Faith in Doubt: A Guy Named Job

A continuation of the series by Luke, Faith in Doubt.

How can we trust a God who allows so much suffering in the world? 

Some don’t realize it, but the Bible actually addresses this question directly.  The main point of an entire book is to deal with this question.  This book is often misunderstood.  It is about a man named Job. 

Job was a guy who was very faithful to God, and consequently God had blessed him.  He was rich. He had tons of kids.  His servants were loyal.  He had sheep coming out of his ears.   This is the good life in the Bronze Age.   Then one day, for reasons completely hidden from Job, God allows it all to be taken away.  His calamity is very theatrical.  The whole book plays out like a kind of theatre production.  The story goes like this.

One day Job is sitting in his house enjoying a cup of tea, and in rushes one of his servants. 

“Job, Job! A group of Sabeans attacked us and killed all your servants and stole all the Oxen.  They’re all gone Job!” 

And before Job’s jaw can even drop another servant runs in and says “Job, there was a meteor!  It fell from the sky and incinerated all your sheep.  I’m the only one who survived.” 

Then in comes another.  “Job!  Your camels Job!  The Babylonians attacked us and killed everyone and stole the camels!” 

Then another.  “Your children Job, they’re all dead!  They were eating together and a storm came and knocked the house clean over.  They were all crushed!”

Just like that, Job’s world falls apart.  It only takes about 200 words in my Bible.  It happens so fast it seems more like a poorly executed practical joke, but Job isn’t laughing.  It’s real.  Before the week is out, he is huddled up in the middle of a field, scraping at the burning boils that now cover his skin, and wondering what the hell God is doing up there. 

Job’s loss is so complete that it sets him up as a kind of ultimate sufferer.  A guy whose suffering is so unexpected and so severe that few could compare themselves to him.  And then, he and his friends begin to talk.

Most of the rest of the book is lengthy dialogues between Job and his friends as they wrestle through the reasons for his suffering.  The summary is something like this:  Job’s friends are convinced that God is just, and therefore he would never do something like this to Job unless he deserved it. But Job argues for his innocence. He insists that some mistake has been made, and if he just had the chance to present his case before God then all would be made right again.  Both he and his friends agree that since God is just, nothing like this could rightly happen to a person like Job.  Either Job has done something to deserve it (Job’s friends’ argument) or Job is being treated unfairly (Job’s argument).  They battle back and forth and back and forth, until God appears.  Enter God, stage left.  

What would we want or expect God to say in a situation like this?

Maybe:  I’m so sorry Job.  I didn’t want this to happen to you either, but sometimes bad things just happen to good people. 

Maybe:  Job, don’t worry.  This has just been a trial and it will pass, and you will receive even more from me later (which he does at the end of the book). 

Maybe even:  Job, I know that you are suffering, but if you could see it from my perspective, you would understand why things have to be this way. 

From the perspective of the book, I think this last answer is a true answer, but this is not the answer that is given to Job.

Here’s how God starts his reply to Job.

 “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (Wait…what?) “Tell me, if you think you’re so smart.”  It goes on like this for a while.  It is everything from “do you know the measurements of the earth?” to trivial stuff like “do you know when the mountain goats give birth?”   God replies to Job’s suffering by spending three chapters cutting him down to size, without even addressing the question that has driven the entire book.  The entire book has been a debate about whether or not Job’s suffering is just, yet God does not weigh into this debate.  The reader is given a reason why Job is suffering, but God does not convey even this to Job.  He sticks to “I am God, and you are not.” 

On the surface, God kinda looks like a jerk.  Here is a guy who had everything taken away from him for no good reason, and all God can say is “I’m better than you so pipe down.”  If you come to Job looking for an intellectual argument for why a just God would allow a good person like Job to suffer, then you may be disappointed.  

But Job is not disappointed, and if we miss this we miss the whole point of the book.  I don’t think that God’s speech is intended to be an intellectual argument.  God’s speech is meant to convey verbally what Job is undergoing experientially.  Job has been begging for the opportunity to present his case before God, but when God actually shows up, Job realizes that he is the one who has made a mistake. The experience of facing God is nothing like he expected.  The categories in his mind explode in the face of God.  He has been following God faithfully his entire life, but meeting him is a shock that realigns everything.  The petition that Job has prepared against his unjust treatment melts away.  It seems downright foolish.  God asks Job, “Shall a faultfinder contend with the almighty, He who argues with God, let him answer it.”  And all Job can say is “Look at me, I am nothing, what could I say to you.” 

In Job’s final words he summarizes his experience of God like this: 

“I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know…I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”

Job was seeking an answer.   God’s answer was himself. 

So why does God allow so much suffering in the world?  The answer is simple:  We don’t know.  We can’t know.  We can guess and we can imagine, and many Christian thinkers have produced some compelling explanations (I hope to blog about a few of these eventually).  Yet at the end of the day we will acknowledge that there is something lacking in our explanation.  Whenever there is a famine or an earthquake in a third world country, the images will always call back our confusion. 

