Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 1-109 (Apologetics)

The Cry for a Reason in Suffering (Part 4)

by Ravi Zacharias

——————— A PROPHET OF THE WIND ———————

Their stalemate prepared the way for Job’s next friend, Bildad. He wasted no time and immediately said to Job:

Your words are a blustering wind. . . . Ask the former generations and find out what their fathers learned, for we were born only yesterday and know nothing. . . . Will they not instruct you and tell you? Will they not bring forth words from their understanding? (Job 8:2, 8-10)

No one can read Bildad’s response and question anything he said. Yet somehow there is something wrong that is not easily identifiable. The thoughts themselves seem very true–after all, what is wrong with saying that we are to give ear to the wisdom of the ages? Former generations have much to teach us with respect to suffering and pain. The wealth of poetry and prose that has been written over the centuries in the stormy moments of life has shed light for many when they have had to cross through such dark valleys.

I think, for example of the powerful testimony of a woman named Annie Johnston Flint. She was one who lived most of her life in pain. Orphaned early in life, her body was embarrassed by incontinence, weakened by cancer, and twisted and deformed by rheumatoid arthritis. She was incapacitated for so long that according to one eyewitness she needed seven or eight pillows around her body just to cushion the raw sores she suffered from being bedridden. Yet her autobiography is rightly called The Making of the Beautiful. Almost like a minstrel from heaven she penned words that touch the heart in its despairing moments. One of her best-known poems, put to music, reads:

He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater, He sendeth more strength when the labors increase: To added affliction, He addeth His mercy, To multiplied trials His multiplied peace.

When we have exhausted our store of endurance, When our strength has failed e’re the day is half done, When we reach the end of our hoarded resources Our Father’s full giving has only begun.

His love has no limit, His grace has no measure, His power has no boundary known unto men; For out of His infinite riches in Jesus He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again! 5

One is tempted to ascribe a sense of divine inspiration to words as soul-stirring and to sentiments as profound as these, uttered by a life as broken as hers. I have little doubt that over the years many have turned to this hymn time and again and drawn comfort from her words.

The question here, however, is whether these words provide an answer to the question of why pain occurs in our lives, or do they merely echo the sentiments of acceptance and triumph in the situation? Job pondered on the reason for his suffering more than he did on how to endure it. Beyond the poetry of triumph we can look back upon the exhortations of those who have thought this problem through, and once again we come away with a mixed response. From a voice in antiquity like that of Augustine to the more recent voice of C. S. Lewis, wisdom is offered on this gnawing subject. The words of Malcolm Muggeridge sustain this good news/bad news feeling. He said:

Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful, with particular satisfaction. Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I have learned in my seventy-five years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence, has been through affliction and not through happiness, whether pursued or attained. In other words, if it ever were to be possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo jumbo . . . the result would not be to make life delectable, but to make it too banal or trivial to be endurable. This of course is what the cross signifies, and it is the cross more than anything else, that has called me inexorably to Christ. 6

There is a gold mine of truth in these thoughts Muggeridge has expressed. But to the one in despair, this too may seem a distant answer to the more proximate agony. Hence, the response from Job to Bildad revealed his exasperation. He asked, “How can a mortal be righteous before God?” (Job 9:2). God’s power seemed so arbitrary, Job charged. He makes mountains and then moves them at His own will. Once again, Job did not doubt God’s existence; he merely asked to know His purpose. Then he uttered with great longing a cry that began to open the door just a fraction: “If only there were someone to arbitrate between [God and me]” (Job 9:33).

A Voice of Anger

We begin, at this point, to see Job’s own journey crystallizing. In the first instance, he asked for instruction. Now he is asking for arbitration or a point of contact. Into his world that is broken on the outside comes a gradual rebuilding from within.

Then came the third voice–that of Zophar. The youngest and rudest of the three, he basically called Job an idiot and a windbag. “It is more likely that a donkey will give birth to a human being than for you to listen to wisdom,” said Zophar (see Job 11:12).

It is somewhat humorous to note how human nature expressed itself in a situation like this centuries ago and comforting to realize that those characters were no different than we are. Impatience and anger are predictable when you think you have the answer and the other person fails to see your point. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar saw themselves as God-sent emissaries with nuggets of wisdom in abundance. Job was mystified at their utter thoughtlessness.

In essence, Zophar’s answer was that God’s ways were not Job’s ways and Job just needed to understand that. But was that really an answer? The fact is that the devil’s ways were not Job’s ways, either, and that was already clear to him. His question concerned the what and why of the difference between God’s thinking and his, not just the fact of it.

Now the point of clarity begins. Earlier Job had begged for someone to teach him. Then he asked if there was a mediator to settle his dispute with God. Next he cried out in desperation, asking, “If a man dies, will he live again?” (Job 14:14). If nothing else, pain at least helps us clarify the question. From his hunger to know the reason why, to his question of life beyond the grave, Job had come a long way.

5 Annie Johnston Flint, “He Giveth More Grace”.

6 Malcolm Muggeridge, quoted in Donald McCullough, Waking from the American Dream (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity, 1988), 145.

To be continued in Part 5 – The Illusion of Omniscience

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(“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.)