast with his friends' unsympathetic, dogmatic approaches to others' plight. This kind of interpretation is reasonably grounded in God's own evaluation of Job as blameless, upright and God-fearing and his three friends; Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar as folly and untrue. As God unsparingly rebuked these three for their condemnation of Job's self-righteousness at the end of the story, we tend to flatly discredit their messages. However, a careful examination of their words may bring us to realise that what they did actually convey in their messages was none other than a true and beautiful description of God. Therefore, it is probably reasonable to say that they spoke to Job with the full intention of helping him realise his own situation from God's point of view but used the wrong approach. Unwittingly, they had misrepresented God's omnipotent and omniscient nature as a rod of condemnation. If Job had had to learn the folly of self-justification and thus, correct knowledge of God through all his suffering, likewise, his friends had to learn that none of them was in a rightful position to sit in judgment over other humans because of man's utter inadequacy apart from God's approval. Accordingly, the book of Job might be read from several different angles. One of them teaches how Job has been trained to recognise God's voice from other human agents and in the end, how he was led to correctly acknowledge Him through suffering. The book will serve as a guide book of man's spiritual growth by overcoming difficulties by the Word of God spoken by others and finally by God Himself.
When God allowed Satan to challenge God's righteous servant Job by various means, Job upheld his worship of God and never sinned by charging Him with wrongdoing. However, as the duration of unbearable suffering lengthened Job succumbed to a natural human reaction; becoming deeply depressed and impatient. When he could not find reasons for his very situation that totally betrayed his concept of God as faithful, merciful and unsparing to grant His righteous prosperity and protection, Job broke the seven-day silence and started complaining bitterly, first, by cursing the day of his birth. Job was trapped by Satan's strategy; if man was robbed of the very things that he had regarded as measurements of God's approval and blessings it would not be long before he was sure to curse God to His face. It was a time of crisis for Job when what he had developed in his life of faith in God as assurance and security started crumbling helplessly to nothing. What was happening to him simply did not match up to any of his concept of God, which he used to believe without question, and now only despair remained. His complex feeling of confusion, disturbance, fear and loss of confidence found expression in the exclamation of the unending why-s: "Why is light given to those in misery and life to the bitter of soul, to those who long for death that does not come, …Why is life given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God had hedged in? For sighing comes to me instead of food; my groans pour out like water. What I feared has come upon me; what I feared has happened to me. I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil."(Job 3:20~26) Fear aroused further fear. To put it another way, when he came to be unable to understand what was going on, Job was naturally inclined to dread one consequence after another and thus, was on the verge of plunging into a vicious circle of back-sliding from God.
Empathising Job's horrible plight that was really beyond one's imagination, Job's three friends could not do anything but just loudly weep, tear their robes, sprinkle dust on their hands with great grief and quietly sit with Job until Job himself made a move. It was triggered by Job's own depressive exclamation of curse, that they at last broke silence and launched into delivering God's message. God sometimes sends a human agent who can calmly see the situation of the suffering in God's perspective to rescue them from a seemingly bottomless pit because when one is so overwhelmed by pain, sorrow, affliction, turmoil, and turbulence he or she cannot usually recognise God's revelation or signs or even His presence appropriately.
The first friend sent by God was Eliphaz, a kind and gentle instructor, through whom Job would have enlarged his knowledge of God. But Job, who was in such deep agony, closed his ears from his message. He had too small a space of mind to accept God's temporal but harsh discipline and therefore, it was totally impossible for him to see it as a process of eventually complete restoration. However, Eliphaz who gently started with a deliverance of divine revelation, turned out to be an accuser by alleging Job as guilty of projected sins, when he assumed that the reasons why the snares were lingering so long and why sudden peril terrified him must solely lie in his hidden sin (Job 22:6~10). If Eliphaz had been rebuked by God, this projected condemnation upon Job would have been its cause. His great error might have been produced as a result of emotional, theoretical and personal deductions but not by divine revelation. Therefore, if Job did not regard Eliphaz' whole message as of divine origin, it would have been a logical and justifiable reaction.
