When we start trying to explain God’s plan, we are really explaining our wishes.
Job was a good man. Loved God, kept his ways, and he was rich on top of it. Everyone around him looked at his life and saw a man who was clearly blessed.
Then he lost it all in about four verses. Kids, livestock, servants, health. Gone, fast.
His friends show up and spend most of the book explaining why. Different speeches, same theory underneath all of it. God is just, suffering is punishment, so the suffering must mean Job sinned somewhere and isn’t admitting it.
Job won’t agree. He hasn’t done what they’re accusing him of, and he says so. They don’t believe him, because they need him guilty. Look at why for a second and it makes sense. If suffering is always earned, then being righteous keeps you safe, and they get to keep believing they’re in control of what happens to them. Easier to accuse Job than to give that up.
We like that idea too. Be good enough, do it right enough, and God will help you. Except look at it for ten seconds and you’ll notice you don’t actually want a universe that runs on that rule. It means everyone who’s ever suffered did something to deserve it. And we’ve all done something to deserve it.
If you’re honest, you know that even when you do something that’s technically right a large part of the time you’re not doing it for the right reasons.
Job’s friends go through chapter after chapter of explaining why things happened like they did. Kind of like how we act like we can discern God’s plan for us. Here’s what actually happened: God let Satan destroy a man’s life over a bet Job had no say in. A righteous man, no less. Read that straight and it’s offensive. But once you sit with it, the friends’ explanations are the part that’s almost funny, how far off they were chasing a reason that didn’t exist.
When God finally answers Job, He doesn’t explain the wager. He asks where Job was when the earth was made, whether he can command the morning. Shows him the size of what he isn’t equipped to know, not the reason behind it.
We’d do well to spend less time hunting down the reason for things. Job’s friends never could have worked out what was actually happening, no matter how hard they tried. Job probably never found out either, this side of being back with God.
We like to make it sound like it’s easy to trust. But it’s not. At least not all the time. Not when it’s impossible for us to know the why. That’s why we fail repeatedly. And why God made provision for us.
P.S. If you’d like to read through the Bible this year, you can join us at His Word Together.
No commentary. No telling you what to think. Nothing to buy. Nothing fancy.
Just steady time in the Word.