By Frederick Buechner (1926-2022) in Wishful Thinking (1973).
Above painting of Job by Russian painter Ilya Repin (1844-1930)
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Job 1:14-19 — One day, a messenger came to Job and said, “The oxen were plowing and the donkeys were grazing nearby, and the Sabeans attacked and made off with them. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!” While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, “The fire of God fell from the heavens and burned up the sheep and the servants, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!” While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, “The Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels and made off with them. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!” While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said, “Your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house, when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”
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Theodicy is the branch of theology that asks the question: If God is just, why do terrible things happen to wonderful people? The Bible’s best answer is the book of Job.
Job is a good man and knows it, as does everybody else, including God. Then one day his cattle are stolen, his servants are killed, and the wind blows down the house where his children happen to be whooping it up at the time, and not one of them lives to tell what it was they thought they had to whoop it up about. But being a good man he says only, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). Even when he comes down with a bad case of boils and his wife advises him to curse God and die, he manages to bite his tongue and say nothing. It’s his friends who finally break the camel’s back. They come to offer their condolences and hang around a full week. When Job finds them still there at the start of the second week, he curses the day he was born. He never quite takes his wife’s advice and curses God, but he comes very close to it. He asks some unpleasant questions.
If God is all he’s cracked up to be, how come houses blow down on innocent people? Why does a good woman die of cancer in her prime while an old man who can’t remember his name or hold his water goes on in a nursing home forever? Why are there so many crooks riding around in Cadillacs and so many children going to bed hungry at night? Job’s friends offer an assortment of theological explanations, but God doesn’t offer one.
God doesn’t explain. He explodes. He asks Job who he thinks he is anyway. He says that to try to explain the kinds of things Job wants explained would be like trying to explain Einstein to a clam. He also, incidentally, gets off some of the greatest poetry in the Old Testament. “Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters may cover thee? Canst thou send the lightnings? Hast thou given the horse strength and clothed his neck with thunder? And who hath given understanding to the heart?” (Job 38).
Maybe the reason God doesn’t explain to Job why terrible things happen is that he knows what Job needs isn’t an explanation. Suppose that God did explain. Suppose that God were to say to Job that the reason the cattle were stolen, the crops ruined, and the children killed was thus and so, spelling everything out right down to and including the case of boils. Job would have his explanation.
And then what?
Understanding in terms of the divine economy why his children had to die, Job would still have to face their empty chairs at breakfast every morning. Carrying in his pocket straight from the horse’s mouth a complete theological justification of his boils, he would still have to scratch and burn.
God doesn’t reveal his grand design. He reveals himself. He doesn’t show why things are as they are. He shows his face. And Job says, “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see thee” (Job 42:5). Even covered with sores and ashes, he looks oddly like a man who has asked for a crust and been given the whole loaf.
At least for the moment.
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For more on Job from Frederick Buechner go to:
https://www.frederickbuechner.com/quote-of-the-day/2018/6/14/job
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In the last chapter, Job is healed and his fortunes are restored:
Job 42:12-13 — The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. And he also had seven sons and three daughters.
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And one more thing, this from William Willimon:
At the end of the story, the Bible tells us that the later part of Job’s life was blessed by the Lord even more than the first part. Notice that the epilogue does not say that God restored Job’s fortunes and relationships in response to Job’s words or repentance and humility. Instead, God’s reasons for giving things to Job are as unexplained as the reasons they were taken away. God does not explain suffering, but God does not explain blessings either. They are twin mysteries. The sources of each are hidden from our view and beyond our understanding. If, at the beginning of the story, Job had demanded to know why he had so much, God could have responded with the same dissertation on his majesty. It is difficult to imagine Job pressing such questions in the midst of prosperity and happiness—after all, we tend to accept the good that happens to us as a matter of course, (taking it all for granted). It is only in the epilogue—after we have demanded to know with Job, the reasons for suffering—that it occurs to us to question also the reasons for Job’s (and our) blessings; and to then grant that they too are cloaked in divine mystery.
(When do you ask “Why me, God?” Is it when you have been richly blessed and life is good? Or, is it when you are suffering? Why at one time, and not the other?)
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