Spoiler alert! This chapter delves into Christian Theology.
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We need to begin with the roots of suffering to understand Job's suffering. God created man and his world without stain. In our disobedience, we opened the door to death and suffering. The Fall twisted creation and those things which cause suffering have affected the world ever since (Genesis 3:16-19.) God does not cause man to suffer, man caused man to suffer. God has the option to lift the suffering off of man, to protect him from suffering, or to remove his protection. The question is not, why is God doing this to me, it is what is the particular cause of my suffering?
There are four main sources for suffering:
1) Suffering because of what we do to ourselves.
2) Suffering because of the actions of others.
3) Suffering because of the Fall.
4) Suffering for the glory of God
When we abuse our bodies through addictions to drugs, alcohol, or tobacco, when sex is done wantonly, we invite disease into our bodies. When we as spouses commit adultery or we are selfish towards others, we fracture our relationships. These things cause suffering, whether spiritual, emotional, or physical and this is self inflicted suffering. If you are an abused child or spouse, if you are raped, beaten, or tortured, or if a company pollutes land and water sources causing illness, or if someone is murdered, this is suffering caused by the actions of others. Often, though, people are diseased through no actions of themselves or others, and everybody dies sometime. People starve from famine, and hurricanes. tornadoes, and floods destroy lives. Cancer, Alzheimer’s, pneumonia, and other diseases run rampant in the world. These are all examples of suffering because of the Fall. Now we get into the theological beliefs about the fall of mankind in the Garden of Eden. When creation was twisted, these things were born. God has the power to intercede in these things but he does not always choose to do so. Through the cross he has eliminated death, but just as he gave us free will in the garden, he gave us free will to accept or deny the cross.
For both Job and Jesus, God removed His protection and allowed them to be turned over to suffering. We know that Jesus was His most beloved creation, an actual part of Him. He did not allow Jesus to suffer because He did not love him. It was because God loved Jesus so much that He allowed him to suffer. His suffering was for the glory of God and the expansion of the kingdom of God. Therein lies the story of Job. He is not just any man but a man God thinks well enough of to speak with joy to the satan about. Why, then, does God allow him to suffer? God knows us and what is meaningful to us. In our own sinful way we know we deserve punishment but how often are we called upon by God to face the punishments we deserve? When one who is blameless of our sin is punished in our place, it is hard to ignore the fact. Hero stories are often stories of special people who fight to save others from certain destruction and Job is a hero story in that sense. Jesus is a hero story as well as the most heroic drama ever to happen on this earth. It is not easy to stand at the foot of the cross knowing that it was our sins, not his that he died for and through his death we were given a gift none of us deserved, everlasting life. Job is chosen by God to get his friends' attention. His situation of suffering shows very clearly what fallacies they are holding onto about God. This story is just a hint, a preview, a breath that comes nowhere near the reality of the sacrifice of Jesus. It does however begin to point in the direction God is heading, as well as revealing more about who God is.
Many of us have known a person who we thought a special person, someone who was a witness as to what a loving and good person is and many of us have lost this person through disease, accident, or murder.
At Christ Episcopal Church, Denver, that man was John Wallace. He was neither rich nor famous, in fact he appeared to be a pretty ordinary person to many people. This man was stricken with cancer of the brain and the people of Christ Church met him after he had come through twenty-seven hours of brain surgery. He had a hole in his head covered by a prosthesis and one eye was destroyed, the other one drooped, and he had no hair. His skin was grey. He was told that he only had a few weeks to live. He came to Christ Church for prayer for healing. Twenty-four hours later the eye that had been destroyed had been completely healed. The hole in his head began to regenerate healthy tissue. Many of his doctors and therapists became Christians as they witnessed more and more of his physical healing during the next four years. Even more important were the people whose lives were changed because of the strength and forbearance John maintained while knowing the cancer could reappear at any time. He suffered much physically through the radiation and chemotherapy treatments he had to have and when the cancer did return, he had another year of incredible pain and disfigurement till he died. During all this time, he had a simple, childlike faith which told him at all times God was in charge. He never lost his loving heart and when other men were going through crises, no matter how large or small, they would turn to John and he would listen and help them to find a way back to God. John had a wife and two children and he also found time to be a father figure to children who did not have a father in their home.
He spoke in ways that showed he loved and trusted God and loved others and his kindness and loving heart showed in his family and everyone he came into contact with. This man definitely did not deserve the suffering he went through but many years after he died, men speak of how he taught them to love God, to become open to God and Jesus, and how he, because of his suffering helped to bring them into a meaningful relationship with our Lord for the first time.
His death, while bringing much sadness because of our loss, was transformingly beautiful in the way he released himself at last to the Lord. All of us who met John were taught a lot about faith in God and about really walking with Jesus in complete love and trust. His witness was a vision of dignity while suffering as well as great faith.
God did intervene for awhile in his illness and John had five more years than the doctors expected or could have believed his poor, torn body should have lasted. The miracle of his healing was not the most important thing, though. It was what he did in the midst of suffering that spoke to us. John didn't understand why he was suffering as Job did not understand. But, neither Job nor John were being punished through their suffering for any sins they committed. Both were purified through their suffering and many more people learned more about God because of having to wrestle with their own fears about suffering and death. Most of us could not be the kind of witnesses which both John and Job became to the world by maintaining their faith, integrity, and love of God in the midst of their suffering.
Suffering can purify the sufferer and those who are witnesses to their anguish. It makes people look at their ideas about what kind of God allows that kind of suffering as well as what their part in the suffering is. Long held conceptions, verbal platitudes about who God is and what he does fall by the wayside in the awesome reality of suffering. None of us can stand by in guilt-free observation when the innocent are suffering. God can no longer be taken for granted. Safe little existences are uprooted and shaken to their foundations. Some people turn their backs on God in anger while others draw nearer to God in an effort to understand such suffering. No one is unmoved by it.
Sometimes God intercedes and restores life, hope, and health to the person who has suffered (as He did to Job) and they can act as witnesses about surviving suffering and can be comforters to those who will suffer later. Many people are redeemed by this witness and, whereas, before God was not a living part of their lives, they discover new meaning in God and Jesus Christ. Then they begin to work towards alleviating some of the suffering in the world. Some who suffer are given complete healing, as John was, in being called home to God. In neither John's nor Job's cases was the suffering meaningless or wasted, and it couldn't be ignored.