Greg Boyd’s Article, “The Point of the Book of Job” Is Fantastic and It Is Helping Me Parse this Moment
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I want to tell the suffering that everything is going to be okay, but sometimes those words can ring hollow in the face of tragedy.
I think God gave us the book of Job to help us through hard times. He gave it to correct our thinking about suffering and about him. When Job goes through all his suffering, his friends keep telling him it’s going to be okay:
“In famine, he’ll keep you from starving,
in war, from being gutted by the sword.
You’ll be protected from vicious gossip
and live fearless through any catastrophe.”
But this is wishful thinking and these words are misguided. Boyd writes:
As cliché assurances often are, these words are self-serving and wounding. Promising a father who just lost all his children (Job 1:18-19) that if he will only get right with God his “tent” will be safe, his children will not be missing and his offspring will be like “the grass of the earth” is not just hollow: it is positively cruel. It is what Job’s friends want to believe, for they want assurance that what happened to Job can’t happen to them. But their wish-based theology is out of sync with reality and completely unhelpful to their suffering friend.
Of course, Jobs’ friends’ words aren’t all incorrect. There is some truth to them. God is a provider and protector. The problem though is that they’re assuming that Job has done something wrong, and that he’s got to get right before God will bless him again. And I am convicted by this: I too want assurances that something like this won’t happen to me. I want COVID assurance for me and for mine. I want to think if I’m good I’ll be safe. Yet, sometimes we’ve done nothing wrong and still there is difficulty, suffering, even disaster. Bad things can happen to good people.
The truth is we are all ignorant of the chaos and the order around us. We’re often ignorant of God’s continuous action and presence. Sure he gives us glimpses. He speaks and he guides us through. But we can’t say that we know “the ordinances of the heavens…”, (Job 38:33), or that we “comprehend the expanse of the earth”, (38:16). We can’t say that we, “can draw out Leviathan” (41:1). We are unaware of the forces of evil swirling around us. Yet God knows, and continuously contends with it.
Even though what happens in our lives will likely remain mysterious and unknowable, God himself, his will and his character are known. He’s revealing himself to us daily. Even in the face of difficulty or suffering, we can know that God is good. Job didn’t have complete right thinking or perfect theology, but to his credit, he clung to the truth of God’s character. And so, instead of saying to myself and to others who are struggling, “It’s gonnu be okay”, I think I’ll say, “No matter what, God is good. He loves us, and we can trust him.”