However, someday we will meet God, and it will be very different than we had expected. 

Someday the answer to this big question will be unmistakable.

It will be the most obvious thing in the world. 

Children and philosophers will both laugh at the thought of such a question.

The answer will be plain before our eyes.

We will see God, and God will be our answer.  

                                                                

Why do Christians trust a God that allows so much suffering and cruelty in the world?

We trust him because he is greater than us. 

We trust him because he loves us. 

We trust him because we don’t have access to all the information.

We trust him because we have experienced a fractional part of the awe that overwhelmed Job. 

We trust him because he is our Father.

We trust him because he is God.  

Faith in Doubt: The Biggies

A continuation of the series by Luke, Faith in Doubt.

I started this series of posts with two motivations.  The first was simply to tell my story.  There are many of my friends and family who were shocked when I left the faith and were never given any context for why I came back, and others who I thought might benefit from hearing it.

In addition, the questions that I worked through over the last six years are the same questions that most thoughtful people struggle with, whether inside the church or not.  Therefore, my second goal of writing is to try to address some of these big issues.  In my experience, church communities struggle to address these kinds of issues.  We have some heroes out there doing good work, but our actual communities don’t seem prepared to receive people who still have serious questions.

I had a conversation with someone recently that finally convinced me to write about how I deal with some of these big questions.  This person was introduced to Christianity late in life, and still seems very interested in it.  But like a lot of us, this person has struggled with the question of why there is so much suffering in the world.  Why would the world be so cruel if there is a sovereign God?  They said something that I found very sad.  They said that going to church had only exacerbated their anger and confusion about these issues.  This makes me upset, so for my next series of posts, I am going to take a shot at some of these big questions.  

So what are the biggies?  At the very least, they include the following:  If God is in control, then why is there so much suffering in the world?   How can hell be considered just?  How can we believe the Bible when it seems to be based in outdated worldviews, and seems full of inaccuracies and contradictions?  How can Christians claim the universality of a single religion in light of the multitude of world religions?  In addition, there are questions that often arise around conservative Christian views of women, families and homosexuality.  (This all suddenly seems a little ambitious…)

I titled this whole series Faith in Doubt.  I love this title because it has a double meaning.  On the one hand it includes my story about a time when my faith was in doubt.  But it has another meaning as well.  It expresses how I can still live in faith even when doubt remains.   Faith and doubt may be antonyms, but that does not mean that they cannot exist together.  I have faith in God and the Bible, but that faith exists in the midst of my ongoing questions.  I don’t have everything figured out, and I don’t have to pretend like I do.  My doubts are legitimate, but that does not stop me from trusting God.  If push comes to shove I’m going to trust God, but right now I have the freedom to think and struggle and learn. 

I do not have satisfying answers to every question, but what I hope to model in these posts is a life and mind that can live in faith, while still remaining honest about doubts.  It is not one or the other.  I invite readers to add questions and critiques of what I say, and I look forward to the discussion.  

Faith in Doubt (Part 4): Loving God

A continuation of the series by Luke, Faith in Doubt.


Phase 4:  Love God

Even after three years of living like a pretty good Christian, I still thought of God as a distant force, like a world leader whose policies I respect.  I liked God, but I knew I did not love God. I knew what love was supposed to look like.  I had been married for several years, and during this time my first son was born, who continues to teach me about another kind of love that I think only parents can know. 

But this is not how I felt about God. Love springs from familiarity, yet never ceases to produce awe.  Mine was the awe you might feel for a celebrity.  Love inspires a kind of reckless loyalty.  My relationship with God was still on certain terms.

This time I have no idea when the change happened.  One day I woke up and realized that God was as familiar and present to me as my wife or son.  After a thousand tiny steps I loved God again. 

But how can you love a transcendent being you have never met?  I have always found it difficult describe this to those who have not experienced it.  The best I can say is that I have met him.  He’s around quite a lot actually.  I don’t hear voices or anything.  It is much more subtle than that.  But like I said before, he’s there and at this point it doesn’t make much sense denying it.

This love completely changed my attitude toward God.  For example, there have been times when I have defended God because of the threat to my identity.  Like if God isn’t real…then what am I going to do next!  I wasn’t defending someone I love, I was just defending the idea of God.  This God is nothing but a proposition, an intellectual crutch to hold up my dilapidated life. When people attack God now, there is something profane about it, and sad, yet completely unthreatening.  When I engage in this kind of discussion now, it is almost always for the benefit of another.  Otherwise, what would be the point?  God and I are just fine.  I no longer feel the need to argue for God’s existence for the same reason I do not try to argue for the existence of my mother.

