The Passion of Job: Why Job suffered and what we can learn from it

Part 1: The Meaning of Job's Suffering

The goal of this chapter is to take you on the same journey through Job that I took that summer in church. Perhaps, you will find the same message I did – that Job is God's lesson to us about the importance of awe in our spiritual life.

The clues about Job

The message about awe is not hidden deep down in some complex text in the middle of the Book of Job. You don't have to read the original Hebrew text. You don't have to look up the original words and study their meaning. You don't have to be a religious scholar in order to discover the meaning of Job. Once I began to approach the book in the right way I found that there are several clues that point to the issue of awe as the focus of this book. What surprised me as I started my study of Job is just how obvious are the clues that God provides. I now wonder why I ever had such a misconception about Job. Any one clue by itself could be dismissed as incidental but taken all together they clearly point to a picture of a man who needed to discover a sense of wonder in God.

The story of Job can be broken down into four parts. Within each part there are many clues to the real issue in Job. The six most important clues will be phased as questions. The answers to these six questions change the depiction of God from one of a supreme being who manipulates us for His pleasure to a loving and concerned God who will go to great lengths to instruct His children.

Clue One: How does Job pray?

The first clue as to the problem in Job's life comes early in the book (by the way, I encourage you to read the relevant passages of Job along with this book). In the first few verses of the first chapter, Job is portrayed as a blameless, upright, God fearing man who turned away from evil. What a powerful description of a believer. Who would not want to be described in God's Word in this way? Job is clearly a righteous man, certainly the type of person we all aspire to be. But, just a few verses later (verse 5 of chapter 1 to be exact), Job is described doing something rather unusual. To be honest with you, I did not find this verse unusual until I came across some of the later clues to Job's problem. However, looking at it in light of Job's lack of awe towards God (something that will be documented in later clues), it says something very powerful about Job and how he chose to deal with God. Verse 5 of chapter 1 reads:

And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, "It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts." Thus Job did continually.

Do you see something unusual in Job's behavior, in the nature of his prayer? Clearly, Job was concerned about the spiritual health of his sons – that's good; we all should be concerned about our children. Like Job every parent should be as concerned about the state of their children's spiritual health as they are about their physical health. As the verse describes, Job would offer sacrifices in their name – that's good. While we no longer practice burnt offerings, we do pray and we all should be praying about our children. The problem is not what Job did; the problem is Job's attitude. What is most revealing about Job and hints at a deeper problem is Job's motivation – the reason why he would ". . . rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings . . ." Look carefully at Job's reasoning. Maybe, Job thought, his sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. This may not seem like a big deal but it is the only description of Job's motivation; of his heart that God provides. It must be significant. Now, stop and think about Job's approach for a moment. Of course Job did not know for sure that his sons had cursed God in their hearts since he couldn't really see their hearts as God could. In fact, he admits that he did not know ("perhaps they . . ."). He might have had some suspicions based on their behavior, but he didn't know their hearts. Yet, he is making daily offerings to God for a condition in his children o which he has no knowledge. I can understand making offerings and praying for things that you know are going on in the life of your children but why concentrate on prayers for things that may not have happened? What does that even mean? It is clear that Job was trying to cover all the bases. He didn't want to leave anything to chance. But in the end, what real substance is there to a prayer that says "God, if my children have done anything bad forgive them." Imagine going up to a friend and saying if I have hurt you in any way, I am sorry please forgive me. What does that mean to the friend? How could your friend offer you forgiveness when you don't even know what it is you might have done? It appears that you are simply trying to have your cake and eat it too. That is, you are trying to gain forgiveness without having to face what you might have done. It is an empty, worthless expression of sorrow.