Disappointing Ending
Out of the whirlwind, the LORD answered Job and said, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Dress for action like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me.” Job 38:1-3
How much do you know about the Book of Job? Right now, the Daily Office lectionary is leading us through some highlights of the book. We started with the strange and terrible prologue, in which God boasts of Job’s righteousness and Satan counters with a plan to sabotage God’s prized specimen. We read about Job’s faithful though misguided companions, who for seven days sat silently with their tortured friend as an expression of their solidarity before offering their objections to Job’s interpretation of his downfall. We heard Job curse the day he was born and skimmed through his friends’ responses to Job’s lamentations. Over the next two weeks, we will hear more from those friends and Job as well as from a young man who arrives and offers new prophetic insights into Job’s situation. Then, at last, we will hear from God, whose wisdom and purposes are presented to us as inscrutable.
Do you remember how the Book of Job ends? Do you recall that, after being needlessly tormented, after seeing his children tragically killed, after being deserted by his spouse, and after losing all of his possessions, God finally intervenes and restores all of Job’s fortunes, giving him twice as much as he had lost? One wonders whether that is supposed to sound like good news or like an intentionally hollow conclusion to a haunting tale that forever gnaws at our sense of right and wrong. To the reader, God seems more like a sadistic genie or a heartless plutocrat who wreaks havoc on others for his own pleasure before throwing riches around to cover up the damage. Sure, Job ends up even better than when he started, but what must it have felt like, sitting at that dinner table, surrounded by a new spouse and new children, yet carrying the burden of an incalculable loss that no one can explain or justify? How are faithful people like Job supposed to make sense of a world in which God has the freedom to send down blessings or curses yet does so without any regard for our sense of justice or fairness?
That seems to be the point of Job. The wisdom of this book was developed at a time when God’s people could not make sense of the tragedies that had befallen them. For generations, they had understood that God’s wrath would come upon those who were wicked, and God’s redemption would find those who were faithful. Even if it took generations to come to pass and even if God’s hand in it all was only discernable decades after the fact, they knew that eventually they would be able to look back and see that God’s interventions reflected a clear and higher understanding of righteousness. But, as the horrors of Jerusalem’s destruction had taught them, sometimes things do not work like that. Sometimes there is no amount of time and no depth of theological scrutiny that enable God’s people to recognize why God has allowed some terrible thing to happen. Sometimes, the ups and downs of life are as frustratingly inexplicable as a hypothetical wager between God and Satan, on which humanity’s existence rests.
We are tempted, at times, to ascribe divine purpose and meaning to situations that defy explanation. As important and valuable as theological reflection can be, the Book of Job teaches us that God is not asking us to make sense of everything that happens. More than that, it tells us to resist those who would offer simplistic justifications for how God is at work in the world around us. We are faithful not to the extent that we can make sense of what happens but to the extent that we can remain in relationship with the God who loves us even when terrible things take place.
At the end of its journey through the Book of Job, the lectionary does something interesting, offering its own interpretive gift to those who have persevered through the weeks of readings. Instead of finishing with God’s restoration of Job’s fortunes in chapter 42, as the biblical text does, the lectionary tacks on one more reading, circling back to give chapter 28 the last word. There, Job declares, “But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Mortals do not know the way to it, and it is not found in the land of the living.” Even in his dejected state, Job recognizes that wisdom and understanding are not only more valuable than gold or precious jewels but, in this life, utterly unattainable. For those of us who live in a world where real suffering occurs every day, there is comfort in those words—even more than we find in the so-called happy ending to Job’s story.
In times of great trouble, we are sustained not by the illusion that everything will work out perfectly or the expectation that our faith will provide satisfying answers but by the belief that God is with us even when everything else seems to be against us. That truth transcends every chapter of human history.
Yours Faithfully,
Evan