Christopher Ash on Job, the Christian Believer and Suffering

Loads of things happening requiring much sorting out.

Thankful for good food (prepared and cooked by other people) and a few hours of laughter.

Thankful also for Christopher Ash speaking on the Book of Job:

Does Jesus want you to be rich, healthy, successful and powerful? It is easy to mock the prosperity gospel but some parts of the Bible appear to agree with its teachings (eg. Proverbs 3:1-10).

If the world was well-run, shouldn't the godly be healthy and wealthy, and the ungodly die in great pain? Job in Job 21 says that if there's a prosperity gospel, it sure isn't working in this world because the wicked are having a great time in their evil lives.

Suffering
Job 1:1-5
We are told by God that Job is "blameless". Not that he was sinless but that he had integrity – he was the same inside and out. He feared God and honoured and trusted God. He was a man whose life was shaped by God. Blameless Job was wealthy, healthy, happy and he had a nice family. Just what you'd expect in a well-run world.

We know the story. Satan asks for terrible permission to afflict Job and God grants it. Job is made bankrupt, his children die and his own health is destroyed. But note: this happens to him because he is a blameless believer.

So just how does God treat his friends? And is God worthy to be God? The second question is the nub of Satan's underlying question in the conversation between God and Satan in Job 1:6-12 and Job 2:1-7a: oh God, Job a real believer? No, he's a prosperity gospel believer. He's in it because of what he can get out of it. Take everything away from him, God, and you will see what he really is. No one worships you because you're God. Oh no, they're only in it for the money or health.

Job 2:11ff
So God gives Satan terrible permission to take this all away from Job, and Job's lament is dark and depressing. No one would preach this if they wanted a happy clappy church. (Here Chris rehashed the story of William Cowper and Wilfred Owen.) There's a kind of superficial kind of Christianity that has Jesus singing "It's a happy day" at the tomb of Lazurus or "With Jesus in the boat we can smile at the storm". Let's grapple with reality. God's people do suffer. And Job is suffering not because he is sinless but he has not sinned that he hasn't repented. He has done nothing wrong in God's eyes.

Job 2:11-13
Suffering can isolate us. Job's comforters are the wisdom of the world come to comfort him. Their silence wasn't much good. It wasn't a silence of sympathy but a bankruptcy – they had nothing to say. Plus this was the sort of thing people would do when someone had already died (see Genesis 50:10 and 1 Samuel 31:13).

Suffering, even trivial suffering, isolates. What more deep suffering. The believer can only look back and wish that he'd never been conceived or born (Job 3:3-10). Deep darkness speaks of the darkness on the cross, the Egyptian plague, the narrative about Judas going out to betray Jesus "and it was night".

Job wants to put life in reverse and wishes it never happened. He wishes he'd died at birth, then he would be at peace and at rest. Job is so very tired. Prisoners never forget the voice of the prisonmaster or slaves of the slavedriver. They are scarred for life, recurring dreams of horror. Job feels that kind of anguish. Why is life given to those in misery?

Job 3:20-26
The believer cannot avoid God. We could import the gospel – "oh it was alright in the end because they lived happily ever after and Jesus came" but that does not grapple with reality. For the believer, the best is not in the past but is yet to be. Still, believers do face times like C. S. Lewis did when it seems as if you are happy and you turn to God, there is an open door. But when you are desperate and full of grief, you turn to God and the door is shut. They can read Bible verses but they cannot sense the presence of God.

Job knows that his life has been given. He doesn't know why. He knows there is a hedge around him that protects him from death and keeps him suspended in a life (of misery) and he knows that God has done it. It is God whom he has to deal with in his suffering.

So Job sits in desolation and grief. Thousands of years later,there was one with 3 friends, but they did not share his grief. That man prayed alone in a darkness deeper than Job's, a darkness never before seen or seen since. On the cross, he gave a cry of dereliction "Why have you forsaken me?" and it seemed that he could not see the future. But he could cross the abyss and plunge into deepest hell. The objective truth is that the Christian believer who feels utter darkness has one who walks with him/her who has been through deeper darkness. This is so much better than the prosperity gospel. Don't settle for shallow teaching.

Suffering is what we can expect in the Christian life. God is kind to warn us of this in his word.

Two surprising marks of a real believer
How can you tell a real believer?

