The Book of Job is difficult. It doesn’t crop up very often in our Sunday readings: we have just 11 verses of it this morning from its 42 chapters. You may remember the story. Job has everything. He has a large family. He is wealthy and respected, and he is ‘righteous’ in the sight of God. But, at a Chief Executive’s meeting in the heavenly places one of the Managing Directors named Satan steps forward before the Boss and says words to the effect that Job’s righteousness is just skin deep. He only loves and serves God because he is so blessed. And so, a memo is written, and a cruel and unusual experiment is carried out to see what Job will do if everything is stripped away from him. Will he curse God rather than bless Him?
At this point we should be aware that Job is a ‘thought experiment’, an exercise in philosophy rather than a historical book. The question under discussion is what is called ‘theodicy’. Theodicy wrestles with questions to do with the goodness of God and how this might be squared with the obvious pain and suffering we see in the world: where does suffering comes from and what might our answer tell us about God? For Job (the book), the issue under discussion is whether suffering is related to sin: Job’s concern is to be shown to be innocent of sin – to be declared righteous before God. But much of the thinking of the time when this book was written, linked sin and suffering together – with righteousness and blessing as their opposites. If you push this line of thought you end up, like Job’s comforters who occupy chapter upon chapter of the book, telling people who are hurting ‘that they must have done something wrong’ to deserve their lot…. which, of course, is utter rubbish! And you end up with an opposite line of thought that suggests that anyone with a healthy credit balance, a big car and house and investments around the world must be favoured by God…. which is also rubbish.
The Book of Job presents us with a mental struggle: a struggle for human dignity and integrity on the one hand and for the protection of divine freedom (that there are some things we cannot even begin to comprehend as creatures and that God’s purposes cannot all be understood) on the other.
So, a ‘thought experiment’ and not a history, but what (in the story) happens to Job? Where is he when we hear his words this morning? What happens in the first chapters of the book is this: Job’s flocks and herds are stolen by marauding tribesmen, so he loses his money and his business; His servants are attacked and brutally slaughtered; his family die in a sudden whirlwind that destroys the house around them, they are left under the rubble and Job’s wife encourages him to curse God and die. Remarkably, in response to all this, Job utters the words we read at the beginning of our funeral services ‘The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord’. Surely, there is an end to his suffering? – but no. Satan now takes aim at Job himself. So, sat in deep mourning for all that has been stripped from him, so traumatised that he is unable to even speak (!) Job is then afflicted with disease and his health gives way.
At this point this book of ‘wisdom literature’, (this philosophical treatise) steps right into the 21st century and we see Job and people like him everywhere we look. In Sudan the Janjaweed militia raid remote villages, burning the properties, killing the men, raping the women and girls and stealing animals essential for survival. We have just passed the anniversary of Hamas’ October 7th attack upon Israel from Gaza, with its extreme brutality. Now, there are bodies underneath rubble in Gaza and neighbouring Lebanon. We see families displaced, people living amongst the ruins, sat in the dust and looking up to heaven for some relief from their pain. Children are suddenly maimed or killed. Parents are lost. We see trauma and grief piled high up to the skies. Then, don’t forget the scorched earth policies of the Russian military in Eastern Ukraine: the destruction of the dam on the Dnipro river that instantly wreaked destruction downstream, the missiles and drones that, from nowhere take everything from families like yours and mine. Or look across the Atlantic to the state of Florida where hurricane Milton has removed whole communities from the map: homes and businesses gone for ever.
Job’s suffering becomes up close and personal and we may well begin to see ourselves in him. Job wants an answer. He wants to ask God what He is doing? …and why? But God is distant (verse 8) If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.
And then, horror of horrors, Job wishes that he were dead. 17If only I could vanish in darkness, and thick darkness would cover my face! Earlier in the book Job had cursed the day of his birth: ‘would that I had never been born!’ Job’s suffering has totally eclipsed the good times that preceded it. Gone the memory of his family, his children, the sense of purpose and well-being. The pain he feels is so intense that, in this moment (like Shakespeare’s Hamlet) Job contemplates death as being preferable to the pain he feels: ‘To be or not to be? that is the question’.
Now we must wait and pause…. for we must tread very carefully here. Job wants to die. Professionals call it ‘suicide ideation’: in some people it is passive, a thought only but a thought that indicates a need for help and support. In others however it is active: a thought that will lead to an action. And this reading lands before us in church just as the ‘assisted dying (should we really call it ‘assisted suicide’) bill’ is being laid before Parliament.
And, in despair, Job starts pushing buttons that we would prefer not to be pushed. We’re now truly into the realms of faith and meaning. What is life? What gives our lives value and purpose? Does life only have value if it is free of suffering? How much suffering is enough? Wouldn’t it be better if we just ‘killed Job with compassion…if we offered him a way out of his misery?’ ‘You’d put down an animal, wouldn’t you?’ at least, so the argument goes.
But who judges whether life is worth living? Is it possible to preserve and protect human dignity even where a person has lost control of their bodily functions? – for that’s our fear, isn’t it? That’s what causes TV personalities (who will no doubt themselves receive the best palliative care possible) to head up a campaign that will endanger those whose voices will not be heard in the assisted suicide debate – the poor and infirm. If we, (in our thought experiment), allow Job to move from passive to active suicide ideation and assist him to take his life, have we affirmed or undermined our humanity? If Job’s life is not worth living, why not the lives of all who suffer? – are the lives of millions to be written off as of no value? Not just the articulate few but the inarticulate, those who live with severe handicap. In the end, all of us suffer an illness that will lead inexorably to our death: we are human – does our value decrease with age, or illness or are we always and forever those for whom Christ gave Himself, of infinite value to God?
Job does not die. Indeed, by the end of the book he has emerged from his ‘dark night of the soul’ and we are told that ‘the Lord restored the fortunes of Job’. If ever there was a lesson not to give up hope, this is it. But, with his children gone, his surviving family gather around him and comfort him. Life begins again, and (strangely for a book that rails against the idea that prosperity is a sign of blessing) Job’s fortunes change. He starts a new family and lives to a grand old age. That’s not everybody’s experience of suffering but one might hope that the last weeks and months of our lives might be filled with grace: that we might be granted grace to make a ‘good end’. That needs a commitment to living and dying well. It needs an investment in palliative care that currently doesn’t exist, that lifts access to hospices and care in dying from the lucky few to embrace all people. It needs us to value humanity and affirm the dignity of all: which includes those who are poor, those who are ill, those who struggle with their mental health or with chronic illness, those who are frail, those who live with dementia, those who cannot care for themselves and especially those who cannot speak for themselves.
This strange book of Job does not give him a reason for pain and suffering. It does not come near answering our many questions but perhaps its purpose is to force us to ask questions we’d prefer to avoid.
For all his looking, Job could not find God’s presence, he could not perceive Him. That’s a sadness, an indictment and a challenge. For God has no hands or feet but ours: the Jobs of the world need us to minister His loving kindness to those who cannot find it for themselves. And may we hope that, when we are in need, there will be others who will bring something of God’s goodness to us.
Get more updates and engage with the church community on our Facebook page