The next was Bildad, an unsympathetic traditionalist. Bildad, who might have hurt Job severely by charging that his sons for whom Job had daily interceded perished because of their transgressions(Job 1:4~5, 8:4), had taken a stance of belief that all suffering and death were the result of personal sin. Although it is true that the wages of sin is death, the book of Job, on the other hand, appeals that even the righteous does suffer at times not necessarily as a result of sin. Yet in the midst of his harsh words, Bildad conveyed God's firm vindication of Job as blameless, despite his times of current testing and trial. Bildad, emphasising the justice of God exactly as Job did, declared God's transcendent sovereignty over all creation.
The third was Zophar, a narrow dogmatist, who focused on God's wisdom, did not even hesitate to use rebuking words against Job. Because of his own concept of God as judgmental all his message was coloured by this personal conviction. Such a presupposition that Job's suffering was God's punishment or judgment on his sin, put Zophar in a very biased and judgmental stead, unqualified to assess Job's condition. He did not seem to understand that God might use suffering, difficulty, endurance and privation to build up and mould His servants as a better vessel of God so that all things work together for their good eventually.
Job's friends' messages, mixed with the true description of God and their accusation against Job's constant self-righteous claim, made Job more and more confused than comforted despite their genuine intention to help him. Job, who had from the beginning sought God alone to speak to him with answer but had lost him in confusion, completely shut his heart and ears to his friends' speeches, theoretically discrediting the idea that God could speak to him through another agent. Therefore, Job, rejecting God's message in other imperfect humans and also mutual dialogue with them simply repeated his one-sided petition towards God until His Word overpowered his self-centred demands.
The fourth was Elihu, a young zealous prophet full of God's Word. His bombarding message about God's unquestionable sovereignty and His unfailing goodness overwhelmed Job, or more precisely, Elihu's authoritative speech never allowed Job to interrupt with his repeated plea. Eventually, Job started learning how to listen to God's Word intently and through other human agents. Subsequently, when God started speaking to Job directly, revealing His overwhelming presence and when Job actively responded to Him with repentance, the times of testing and refining were over and Job was healed completely, yet accompanied with multiplied both material, spiritual blessings. Job was at last led to look away from his own problem, petition and self-justification to God's far surpassing goodness. A deliverance from his small secluded world took place on him for the first time in his life only through the train of unexplainable sufferings from man's view point.
The book of Job does not actually give any concrete answer to our most interesting question: Why are there sufferings? Why does healing or deliverance not take place quickly as we desire despite prayer, fasting and petition? Why does it occur to a believer and not a non- believing person? However, one thing that is clear is the fact that Job, a sufferer was healed when he intently listened to the life-giving Word of God and correctly acknowledged Him. To put it differently, Job had to suffer until he could come to recognise God as He is, sovereign, righteous, just, caring, loving, good and so on in his clear spiritual eyes beyond his own presenting problem, suffering and self-centred interest. It means that if Job had focussed on himself and not tuned in his heart to God Himself he could not have properly heard Him and thus, he would carelessly have continued to dismiss His message and signs to be delivered. Therefore, it can be concluded that God allows Satan to cause sufferings upon His servants so that they will correctly acknowledge Him to a more advanced degree and through this learning and disciplining experience be transformed into God's true vessels, a likeness of Christ Jesus. Indeed, Job, though he was upright and pious, did not know how to listen to God and thus learned indispensable lessons of how to be directly in tune with God even through unexpected and unwelcome sufferings. Eventually, he was further moulded into God's desirable vessel. Likewise, Christians will not be completely immune to difficulty, plight, illness and various harm in this imperfect world where Satan is prowling around day and night to devour someone. However, whatever happens to us, we have full assurance that the Lord is always with us in and through our difficulty and suffering to help and support us.