The little conversation between God and Satan sounds like a casual bet. And then down here on earth, Job is bankrupted, loses his children and his health. We think our happiness and fulfillment is important but it is more important that God is glorified regardless (1 Peter 1:6-7, 1 Peter 5:8).

The story of Job is not merely about Job but a foreshadowing of Christ and of the normal Christian life. We read Job not as a spectator but as what will happen to us. Satan is prowling and waiting to attack and perhaps God will let him.

Every church is a mix of people who are and aren't Christian. Some preachers and pastors aren't. Outward form means nothing. How you can tell a real believer is when the difficulties come and they choose a non-Christian boyfriend or girlfriend, when success or health or prosperity is taken away, when precious relationships are taken away.

God tells us what he thinks of the comforters and their speeches (Job 42:7ff). The comforters are essentially wrong even though they seem right. The comfortors' common error is their tidy minds. They think:
(1) God is almighty – everyone agrees with that.
(2) God is just – everyone agrees with that.
(3) Therefore, God must punish wickedness and reward faith and virtue and he must do it pretty soon.
(4) Therefore if I am experiencing suffering, I must be wicked! This is alarmingly close to the theology of many churches.

So how can we tell a real believer? For some, it is that they say that Jesus is Lord or that they love other Christians.

But surprisingly, we see from Job that (1) the believer experiences the problem of pain in a way that the unbeliever shouldn't.

Job 6:2-4
God is the archer and he's using me as target practice. And he's shooting poisoned arrows. What causes Job the most grief? Is it his bankruptcy? Is it losing his children? Or losing his health? It is that he thinks that God has done this to him.

Job 7:17-21
This reminds us of Psalm 8 but here Job is asking why God is picking on him. The pain is that God has done it.

Job 9:21-24
Job claims that he is "blameless" and we might think that he's being stuck-up and self-righteous but God tells us that he's being honest. So is God a dishonest judge? Does he say "hahaha they thought they were trusting me but now I'm having fun at their expense!"? These are impeachment accusations. Very serious stuff.

Job's pain is that God is acting like this. This is the problem of pain. Non-believers say that they can't believe because of all the suffering in the world. But we need to ask them why it troubles them. It is a problem for Christians not a problem for non-Christians. It is a mark of a believer to struggle with this. The comforters are not troubled by the problem of pain. They believe in karma. It is mark of the believer to feel the pain of this unfair world.

(2) The believer is marked by a passionate longing to see God stepping in.

Job 23:2-10
Job longs for the God who seems to hate him. He knows that his suffering is not the end of it. It's like when a girl shouts to a boy "I hate you, I hate you" but actually means "I love you but I want you to prove that you're not the monster you appear to be". At the deepest level, Job longs for God and wants this resolved.

Job 5:1
Eliphaz taunts Job and asks him to give up calling on God but to listen to the comforters instead.

Job 9:3-21a
Job is longing to stand before God but can't take him on.

Job 9:32-35
It is not a fair contest, not a level playing field. If only there was a mediator or referee. But there can't be because God is God.

Job 14:13-17
Job is longing to be dead so that God will get over his anger. And then his PA can make Job an appointment to see God. He has been longing to talk to him.

Job 13:15
Job must trust in God. There is no higher authority.

God and unanswered questions
Job 28
But God doesn't answer why Job is still alive or why life is given to people who have to go through such deep darkness.

Where can wisdom be found? It is inaccessible, and it is priceless. You can pile up the wealth of a wonderful world and won't even get near it. It is hidden from everyone even humans. No one has seen it, no one can find it. Job is right to look for it but he won't find it.

Only God understands. He controls the most "random" and "chaotic" things. He's the source of everything.

But God tells us the wisdom that humans can have: it is not understanding the architecture of the universe but in fearing the architect – a fear of the LORD. An obedience of faith, trusting and submitting to and loving God. Knowledge puffs up. Stop trying to find out why but walk with he who knows why and trust him. (Colossians 2:2-3: all the architecture of the universe is in Christ.)

This is a humbling chapter. God knows the way to wisdom and he knows all the answers. He may not tell us everything but we can be wise without knowing all answers.

Job 40
Think of the most evil thing on earth and the Behemoth and Leviathan laugh at it. Jesus calls their master, Satan, the ruler of this world and he has been savaging the Jobs of this world.

