Thoughts on the book of Job

Coming across through a few old files on the computer, I found something I'd written on Job - ooh, back in 2007. At least, I think I wrote it. If someone else recognises this as their thoughts and writing on Job, I apologise. And I thank you.

Anyway - I wrote about how easy it is to misunderstand the book, and to draw conclusions that the book does not support:

Here are 4 really quite common ways in which the book of Job is misunderstood.

1. God is responsible for Job’s suffering.
2. Job is, in fact, innocent, and so not deserving of what he suffers
3. Job’s suffering is because of a particular sin on his part
4. At the end of the book, God finally explains what is behind Job’s suffering. Job didn’t work it out for himself, but now he understands God can remove the suffering.

Chapters 1 and 2 make clear that God is not responsible for Job’s suffering; Satan is. It is true that Satan is allowed to do what he does by God, but there is the world of difference between God doing something and allowing someone else to do it. Satan does what he wants to do; nobody makes him do it; so Satan is responsible for what is done. And Revelation is clear that he will be punished for all he does.

Job is, indeed, a righteous man. Whilst he may have been more of a God-fearer than practically anyone else alive, that is not the same as saying he was without fault. All of us were made perfect by God – what God made was good in Genesis 1 and 2. But all of us are sinners – and because we have made ourselves sinners, we are responsible for that. Job was not innocent, but good. God could have made him suffer far more, and things would still have been just.

In the book of Job, Job and his friends try to find a direct link between particular sin and what befalls Job. God dismisses this as “words without knowledge” when he finally speaks. Job was not perfect, so it is not unjust for him to suffer. But that is very different from saying that there is a particular sin behind every particular suffering. Jesus said the same thing in John’s gospel to the man born blind.

What is striking about God’s speeches is that he doesn’t explain himself. In fact the point of the speeches of God is the opposite – God is so great that he is beyond our total understanding and we have no right to expect an answer to every “why” question we might ask. God doesn’t wait until Job has finally passed the test of cracking the code. He has reasons for allowing the extent and degree of suffering he does, and reasons for bringing it to an end when he does.