Most people blame their
troubles on God, or, as a very whitty columnist whose article in
response to some atheists' published rantings I very much enjoyed, put
it: "Bad boy gets his knuckles slapped by nasty old nuns and ergo
concludes: there is no God."
While it is certainly a pity
that those who profess to be the people of God very often lack the very
quality which would identify them as such (see John 13:35),
and I have personally come to the same conclusion for similar reasons
in my life, namely at the age of 10, it is also up to us to wake up
from that temporary delusion and to mature enough to realize that only
a "fool hath said in his heart, 'there is no God'" (Ps.55:1).
Job teaches us that although
God may allow certain troubles to befall us, it is not He Who would
have wished to bring them upon us in the first place, but very often
the Devil who is begging for God's permission to test us, because he
wants to prove to God just how "good" we really are.
One fine day when all the
(angelic) sons of God, evidently including those fallen ones like
Lucifer, assemble in the Presence of the Lord, God makes the "mistake"
(without which we wouldn't have gotten the lesson) to boast of His
servant Job, bragging that there's no "gooder" fellow around on earth.
Satan, obviously not very fond of God's crowning creation (for he was
told that their seed would bruise his head - Genesis 3:15),
jumps up and says, "Well, it's no wonder he's so good. You've got him
well protected with a wall of angels. But allow me to touch him, and
you'll see just how righteous and obedient he's going to be!" (See Job 1:8-12).
So the Lord allows Satan to
touch Job's possessions, all of which Job promptly loses by one
calamity following another, but still he remains faithful to God. So
Satan asks God for permission to touch his body, and thus we get the
rest of the Book of Job: the conversations of a diseased man who had
and lost it all, sitting on a heap of ashes with God and three friends
of his who try to comfort him (though not very effectively), all
culminating in Job's gloriously stubborn refusal to give up his faith
by stating, "Thou He slay me, yet will I trust in Him" (Job 13:15). In
other words, "even if God kills me, I will keep trusting in Him anyhow."
Greater faith was only seen
manifested by Abraham, who in effect said, "Even if He asks me to kill
my only beloved son, yet will I trust and obey Him."
The message that lies hidden in
the Book of Job, though, is much more a question of our own idea of
justice and righteousness vs. God's. Was it fair that God would allow
such evil to befall a righteous man? His friends kept insinuating,
"Come on, Job, you must have done something wicked to deserve this.
Tell us what it is!" But in the end, the Lord Himself comes to Job's
aid and tells Job's "comforters" to shut up. He hadn't done anything
wrong. It was all just a test. And he passed it with flying colors. So
much so that God gave Job back twice of all that he had lost.
The message for all of us in
this tale of suffering is: Cheer up! There's a purpose for the things
you're going through! God isn't just being mean. He's just bringing out
the best in you. In the process you may find out that you weren't quite
as good and perfect as you thought you were, in fact, you may just
realize how imperfect you really are. But that's the perfect ground for
God to start using you in a greater way than ever before. Those
crucifixions of our lives always result in a resurrection that
surpasses whatever you've been before.
The fires of those trials and
testings bring out the gold in us. Anything else will burn away. The
message is: Hold on another day! You won't regret it! Think about Job!