The point here is not that the Leviathan is scary but that he is God's creature. God is more powerful than that. He has power over the Leviathan and death (and it is through death that he had power over death (Hebrews)). Only in the New Testament that we learn that the reason these monsters have power is that we have given them power through sin. We have a strong sense of the overwhelming power of evil but we can't overcome it. But they are God's creatures and he has them on leash (albeit a rather long leash).

In the darkness, we can entrust ourselves to the one who has them on leash. In the darkness, we must remember the sovereign faithfulness of God. God is God and we are not. Previously, Job knew true doctrine but now he sees God – not in a mystical sense but that he understands God more deeply. This then is the Christian experience – to grasp truths more deeply than before.

Cyprien Katsaris, Liszt's Thing About Funerals and Death, and the Mystery of Job's Suffering

While there was tussling over where a certain warm body will be come Sunday, I ran like a robber's dog out of the office and scored a cheap-seat at the evening's Singapore International Piano Festival.

(The bad joke about the Singapore International Piano Festival 2007 is that when someone asked what'd happen if last-minute cheapseat tix to Cyprien Katsaris' gig weren't be had, the reply was that I'd be Liszt-less.)

Because this is the generation of the ipod and of life having a soundtrack, my earworm set Mike Reeves' latenight tasty taster of Job to the amazing Cyprien's repertoire.

(The first amazing thing about The Amazing Cyprien is his wonderful list of late Liszt, past long-maned showmanship and into contemplation of suffering, death and redemption:
LISZT, Trauervorspiel und Trauermarsch
LISZT, Nuages gris
LISZT, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 5 (Héroïde-élégiaque)
LISZT-KATSARIS, Czárdás obstiné
LISZT, Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude
LISZT, Am Grabe Richard Wagners (I hope he wasn't spitting on it)
WAGNER-LISZT, Isoldes Liebestod

(The other crowd-pleasing stocking stuffers were:
SCHUBERT-LISZT, Three Song Transcriptions: Ständchen - Der Müller und der Bach - Ave Maria
CHOPIN, Waltz in A minor, Op. 34 No. 2
CHOPIN, Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9 No. 2
CHOPIN, Berceuse in D-flat major Op. 57
CHOPIN, Fantaisie Imprompet Op. 66
BACH-SILOTI, Prelude in B minor
BACH-KATSARIS, Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV565))

(The more amazing thing about The Amazing Cyprien is that he can keep track of all ten digits in the midst of noodling up and down the ebonies and ivories and leapfrogging and reverse leapfrogging and making sounds like there are actually 4 hands on board or like church bells tolling over the grave of his son-in-law or like lovelorn young men beside babbling brooks or as in the Gottschalk encore: cheeky banjos in American minstrel shows. He is able to ensure, for example, that those fingers haven't noodled clean off the keyboard and started tickling some nice lady in the front row. Man. He ought to be in a circus alongside the bearded lady, the lion tamer and the sword swallower.)

(The even more amazing thing about The Amazing Cyprien is that there wasn't even a whiff of burning despite the enormous amount of air friction his high-speed fingers must have generated.)

(The further more amazing thing about The Amazing Cyprien is his distinct familial resemblance to Bobo the Clown. (Mind, this is said without meaning any offence to clowns (or The Amazing Cyprien), having myself been the Sad Clown in a now-defunct Clown Ministry.) "Doesn't he look like Bobo the Clown?" I texted someone sitting in the slightlymoreexpensiveseats. "No, Krusty. :)" Which was spot on. The Amazing Cyprien would look just right, back in his room after 3 encores, flinging his tux and corset at the monkey butler in a corner and, alternately fagging 3 ciggies simultaneously and taking huge swigs from bottles of XXX, cussing the coughing, sniffling, rustling, jangling, muttering Singapore audience for being worse than a colony of obstinate tuberculosis-ridden gossipy bag-ladies.)

But really truly gobsmackingly amazing thing of the night was the suffering of Job, the grand mystery of suffering: why a good and sovereign God would allow an innocent man like Job to suffer. The thing about a Mystery is that you can't throw neurons at it and expect to understand it. Like the gospel (itself a Mystery), the answer to a Mystery needs to be revealed to us.

Job's comforters (humans, not duvets) thought they were pretty sorted folk. The reason, they said, for Job's suffering was really quite simple: people get what they deserve (Job 4 etc). Don't plead innocent, Job, when it is obvious from all that has happened to you that you are somewhat guilty. But we learn that God's anger burns against Job's friends because they have not spoken of God what is right (Job 42:7). The reason for suffering is not simple cause-and-effect.

