GOD, WHY ME?

Hello to you if you’re reading, I hope you’re well. My hope as always is that this can be helpful to you as you journey along in your life and in your faith.

According to the authors of the bible, God is the ultimate form of being. He is the God and he has authority over everything. Despite this ultimate authority over existence the God of the Bible is generous and he shares his authority with all of creation. God’s desire is for a creation that is united in him and by him. Right at the beginning of the biblical story God creates a pocket of existence known as Eden. Eden means delight. It is this piece of creation that is good, but it’s fragile. God and humanity exist in this good place together and for a while peace and harmony prevail. But then the serpent enters the picture and convinces humanity that to be like God they have to eat the fruit he forbade them from eating. The irony of that lie is that humanity was made in God’s image so they’re already like him. Now humanity is presented with a choice, trust fully in what the good God says is good or trust in what they say is good. We know the story; humanity picks the latter and plunges into a rebellion against the order of God. But God continues to be God and he relentlessly pursues humanity to draw them back into the good he intended for him. The bible is a single pattern. God pursues his creation, and along the way we meet many flawed and many righteous people, most times we meet people who are flawed and are also righteous. However sometimes in the bible we meet humans who have fully embraced the good of God the righteousness in these characters stands out and the bible makes it a point to show us that it does. But suffering and chaos are things that even they experience and honestly it sucks to read.

One of these characters is Job. Job is a righteous man from a place outside of Israel called Uz, the kings of this place are subject to the coming wrath of God, but Job is blameless in the eyes of the Lord. Job is a man who’s blessed and the Lord is with him. As the book opens we’re introduced to him. Job is a rich man with a thriving family, but the thing that stands out about him is how devoted to the lord he is. Every morning Job would get up and acknowledge and make offerings to the lord on behalf of himself and his children and he consistently turned away from evil in a place where men always turned towards it. One day God and his council are holding court. The bible frames this as a thing that usually happened, but this particular day was different because Satan (the accuser) was among the people in the council. Satan was not invited so God asks him where he’s come from, Satan says he’s been wondering the Earth and afterwards God, unprovoked by Satan brings up Job and lovingly exclaims just how upright and blameless he is, God even goes as far as saying that nobody on the planet is like Job. Then Satan’s response kicks off maybe one the most beautiful stories ever been written. In this court scene, The Accuser claims that Job only loves God because he’s been blessed and up to now his life has been good. If God were to take everything away Job would turn to evil. God has full faith in Job so he disagrees and Satan says okay let’s test him. Then stunningly to most (me included) God lets Satan do his worst to Job! As a result this righteous man suffers (we’ll hopefully take a deeper dive into Job’s suffering in the next couple of posts). To add to the frustration Job never learns why he suffers and there’s never an explanation as to why God let Satan run riot in Job’s life, the book doesn’t even try to explain it, it’s clear those are not the questions it wants to explore. But then what are the questions being asked?  

Let’s start with The Accuser. You see his questions to God are actually questions to us. If God stopped blessing you, if the gifts and the favour stopped, would you still want to know him? That’s what Satan is asking. Would you enter into a relationship with God if God was the only thing to gain? Is God a means to an end for you or is God the end in itself? If blessings are the manifestations of God’s goodness, should it not be more important for you to be intimately connected to the good God or do you only want to be connected to the manifestations of his good? Are you in it for the gifts or do you want to know the giver? 

This is Satan’s accusation against Job; it is also his accusation against you. As we go into the week and you make another attempt at life and faith really ask yourself, do you worship the gifts or do you worship the giver? There is nothing we can offer God and yet he still gives, all he wants is for us to know him. I hope that we want to know God as well and not just know his blessings.