Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 1-104 (Apologetics)

The Cry for a Reason in Suffering (Part 3)

by Ravi Zacharias

——————- A STRANGE BEGINNING ——————-

In the first chapter of the book, we find Job facing one calamity after another. He lost his health, his wealth, and finally, his family. As he sat on his ash pile, covered from head to toe with boils, his wife said to him, “Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!”

But Job replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” The Bible adds, “In all this, Job did not sin in what he said” (Job 2:9-10).

One has to both understand and at the same time wonder what Job’s wife really meant by “curse God and die.” If God exists, does cursing Him accomplish anything? One may as well put on a pair of sneakers and kick a tank. If, however, God does not exist, who would Job really have been cursing? But let us give her the benefit of the doubt. She was reacting the way every human being is tempted to react when everything he or she has believed in seems to make absolutely no sense in the face of what appears to be the opposite.

On the other hand, Job made an assumption, too, that just as God is the source of comfort, so also was He the source of pain, and therefore, he just had to resign himself to it. Was Job correct? Let us bear in mind that we are given a glimpse of the prologue and what preceded this test, of which Job had no knowledge. But in the epilogue we see Job understanding the big picture, and the pattern that emerged brought much consolation and worship into his heart. Through the long process of his numerous conversations, the questions he asked became clearer and gained very sharp focus. That may have been one of Job’s greatest discoveries–how important it was to ask the right questions.

As we read on, we are told that Job’s three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, journeyed to see him in order to help him understand where God was in all of his devastation. (I have always insisted that they could not have possibly found their names from a baby book. I used to also say that I have never met anybody with those names, but that changed when I met a Bildad somewhere in some distant part of this globe.)

One can imagine their conversations as they traveled to see Job and laid their plans in place, determining who would play what role in their goal to bring him comfort. But one glimpse of his pitiful state left them speechless. They remained conspicuously silent for seven days and seven nights. Without doubt, they were at their wisest and best when they were silent. As much as one appreciates these men for their concern in coming to Job, one is mystified at their insensitivity in this, their friend’s most excruciating hour. They gave only what we would call “canned answers” and unthought- through theological pronouncements that on the surface seemed sound but were vacuous in the face of Job’s agony.

The first to open his mouth was Eliphaz. He was the oldest and the kindest. But of all the reasoning he could have brought to bear on his counsel, he narrated the strangest episode.

A word was secretly brought to me, my ears caught a whisper of it. Amid disquieting dreams in the night, when deep sleep falls on men, fear and trembling seized me and made all my bones shake. A spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body stood on end. It stopped, but I could not tell what it was. A form stood before my eyes, and I hear a hushed voice: “Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can a Man be more pure than his Maker? . . .” We have examined this, and it is true. So hear it and apply it to yourself (Job 4:12-17; 5:27).

One can only imagine what Job felt while Eliphaz waxed eloquent about this dreamy experience of his. But Job paid him the courtesy of listening to his speech before erupting in dismay. He painfully pleaded for understanding on the depth of his loss:

If only my anguish could be weighed and all my misery be placed on the scales! It would surely outweigh the sand of the seas. . . . The arrows of the Almighty are in me, my spirit drinks in their poison; God’s terrors are marshaled against me. . . . A despairing man should have the devotion of his friends (Job 6:1-4, 14).

There is no evident flaw to Eliphaz’s thoughts except for the questionable foundation on which he built them. He called to mind Job’s “creatureliness” and, hence, his sinfulness. He argued for the justice of God and the fairness with which He deals with people. There is no evident flaw to Eliphaz’s thoughts, except for the weird foundation on which he built it and his apparent callousness, which seemed to care more for the eloquence of the argument than for the misery of his friend.

I remember in the early years of my ministry when I was being asked by a couple why God allows suffering in our lives. I sat facing them as they remained in the last pew of the church after everyone had gone. As I leaned forward to respond to their question I suddenly noticed the baby lying beside them, obviously born with Down’s syndrome. I mentally stepped back for a moment. I knew then that their question struck deep into the heart. This was not an academic question. Their feelings were real, and so my answer needed to be.

Put yourself in Job’s predicament. With everything you cherished gone, what would you think of a friend who talked about a dream he had where a spirit glided past his face and stood still? His hair stood on end out of shock and then the spirit spoke to him with an answer to your pain, “Can a man be pure before his Maker?” Once could forgive Job if he exploded with sheer frustration and said, “What on earth are you talking about?”

Let me note that it is not important whether Eliphaz’s dream really took place. The real question is how someone else could determine if that whole episode was really true. And even if it were, it was at best a personal encounter for Eliphaz. Is it then wise to build an entire theological system on an aberrant experience that cannot be verified by anyone else? He still needed to tread softly around Job’s anguish, and evidently Eliphaz did not.

I am reminded of my days in graduate studies when I had the privilege of studying under a very brilliant scholar. He was short on patience and long on outbursts if any student dared to present any material that was deemed unworthy. In one major test he gave that was particularly difficult, every one of us students prayed for just a passing grade. One student, not having the faintest clue to what one of the questions meant, dared to pad his answers with weighty verbiage, hoping that somewhere in the volume of words he would hint in the direction of an appropriate answer. When he got his paper back, written across it was what I think to be one of the funniest one-liners I have ever read. The professor had simply written, “This is not right. . . . This is not even wrong!” It took a long moment, but the student got the point.

You see, there are at least three things one can say to the answer given to any question that is posed. One is to say that it is right. Another is to say that it is wrong. The third is to say that it has not even risen to the dignity of an error. For to say that something is wrong is to at least concede that something meaningful has been said.

How does one respond to a dream or vision when there is nothing to corroborate the assertion being made? At risk of being rude, how do we know that Eliphaz was not merely hallucinating or suffering from some kind of messianic complex?

How much the Christian faith has suffered at the hands of those for whom a highly charged emotional experience from the sidebar existence of life is made the sole interpreter of the main script of everyone else’s existence. There seems to be no way to “test the spirits” anymore, and all that is needed for a church or group to be formed is the acceptance or allowance of any kind of manifestation, with suspicion being the only inadmissible element. This is a dangerous way to claim devotion to God, because there is no way to differentiate between worshipping God and playing God.

As authentic as Eliphaz’s experience may have been, Job is well within his rights to dismiss it. “A despairing man should have the devotion of his friends. . . . But my brothers are as undependable as intermittent streams, as the streams that overflow when darkened by thawing ice and swollen with melting snow, but that cease to flow in the dry season” (Job 6:14-15). They offered a drink when no one had need of it but denied that same drink to one who was dying of thirst. Eliphaz’s speech missed Job’s anguish. Job goes on to ask God:

Teach me, and I will be quiet; show me where I have been wrong. How painful are honest words! But what do your arguments prove? Do you mean to correct what I say, and treat the words of a despairing man as wind? You would even cast lots for the fatherless and barter away your friend. But now be so kind as to look at me (Job 6:24-28).

With unapologetic forthrightness, Job questions Eliphaz’s heartlessness. In effect, he calls him an unmoved storehouse of words. No feeling. No reason. Just a dispassionate spouter of platitudes.

To be continued in Part 4 – A Prophet of the Wind

————————-

(“The Cry for a Reason in Suffering” is Chapter 3 of _Cries of the Heart_ by Ravi Zacharias. Copyright 1999 Word Publishers. pp63-90. Used with permission.)