Yesterday I laid into wimpy preachers, and went back to Calvin for some old, difficult and challenging teaching. Now, before I go to the text, I want to balance it with a statement about grace and our sovereign God.
We love the doctrines of grace because they serve as the foundation on which the gospel itself is built. Behind the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a God who has already determined the end from the beginning, including the destination of every living soul—not on the basis of anything we will do but purely because of his good pleasure. He is a God who sends his Son to die for those he has predestined. He is a God who sends his Spirit to effectually call and monergistically regenerate those he has elected and for whom he has sent his Son to die. And he is a God who will not be defeated, but rather will preserve his children to the very end. It is this big God we can rest assured will triumph in the end. His purpose will stand, and he will do all that he pleases
We need to hold this. Because we are going to Job. And God let Job suffer. He allowed the enemy to leave him poor, wounded, unclean, in bitter pain and in bitter despair.
When I read this, I harden my heart and go into therapeutic space — where I just feel the other’s pain enough to engage. But no more. For this is a soul in pain. This is a soul who sees no way out.
1Then Job answered:
1″Do not human beings have a hard service on earth, and are not their days like the days of a laborer? 2Like a slave who longs for the shadow, and like laborers who look for their wages, 3so I am allotted months of emptiness, and nights of misery are apportioned to me. 4When I lie down I say, ‘When shall I rise?’ But the night is long, and I am full of tossing until dawn. 5My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt; my skin hardens, then breaks out again. 6My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and come to their end without hope.
7″Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good. 8The eye that beholds me will see me no more; while your eyes are upon me, I shall be gone.9As the cloud fades and vanishes, so those who go down to Sheol do not come up; 10they return no more to their houses, nor do their places know them any more.
11″Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. 12Am I the Sea, or the Dragon, that you set a guard over me? 13When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint,’ 14then you scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions, 15so that I would choose strangling and death rather than this body. 16I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone, for my days are a breath. 17What are human beings, that you make so much of them, that you set your mind on them, 18visit them every morning, test them every moment? 19Will you not look away from me for a while, let me alone until I swallow my spittle? 20If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of humanity? Why have you made me your target? Why have I become a burden to you? 21Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I shall lie in the earth; you will seek me, but I shall not be.”
Job is more than a Deist. A deist (and this functionally includes most athiests) may accept that there was a creator, but God is out on a long lunch. The universe is uncaring.
Job instead believes that there is a God who cares, and who can intervene. This increases his despair and doubt. Because he has walked with God, he finds the absence of his presence, and the pain he is in more deeply.
It may be better to have loved and lost, but if you never love you never get to mourn. To lose. Job encapsulates the charge that many have against the sovereignty of God and his choosing to save some… and let others go: ‘it is unfair. This should not be happening. Save me’. ‘This life is short. I therefore should not suffer.’
We may say that Job is melancholic. We may say he is depressed. But that would be wrong: he is grieving: he is in pain, he is suffering. The despair and doubts he has is part of this. And this will be our lot, unless God is merciful
People get sick. People suffer. People get depressed, develop mania, or suffer from psychosis. In many situations, with the tools of modern medicine and the prayers of the faithful, people recover. Part of my job is to see if I can cure emotional afflictions, and comfort those who are left with ongoing difficulties.
But the mortality rate for human beings is still 100%. I find it interesting that, as we lose faith, the pagan alternative of self-destruction is again being advocated.
Job had despair and doubts, but he also was a man of courage and faith. We should follow his example — we are allowed to complain, but we need to stand regardless of our circmustances and not pretend suicide or euthanasia are solutions. Doctors should preserve life, not be societies executioners, neatly disposing of messy and painful situations like Job’s.