The experience of Job, described in great detail in the book that bears his name, is one of the classic biblical examples of suffering.
In the book Satan
asks God for permission to attack Job, God allows it, and then Satan goes on to
cause Job intense and almost unbearable suffering.
Job’s suffering
is said to come from God
One of the things
that the book of Job tells us is that the suffering Satan inflicted on Job came
from God. There is no doubt that this is what the book teaches.
Immediately after the
first series of disasters that struck Job – losing his animals,
servants and children – we are told in Job 1:20-22:
‘20 Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved
his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. 21 And he said, “Naked I
came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the
LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” 22 In all this
Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.’ (ESV)
Job’s words in v. 21 clearly show that he believes that
what he has just lost was taken away by God. It is true that Job doesn’t know
about Satan asking for God’s permission to hurt him. Nevertheless, there is no
suggestion in the text that Job is making a mistake when he says that God has
taken away what he has lost.
Furthermore, the comment by the narrator in v. 22 seems
to take it for granted that God did indeed take away what Job has lost.
Similarly, in Job 2:10, after Job has contracted an awful
disease and his wife has told him to curse God and die, we are told:
‘But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish
women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive
evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.’ (ESV)
In this verse ‘evil’ doesn’t mean moral evil but refers
to suffering.
Again, there is no doubt that Job believes that the
disease he has contracted is something that came to him from God. And again
too, there is no suggestion in the text that Job is mistaken.
What is more, as with the previous passage, the comment
of the narrator at the end of the verse seems to imply that Job’s disease came
to him from God’s hand.
In the passages I have just cited there seems to be no
good reason for thinking that Job is mistaken when he attributes his sufferings
to God’s actions. However, some readers of this article might not be convinced
by this.
Crucially, however, there is another passage in Job which
teaches the same thing and which cannot reasonably be understood as a mistaken
idea.
In Job 42:11, right at the end of the book, the narrator
says:
‘Then came to him all his brothers and sisters and all
who had known him before, and ate bread with him in his house. And they showed
him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon
him.’ (ESV)
Again, ‘evil’ in this verse is not moral evil but refers
to suffering.
The comment here that the LORD brought evil on Job is not
something that Job says but is a comment of the narrator, i.e., the inspired
author. Although in the book of Job there are many wrong ideas about suffering
that need to be corrected, importantly, never in this book does the narrator
make a mistake. Job and his friends have some wrong ideas about things, but
this never, ever applies to the narrator.
Just as importantly, in chapter 42 we have reached a
place in the book where wrong ideas have been left behind.
All things considered, then, we should have no hesitation
in saying that the book of Job portrays Job’s sufferings as coming to him from
the hand of God, as well as from the hand of Satan.
A suggestion for how to understand this
So how are we to understand this? What Satan does to Job
is certainly a morally evil thing. So if the book of Job says that what Satan
did to Job came from God’s hand, does this mean that God is complicit in moral
evil?
Not at all! I would suggest the following as a way to
think about this:
For Satan to hurt Job, two crucially important decisions
had to be made. First, Satan had to make a clear and specific decision to hurt
Job if he was able. And second, God had to make a clear and specific decision
to allow Satan to hurt Job. If either of these decisions had not been made,
Satan would not have hurt Job.
This is not to say that Job’s sufferings came to him from
Satan and from God in the same sort of way. The sense in which his sufferings
came from Satan’s hand is very different from the sense in which his sufferings
came from God’s hand.
Nor is it to say that God caused Satan to choose to hurt
Job. God only permitted Satan to do his evil work. But God’s permission was so
crucial in enabling Satan to hurt Job that the book of Job describes what
happened to Job as coming from God’s hand.
The same is true any time we are sinned
against
There is no good reason for thinking that the place of
God in our sufferings today is any different from the place of God in Job’s
sufferings.
Any time you or I suffer something, God has made a clear
and specific decision not to stop it, and in that sense it has come to us from His
hand. He could have stopped it, but for wise reasons mostly beyond our understanding,
He has chosen not to.
This includes times when someone sins against us. God
could have stopped it but He deliberately chose not to, so in that sense the
suffering that we have experienced from the sinner has come from God’s hand.
This is not to say that God caused the sinner to commit
the sin, or that He wanted the sinner to commit the sin, or that He doesn’t
hate the sin, or that He doesn’t care about what we go through, or that He
doesn’t love us. But it is to say that God is totally in control of what He
does and doesn’t allow to happen to us.
Not only is God totally in control of this, but we also we
know from Romans 8:28 that all the things experience, including our sufferings,
work together for our good. And we can take great comfort from knowing that.
See also:
Charismatic
Churches and Their Attitude to Hardship
Some
Things for Christians to Do When They Are Hanging on by Their Fingernails
Taking
Heart from the Apostle Paul’s Experiences of Setbacks and Failed Plans
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