Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 1-114 (Apologetics)

The Cry for a Reason in Suffering (Part 5)

by Ravi Zacharias

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God began to answer Job’s question. He had, in effect, listened in silence, waiting for this conversation to unfold and giving the best of minds an opportunity to try to untangle the mystery. None of them seemed to feel what Job felt, and over a period of days their thoughts were bringing a deeper wedge between them and Job. As God began His discourse, He challenged Job to face up to the heart of the matter. Job had long waited for this.

Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man: I will question you, and you shall answer me (Job 38:2-3).

This has to have been the most shocking response Job could have expected from God. Anyone I have ever known, when asked the question on the problem of pain, begins to philosophize in his or her own answer. We are all chronically bent toward offering our own solutions. God, in a most surprising move, began to question Job. In fact, He raised about sixty-four questions to Job, one after the other, and compelled Job to open up his modest stock of certainties.

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! . . . Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been shown to you? . . . What is the way to the abode of the light? And where does darkness reside? . . . Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons . . .? Who endowed the heart with wisdom or gave understanding to the mind? . . . Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you watch when the doe bears her fawn? (Job 38:4-5, 16-17, 19, 32, 36; 39:1)

So ran the myriad questions, leaving Job completely speechless. He had built his whole argument on the fact that he needed to know what was going on, because only on the basis of that knowledge could his confusion be dissipated. God reminded him, as a first step and only that, that there were a thousand and one things he did not fully understand but had just taken for granted.

Children learn this vital first step early. Have you ever noticed that in every fairy tale there is a condition? “If you do not come back by such and such, you will become a such and such.” But beyond that, notice that the person never asks the fairy godmother, “How come?” Because the fairy godmother could legitimately respond, “If that is the way you want it, then tell me, how come there is a fairy land?”7

The immensity and specificity of the universe must humble us in the best sense of the word. The more a person knows, the more humble he or she needs to be because the entailments of knowledge remind us constantly of the vastness and intricacy of ultimate reality: the birth of a baby, the nursing of that child at its mother’s breast, the boundlessness of a mother’s love, the wonder of growth to maturity, the fascinating intricacy of the brain, the enchantment of human sexuality.

A powerful story is told by G. K. Chesterton, called “The Magician”. It is the parable of a magician who visited a town and was performing a number of tricks to entertain the crowd. While everyone else was thoroughly enjoying his performance, a young scholar sitting near the front of the auditorium persisted in finding his own explanations for every trick. The magician was getting rather exasperated and finally came upon a trick that this intellectual would find unexplainable.

He called the analyst over and asked him, “What color was the light outside your home when you left?”

The scholar answered that it was a red light. “Run along home,” said the magician, “and even as you are running I will turn it into a green light.”

“You cannot do that!” retorted the young man.

“Oh, yes I can, and I will,” came the answer.

The young man began to run toward his house, and as he came within a few feet of it he saw the light change color. Completely astounded, he turned around and ran back to the magician. “All right, how did you do it?”

The magician looked at him and said, “I just sent a couple of angels to change the bulb.”

“That is nonsense,” came the answer. “Tell me how you did it.” No matter how belligerently the scholar protested, he received the same answer: “I sent a couple of angels to change the bulb.”

The young man retreated to his science laboratory, trying to figure out how a red light can be changed into a green light. He became so obsessed with his quest that he finally went insane. His sisters came to the magician and implored him to give his trick away just this once so that their brother would regain his sanity.

“But I have already told him the truth,” he said.

“All right, then, why don’t you tell him something that is not true but sounds reasonable? At least it will bring his sanity back. “

The magician reluctantly agreed and fabricated an explanation for his trick, which the young man readily accepted. Immediately he regained his sanity.

Chesterton made the chilling observation that in actuality the critic was more sane when he had no explanation for the red light turning into green. When he bought into the lie that he believed to be a suitable explanation, he was, in fact, truly insane. The application for our time should be evident.

Years ago when I was speaking in a village in Vietnam, the audience was principally comprised of poor people, many of them illiterate. I shared with them a story we often told in India; the story of a man who was sitting under a tree that was laden with nuts. He looked up into the tree and mockingly said to God, “Somehow I do not think You are very smart. You have made a huge tree to hold small nuts and a small plant to hold big watermelons. Big tree, small nuts; small plant, big watermelons.” Just then a small nut fell from the tree and hit him on his head. He paused and muttered, “Thank God that was not a watermelon!”

To hear the roar of laughter that erupted and to see the way they enthusiastically jostled one another, as if to congratulate themselves for being so right in their simplicity, was truly delightful. This is not intended to disparage or in any way to mock education and glorify ignorance; it is only intended to dent the inordinate pride that arrogates to itself a strident self- confidence based on the illusion of omniscience.

Does this all mean that the intellect has no pursuit in understanding the greatness of the universe? Of course not. It only cautions us to retain the wonder and to remember our finitude. God says, in essence, “Do not assume that you only accept that which you comprehensively understand.” He clearly implies that He had given sufficient evidence of His power and design in creation. To seek comprehensive knowledge as the only grounds for belief is unreasonable. There is a world of difference between the words sufficient and comprehensive. Unless we know that difference, we will always wallow in a no-man’s land straddling between divinity and finitude.

Francis Schaeffer used to give a very fair illustration on this subject. Suppose you left your home in the morning with two glasses on your table, glass A with two ounces of water in it and glass B, empty. When you returned home at night you noticed that glass B now had water in it and glass A was empty. Further, when you measured the water in glass B, you noticed that there were four ounces of water in it, not two. You might deduce that someone took the water from A and put it into B. But you could also be sure that all of the water did not come from A, because A only had two ounces of water to start with. The two extra ounces would need a different explanation.

Science may explain “two ounces of this universe,” but there is much else that is not within the purview of science. Noted scholars such as Michael Polanyi, one of this century’s finest philosophers of science, has cautioned those in the sciences not to lose sight of their own unscientific presuppositions. God challenged Job to admit his limitation and to allow God to be God. God insists that those limitations do and must exist.

But God takes Job beyond just making him think it was all too vast for him. What God wanted him to realize was that this same God who brought such pattern and beauty into a world he had fashioned out of nothing could also bring a pattern and beauty out of Job’s brokeness. The universe is both complex and intelligible, and Job was reminded of that. There is intelligence behind the design, as there is also intelligence in helping us cope with suffering.

Think for a moment of the opposite scenario in a Godless universe. To strip this universe of an intelligent first cause leaves us with a mindless force behind everything. I cannot think of worse news for humanity. I am intrigued by the credulity of those who seem to think that proving the accidental arrival of life in this universe will spell victory for the skeptic. One may as well tell a young man, “You are really not the child we had intended to have, but now that you are here, let’s make the best of it.” I would not want to be on the receiving end of that little speech. That is why God’s first approach to Job was to remind him there was a mind and a power infinitely greater than his listening to him. He was not just speaking into a void.

To be continued in Part 6 – Revealing the Comfort

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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.)