As this love crept in, so did the desire to serve God in full-time ministry.  Since we were in high school, both Jaymi and I had felt sure that ministry was what God had called us to do, and that certainty was returning by the day.   I remember having a conversation with a pastor around this time, and he was trying to encourage me by saying that I didn’t have to be in ministry to serve God.  Many people are faithful servants even if it isn’t their profession.  I completely agree with this in principle, and there are some amazing people in my church community living it out, but this is not me.  As soon as my love for God returned I became restless.  I began to feel like I was wasting my life. 

As soon as we could manage it, I returned to school to get more training, and we began looking into how God could use our life.  For those of you who have read our blog before, you know that this drive is currently pointing us toward Africa, and if you want the rest of the story you will have to read what Jaymi has written about it. 

So what does it mean? 

I turned away from God with no intention of ever returning, and now I have gone from being a functional atheist to a future missionary.  I would not be here if God had not gone out of his way to bring me back.  I know I have not been very specific about why I am so sure that God was there (when he “punched me in the face”).  I do not think this is the appropriate place to describe a thing like that, but it was powerful.   Powerful enough that it has continued to define me as a person ever since. 

There are a lot of people in my life who have struggled with the same questions, but who were not given the kind of gift that God has given to me.  When their questions came up, God seemed silent.  I have no idea why he does this.  It frustrates me.  But I cannot deny the fact that he has been gracious to me, and I hope that he will be gracious to them too. 

By complete accident I came across a verse about a year or two ago.  This verse comes from a very sad book that was written after Jerusalem had been destroyed and the Israelites were being forcibly resettled.  In effect there was no nation of Israel anymore, just her people.  A prophet named Jeremiah was mourning all that had been lost when he said this:

I remember my affliction and my wandering,

The bitterness and the gall.

I well remember them and my soul is downcast within me.

Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed

For his compassions never fail

They are new every morning

Great is your faithfulness

I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for him.” (Lam 3:19-24)

This verse is a summary of my life.  I often think of all that I wasted in those years, yet God did not abandon me.  He was faithful. He is still faithful.  I find new grace all the time.  I still feel doubt and confusion about a lot of things, and I certainly do not have satisfying answers to every question.  Yet what can I say now except “The Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for him.” 

He is God.  He has been good to me.  And I trust him.  

Faith in Doubt (Part 3): The Long Climb Back

A continuation of the series by Luke, Faith in Doubt.

So Sure, God exists.  Now I believed it.  I even believed that Jesus was God.  Yet there was no rush of joy in this realization.  This was not a happy moment.  I was quite miserable in fact.  God had intruded where he was not wanted, and now my life was a contradiction.  All of the questions and hurt that had led me away from my faith were still burning inside, yet I could not deny that Jesus was God.  Because of this, the phases of this four year journey might surprise you.  They certainly don’t match any salvation narratives I have ever heard.

Phase 1:  Hate God

When my journey began, I hated God.  He let people suffer and did not rescue them.  He called people to live to standards they could not achieve.  More than anything, I could not make sense of hell.  I could not make sense of God torturing people for eternity (More on this later).  It was around this time that we started going to church again, and the conflict in my faith was evident.  We would go for two weeks, then get frustrated and skip the next week, but by the fourth week we’d try again.  I remember one week walking out in anger in the middle of the service during a song that I still do not like.  I’m pretty sure we didn’t go back for a month. 

Phase 2:  Fear God 

During this phase I began to make some headway philosophically.  For example, some people draw a false dichotomy about God.  They say that either God is good and loving and everything I want him to be, or he doesn’t exist.  During this time I realized that the two things have nothing to do with one another.  Even if God is a jerk to us, he is still God and there is nothing we can do but serve him.  You cannot protest the Almighty.  God can do whatever he wants, and demand whatever he wants.  He’s God, so I had better pay attention. 

Phase 3:  Respect God

As I worked through my philosophical objections, I began to calm down emotionally.  By this point we had already settled back into our church, and I had begun studying the Bible again.  I felt like I was reading it with fresh eyes.  The texture and depth of both God and his people were leaping out at me, both from the text and in our church community.  All of this culminated in a realization: God is pretty cool.  He is not indifferent and inactive, he’s doing stuff all the time.  There may be a lot of crap going on in the world, but there is a lot of good too. 

Throughout these phases there is a theme that has continued to define my faith:   “Faith seeking understanding.”  I believe first, but I am still working out the details.  One thing that is difficult for many is that they do not want to accept Christianity until the big questions have been answered.  The problem is that you may never get there.  There are some questions that require faith and interaction with God in order to comprehend.  I realize this seems like backward logic, because it seems like we are creating bias in our beliefs prior to examining the questions themselves.  However, for me the answers came because the faith was there first.  I’m not sure if I ever would have made it this far if I hadn’t first believed in God. 

After this, there was one more phase that completed this process and sent our life onto a new trajectory.  (Coming Tomorrow)