all saints blog                                    Bible    Church    Christian life    Theory    World     Healing     Answers      Books

Who knows?

August 26, 2007

Trouble. Suffering. Answers require Questions. Solutions need Problems. First define the trouble then look for the answer. Problems and Questions are one of the ways to make sense of our troubles.

Sometimes the Answer comes from experience, precedent, what has been observed before. Sometimes it comes from ideology, theory, dogma that prescribes how a thing should work. And sometimes it comes from tradition, what others have always said in the past.

All of these methods often produce good answers or solutions. Sometimes not. But whether they do or not depends also on how the Question is understood. Or how well the question is understood. When it comes to giving advice (whether over a coffee or for fee) it helps if we know what the matter is.

Job understood this. His friends were full of advice, but misunderstood the problem. Which is very surprising because they spoke on the basis of experience, tradition and  theology. Their failure exposes two problems: We may not have enough knowledge or experience to understand all of the problems, and we may not know enough to be able to provide all the answers.

A more empirical approach may produce a better answer if to seeks to understand more about the problem first. It may not of course. Christians are aware of a problem like Job’s friends had. We know we have all the answers in principle, it is just a matter of applying the right principle to the right problem.

But the book of Job makes clear that while we do in fact know a great deal, we do not know everything, and therefore sometimes we do not know enough by a long shot either to understand the problem or to know what the solution might be.

It also exposes a fallacy that help is best given on the basis of Questions and Problems. Some people have been drawn to the book of Job because they hope to find in it solutions to the problem of suffering. If anything the book of Job makes the questions more complex. Even Job’s agonising questions to God don’t get a direct answer.

Instead the book points us in another direction. Towards the one who actually does know everything. And so it points us away from having to know everything ourselves. To know Someone and to be known is fundamentally a better answer than to know all the questions and all the answers.

Dale

Comments

Post a comment

Comments are submitted on the understanding that they may be edited. Comments that are off topic, offensive or contain errors of fact will be rejected. All posts are moderated. The *necessary fields are for verification - not for publication. Include your screen name in your Comment.