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The place of suffering

March  2, 2008  - Dale

What should Job have done the next time? After his terrible series of disasters and in the middle of his personal suffering, he asked God for a debate, or a hearing in a court of arbitration, or a face to face dialogue.

And then God spoke to him and asked Job what he knew about creating and managing the universe. The series of sustained questions left Job speechless – but he had seen God with his own eyes. He recognised God could do anything, so he stopped complaining.

Job was commended as a righteous man who feared God. His righteousness was shown in his determination to trust God no matter what. He believed it was God who had caused the trouble and only God who could fix it.

But having endured both the suffering and the dialogue, what would he do next time? What did he learn that might help him the next time such a thing happened?

The question is hypothetical for Job. But the lessons learned are understood by Habakkuk. And also by Jesus. The prayer in the garden of Gethsemane is prayed by someone who understands the book of Job. “If it is possible…  if not….”

Paul understood the idea as well. But Paul had some advantages over Job. He had seen what happened to Jesus. He had seen what happened when God’s servant was put to death. The creator of the universe had raised Jesus to new bodily life. What many had hoped would happen at the end of the age, had broken into the present age.

And Paul saw that a new power was at work which changed the way life was lived. Especially it changed the way suffering was experienced. It was not just that one could trust the Creator to do what he wanted to do. Now it was clear that his power was at work in suffering because it had been at work in the death of Jesus.

So Paul could see that what kept him alive in the midst of his sufferings and his escapes from death, was the powerful resurrection life of Jesus at work in him.  In fact Paul’s sufferings were a continuation of the sufferings of Christ. They were certainly not redemptive for Paul but they were part of God’s action in redeeming the Corinthian church. It was Christ who redeemed them, but it was Paul, in his sufferings, that continued to demonstrate the resurrection life of Christ to them.

Strange that in the very condition that shows our mortality we should experience a foretaste of the resurrection life. In a way exactly the right place.

Dale

Comments

You might be interested in this online commentary "Putting God on Trial: The Biblical Book of Job" (http://www.bookofjob.org) as supplementary or background material for your study of the Book of Job. It is not a sin to question God, to demand answers from God. There is a time and a place for such things. It is written by a Canadian criminal defense lawyer, now a Crown prosecutor, and it explores the legal and moral dynamics of the Book of Job with particular emphasis on the distinction between causal responsibility and moral blameworthiness embedded in Job’s Oath of Innocence. It is highly praised by Job scholars (Clines, Janzen, Habel) and the Review of Biblical Literature, all of whose reviews are on the website. The author is an evangelical Christian, denominationally Anglican. He is also the Canadian Director for the Mortimer J. Adler Centre for the Study of the Great Ideas, a Chicago-based think tank.

Posted by Robert Sutherland on Sunday, June 8, 2008 at 02:20:57

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