The story of Job's friends would have concluded with their death for blaspheming the name of God. But God graciously allows them a way out: the sacrifice of seven bulls and seven rams. Poor innocent bulls and rams. What did they ever do to deserve to die so horribly? Nothing. They suffered because God was angry with Job's friends. There is a such a thing as innocent suffering.

God calls Job "my servant" at least 4 times in the book and as God's servant, Job is called to be a mediator to his friends – to pray for them. Just as Job pleads for his friends not to be dealt with by God as they deserve, he knows that there is someone in heaven who pleads for him, not to be dealt with by God as he deserves (Job 16).

Even to a casual reader of the New Testament, the Book of Job seems to point inevitably to the cross. And indeed, it is at the cross that the problem of suffering is asked and answered. The Mystery of Jesus, though wholly innocent, suffering for the sin of the whole world. At the cross, we see that through greatest suffering comes the greatest blessing. We do not know why we are afflicted with particular suffering. But we know that there is no suffering that God doesn't care about and no suffering that God is powerless to stop. God is intimately involved with the suffering of his Son on the cross. There is no senseless suffering. God only allows suffering so that he can bless us through it. However inexplicable and horrendous our own suffering, the Book of Job and the story of the gospel tell us that we will never lose any thing by our suffering. We can only gain. Let us not rage and despair in our darkest hours. Let us turn to the cross and know that God uses our pain to bless us more. Trust God that he knows what he is doing. Trust God for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness or in health.

What comes of Job's suffering? At beginning of the Book of Job, we read that Job is a man in charge of many animals in a garden in the east. Alot like Adam in Genesis 2, huh. And at the end of the Book of Job, Job is blessed with twice as much as he had before. Very Isaiah 61 indeed. Furthermore, the blessing of Job is not just material. Note that he grants his daughters an inheritance along with their brothers (this was hundreds of years before Moses). And later, we know that it is only because of inheritance by a woman that Jesus inherited the line of David. Very cool.

The end to all the hints and nudges and winks and wriggling of eyebrows is this: we can learn from Job that no suffering is senseless, though it may in this lifetime appear inexplicable. God is still trustworthy throughout our suffering, and we must continue to trust him and treat him as God and hold to his word as true. This is not the blind trust of people who are groping about for a psychological analgesic. This is a trust built on the good foundation of Job's vindication and Jesus' resurrection from the dead. This is a trust that Job's mediation for his friends was only a picture of the real mediator's work. This is a trust that the blessing of Job was only a model of the true blessing to come for humanity.

James tells us that it is through suffering that the goal and purpose of creation is attained. So hold steady in the midst of suffering.

Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. (James 5:11)

It is like the sentiment of Les Préludes from Alphonse de Lamartine's Nouvelles méditations poétiques that so moved Liszt that his prefaced his revised score with:

What else is life but a series of preludes to that unknown hymn, the first and solemn note of which is intoned by Death? Love is the enchanted dawn of all existence; but what fate is there whose first delights of happiness are not interrupted by some storm, whose fine illusions are not dissipated by some mortal blast, consuming its altar as though by a stroke of lightning? And what cruelly wounded soul, issuing from one of these tempests, does not endeavor to solace its memories in the calm serenity of rural life? Nevertheless, man does not resign himself for long to the enjoyment of that beneficent warmth which he first enjoyed in Nature's bosom, and when the 'trumpet sounds the alarm' he takes up his perilous post, no matter what struggle calls him to its ranks, that he may recover in combat the full consciousness of himself and the entire possession of his powers.

It is also like the Lamartine poem excerpt (Liszt was quite a fan) that The Amazing Cyprien read before the performance of Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude:

D'où me vient, ô mon Dieu ! cette paix qui m'inonde?
D'où me vient cette foi dont mon cœur surabonde?
A moi qui tout à l'heure incertain, agité,
Et sur les flots du doute à tout vent ballotté,
Cherchais le bien, le vrai, dans les rêves des sages,
Et la paix dans des cœurs retentissants d'orages.
A peine sur mon front quelques jours ont glissé,
Il me semble qu'un siècle et qu'un monde ont passé;
Et que, séparé d'eux par un abîme immense,
Un nouvel homme en moi renaît et recommence.

