In times of crisis, it is not uncommon to point people in the direction of the book of Job. After all, what better encouragement that God is sovereign, that he works things out, that he cares for his children and ever has his eye on them? However, in examining the story of Job the perspective of the last several years of my life, I have decided that Job speaks more strongly about our pursuit of God than it does about God himself.
In brief, we see the story unfold thus: The accuser questions God as to why Job is faithful, and God allows Job to be stripped of his wealth, his family, and his health. His friends come and sit with him for seven days in silence, they know only that Job's grief is great. When Job finally ventures to speak, he begins to question his own knowledge of God. Indeed, Job's question is that God must be destroying the good along with the bad, that God gives no regard to Job's uprightness. Even after his friends plead with him that this must be the result of some sin, Job maintains his uprightness; regardless of the question that this throws on God. Despite their answers and their pressuring him to turn to God and repent, Job cannot shake the feeling that, despite the terror such an idea holds, God is free to take sadistic pleasure in torturing people for no reason. While Job refuses to deny God, to curse him, or to run from his life of righteousness, he is still somehow caught in a turmoil between the God he thought he followed and the wanton cruelty that seems to also be the freedom of God. In the end that we all know so well, the young man speaks and instructs them concerning the use of pain to produce character, and then, finally, God himself comes to give answers.
What is God's answer to all of the ideas, the arguments, the theologies that have been wrangled over and discussed? After revealing in a real way what Job has already known (That God's ways are far beyond his own), God speaks to the friends and says in essence, "I am fed up with you! You have not spoken of me what is right - not the way my friend Job has." (Job 42:7).
But what had Job spoken? That God seems selfish, that God is distracted, that He is negligent, confused, erratic, psychotic, guilty, lawless, sadistic and ruthless! It seems that the deciding split in the line of thinking is whether we will embrace the familiar, the "all's well that ends well" conclusion, which leaves the questions of those of humanity who are suffering and on the scrap-heap rejected as false and heretical; or will we embrace an uncharted search for a way of thinking about God and the painful realities of life that is radically different from conventional wisdom, one that leaves us in awe and perhaps fright at the immensity of a God who is truly liberated from our expectations and works in ways far beyond our control?
It is in the midst of this turmoil of belief, this disparity of what we believe about God contrasted with what we can actually see him doing that we come to see Him face to face. We are liberated from the mere doing that comes with mental assent and hearing of tales and we, with Job can say "I had heard of You only by the hearing of the ear, but now my spiritual eye sees You." This drawing, this personal revelation that transcends our denominational creeds, our rational views, and careful exegesis is the end toward which Christ calls us.
While I still wonder, and long desperately to hear God's voice as clearly and to see his face, and while I have this strange sort of feeling that my lack of answers is just beginning, one thing I have known, and that is the truth that He calls me, in the midst of my brokenness, my frailty, my confusion, and seeking: "Rise up my love, my beautiful one, and come to me. For behold, the winter is over and done, and the flowers are again appearing in the land. The time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove can be heard again. The fig tree bears fruit and the vines are in blossom and fill the air with their perfume. Arise my love, my beautiful one, and come away."
In the end, all that God has promised us is life, and life abundantly. We have a choice: we can embrace the familiar, the comfortable, and the easy explanations for the events in this world, and we confine ourselves to exist in a dimension so wholly separated from the reality of human suffering that our gospel is powerless. Or, we can choose to truly live in solidarity with those who are genuinely hurting, to feel the full range of human emotions, and to be able to follow the in the footsteps of our savior through the ways of suffering, doubt, grief, and shame and truly know the meaning of human life. In this simplicity of thought, and humbleness of experience, we find ourselves stripped from any reason to pursue the acts of righteousness for any reason other than sheer goodness of heart (Job 29, 30, 31); and it is then that it is Christ's love living in us and no longer our expectation of good or reward, either now, or afterward that provoke us toward action.