Printer Friendly VersionI looked it up yesterday just to be certain. Sure enough there it was in the "Praise and Worship" hymnal. (some of you know what that is). The words to the song i remembered go like this: "It pays to serve Jesus; it pays everyday; it pays every step of the way. Tho' the pathway to glory may sometimes be drear, you'll be happy each step of the way."
Those are the kinds of songs I grew up on. Now granted, we didn't sing those kinds of songs all of the time, but I must admit I grew up with an unspoken expectation that if your religion was really working it would produce happiness. I guess we know better than that now in our ultra-realistic world, but that doesn't mean we like it. We kind of like the thought of being happy all the time and i think we're kind of mad that it can't be true.
I heard about a guy this week, however, who is trying to change that. I listened on National Public Radio to an interview with a man in England who is doing work in neurological research. Seems he's developed a device that he's planning to implant in himself that will record the electrical impulses going to his brain whenever he feels certain things. Then, in theory, he can "play back" these impulses and feel the feeling all over again. He imagined very excitedly that the day would come when we can record our happy times and then play them back during our depressing times so we don't feel the depressing feelings anymore but can feel the happy feelings.
Now I don't imagine that the framers of my childhood religion had exactly that in mind. But it did seem we were far more interested in spiritual happiness than we were in spiritual lament. Well, you can imagine my horror, then, the first time I heard someone talk about "being angry with God." It was blasphemy to my ears.
And yet I read Job, or the Psalms, or Lamentations, and there it is - bold-faced, raw negative emotion - directed at God! I learned never to talk back to my elders no matter how wrong they may be. So how can you possibly get away with talking back to God like this?
During these weeks we are seeking to learn something about suffering from Job. Suffering is common to us at some level at least. And we all know that one thing that accompanies suffering is intense negative emotion. It's probably the main reason we really don't know how to help suffering people. We don't know how to handle the raw emotion. We looked at Job's friends last week and saw what miserable comforters they were to Job. The main reason they failed in their mission of comfort is that they just couldn't take this jagged emotion. They were so uncomfortable with it in fact they attempt to answer it, explain it, fit it into some religious categories so it can be dealt with.
And we are often just like them in our approach to suffering people, especially when they turn their bitterness toward God. We just can't stand it so we try to shame them into happiness. Amazing!
Perhaps that's what Martin Luther's wife was trying to do. Martin Luther once was so depressed over a prolonged period that one day his wife came downstairs wearing all black. Martin Luther said, "Who died?" She said, "God has." He said, "God hasn't died." And she said, "Then act like it."
Have you ever received that message from Christian friends during a time of suffering? Maybe you've even received that message by being around the church. We like our gatherings to be uplifting and positive and to a great degree they should be. We do have so much for which to be thankful and glad. But "happy each step of the way?" Job will have none of it.
He says to his friends, "I'm not keeping one bit of this quiet, I'm laying it all out on the table; my complaining to high heaven is bitter, but honest." And in fact all through the book of Job that's what it is. It's the pained heart of a broken man crying out in confusion to a God that he trusts but doesn't understand. Of course Job doesn't know what we know. He doesn't know about the conversation in heaven between God and Satan. He doesn't know what God said to Satan about how faithful and trustworthy he is. He doesn't know that all that has happened to him isn't happening because God is angry with him or because he did something wrong. In fact it's because God was so pleased with job's upright life and wanted to prove to Satan that Job would serve him and love him regardless of his circumstances. Job doesn't know any of that. So he's left in his suffering wondering what in the world is happening to him. And God isn't talking. I mentioned before that once God and Satan finish their conversation, God doesn't talk again until chapter 38.
So here's job, stuck in his suffering. He's wondering, grieving, questioning, trying desperately to make some sense of all this. We know what that's like. That's why we identify so with Job. We may not know the depth of his terrible tragedies but we know those nagging questions. We know the disappointment of things not being as we thought they should be.
Dr. Jerome Frank at Johns Hopkins talks about our "assumptive world." What he means is that all of us make assumptions about life, about God, about ourselves, about others, about the way things are. He goes on to argue that when our assumptions are true to reality, we live relatively happy, well-adjusted lives. But when our assumptions are distant from reality, we become confused and angry and disillusioned.
That's what was happening to Job. His assumptions about who God is and how things worked in the world are being challenged. His assumption is that when you live an upright life things go well. When you live an unfaithful life you suffer the judgment of God. What he cannot put together is what he believes to be true about God with what he knows to be true about himself. He knows that he has lived faithfully and uprightly. So why has this calamity happened?
Those are the religious questions that give rise to lament. Those are the dilemmas that cause a heart to cry out in pain and even in accusation toward God. In this chapter job's expresses four protests to God:
1. If I've done something wrong to deserve this treatment, then make it clear
to me.
2. How does this fit into what I believe about you - that you're on the side
of good?
3. Is my life, created by you, that meaningless and insignificant that you
would smash it to pieces?
4. What's my purpose in life and how does this fit into it?
Now these laments sound a bit antiseptic just listed out like that, but as Job expresses them to God they are bitter and accusatory. Someone said that lament is faith with nerve. That's what Job is expressing here. Now here's the amazing thing. Job's friends spend this entire book, about 35 chapters worth, working hard to save God's reputation. They want to say everything right. The give the safe, religious answers. Job obviously does not. But in the end when God finally speaks and begins to bring some order into this chaos, how does he evaluate each of their responses? Remember from last week?
Here's what he says to one of the friends, Eliphaz: "I've had it with you and your two friends. I'm fed up! You haven't been honest either with me or about me - not the way my friend Job has." In the end, it's Job's lament that God receives as true faith, not the pious platitudes of his religious friends. The key is that Job's lament was honest. It wasn't the selfish temper tantrum that we sometimes throw with God. It wasn't about Job saying to God, "I want it my way and you aren't cooperating."
It was a faithful man saying to a God that he trusted with his life, "This hurts, this doesn't make sense, I don't understand this, I want you to answer me and help figure this out."
And perhaps the most well known statement of Job is when he says in the midst of his lament - "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him." Some might say, "Well that's nothing more than resignation to the inevitable. You can't win with God. He's always got you in a corner." But that's not the lament of faith.
Elizabeth Elliot, wife of a martyred missionary, said it well: "Resignation is surrender to fate; acceptance is surrender to God. Resignation lies down quietly in an empty universe. Acceptance rises up to meet the God who fills that universe with purpose and destiny. Resignation says, 'I can't,' and God says, 'I can.' Resignation says, 'It's all over for me.' Acceptance asks, 'Now that I'm here, Lord, can you do with this mess?"
You see I think what Job teaches us about suffering is that when it comes into our lives we can be painfully honest about the bitter feelings and hard questions that come. We can indeed "talk back to God." But like Job, we can "talk back" out of faith. Sometimes faith looks pious. Sometimes faith looks like dying. Sometimes faith looks like doubt. Faith can even look like despair.
All of those deep, raw emotions are faithful when they are expressed honestly to a friend called Jesus that we trust with our very lives. It's really not about answers. It wasn't for Job and it really isn't for us. It's about living a covenant relationship with God that is so deep and so secure that it can handle any question, any doubt, any feeling and come out on the other side where Job did: "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him."
Is there some disappointment, some hurt, some anger that you haven't honestly
shared with God because you're afraid it wouldn't be acceptable?
I want to encourage you this morning to give it over to him and trust him
with it. You may find out that the old hymn I grew up with is truer than we
thought:
"Tho' the pathway to glory may sometimes be drear, you'll be happy each step of the way."