(Whence, O God, comes this peace which floods over me?
Whence comes this faith with which my heart overflows?
To me who, not long ago, uncertain, restless,
And tossed on waves of doubt by every wind,
Sought the good, the true, in the dreams of worldly sages
And peace in hearts resounding with tempests?
Scarcely have a few days brushed past my brow,
And it seems that a century and a world have passed away,
And that, separated from them by an immense abyss,
A new man is reborn and begins again in me.)

Only, the answer is more than just Romantic affection and perfumed bosoms but in Job pointing forward to the gospel.

It is like Frodo and Sam during the Nazgûl attack where Frodo is about to give up:

Frodo: I can't do this, Sam.

Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding on to Sam?

Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it's worth fighting for.

Only, this hope is more than just a fantasy. It is a hope with a sure and happy ending, one far better than even the best novelist could ever imagine or begin to describe.

Job's story is our story. Because of Jesus, we will not be dealt with as we should. Because of Jesus, we will be brought like Job through our suffering to God's blessings. There awaits for us a new body, a new family, a new much more excellent inheritance. We are looking forward to a future that is more wonderful anything this world has ever seen, a future more marvellous than Eden. A future in which Satan will be finally defeated. A future where there will be no more death and no more destruction. A future which is not just paradise regained but creation perfected.

I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day
upon the earth. And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall
I see God. (Job 19:25-26)

For now is Christ risen from the dead, the first fruits of them that
sleep. (1 Corinthians 15:20)

And there remains only one tragedy: that some will not be able to enjoy this because they do not realise that they need to be saved from being dealt with as they deserve, eternal destruction for ignoring God. They will not have Jesus plead for them as Job prayed for his friends.

Go to my servant Jesus, God says. He has already sacrificed himself for you. Go to him and ask him to pray for you and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you as you deserve. And do it soon, before the time has passed and it is too late.

Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes and Order

It's funny how you have to read the whole Bible to erm...read passages or books of the Bible in the context of the whole Bible.

Yeah, it's one of the most important mantras of good Bible reading that whatever passage or book you've got your paws on must be read in the context of the whole Bible, the over-arching purpose and workings of God in thousands of years of human history.

But it's difficult to read in context when...well...you don't know what the rest of the Bible says. You could acquire good books on the subject which trace the different strands of the one coherent story in the Bible for you (like Vaughan Roberts' "Big" series or Graeme Goldsworthy's writings, especially his "Gospel and..." series). Yet somehow, you don't quite get it until you get your hands dirty and wade through the Bible yourself.

Got a glimpse of this recently while paddling through Proverbs. There was this overwhelming theme of order: order that can be perceived in the world, order within the entire human race, a common order that transcends time, place and circumstances. This daily pervasive order found in even the most mundane haggling for fish in the market is a gift from God. Fear God, be righteous and you will be rewarded. Simple cause-and-effect.

But we all know that this isn't an accurate reflection of the world we live in. Not all nice people win in the end.

Enter Job.

Before Proverbs-paddling, spent the last few months reading and re-reading Job (Job's so-called friends are really lor sor!). Seen together with Proverbs, Job clearly shows the hiddenness of order. There is no simple cause-and-effect: fear God and you may not be rewarded. In fact, the righteous Job who is commended by God loses everything and comes within an inch of losing his own life (in fact, with all the suffering he was going through, he wished that he had indeed lost it). There is an order higher than the cause-and-effect we know so well in our world, an order known only to God that we cannot perceive.

Most teenage bloggers will have you know that they don't perceive any order whatsoever in the universe and in their lives. Everything is meaningless.

The first book of the Bible I read as a Christian was Ecclesiastes. You can imagine how flummoxing it was. The wise teacher starts off whining like an angsty teenager (but more poetically than most):

"Meaningless! Meaningless!"
says the Teacher.
"Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless." (Proverbs 1:2)

Order is absent in the universe, it suggests. The world is messy, chaotic and disordered. Confusion befuddles everything. And so, life is completely and utterly meaningless.

Or so it appears.

Yet, there is order in the universe and meaning in our lives, says the wise Teacher:

For God will bring every deed into judgement,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil. (Proverbs 12:14)

There is an end to the messiness and the chaos and the disorder of the universe. There is a God, and there is order in the universe created by God, an order that has been confused by sin. In the End, the God will restore order again and in this restoration, he will judge us for everything we have ever thought or done. Therefore, advises the Teacher, the only smart thing to do would be to

Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man. (Proverbs 12:13)