Early in life a man responded to the three angels’ messages by surrendering his life to Jesus Christ. Responding to good information, he adopted a vegetarian diet and a healthy lifestyle, hoping to enjoy a long life. He died prematurely of cancer.
Two little girls were returning from church after the service when the driver of a car veered off the road and struck one of them on the sidewalk, killing her instantly.
A Christian family read and applied the biblical injunction: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6).1 They brought up their son in a godly way. Yet when the boy grew up, he became wayward.
John the Baptist spent his whole life preparing the way for the first coming of Jesus Christ. Imprisoned by King Herod, he heard of the wonderful works of Jesus, whom he had earlier introduced as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He sent to Jesus to see whether he could have divine intervention and be rescued. Instead he was beheaded.
We could add more to this list of mysteries. They all evoke the question “Why?” We would all be happy to have answers to these whys, but God seems to respond too often with nothing. With silence, nothing but silence. But has God really been silent? Could it be that He has responded to our whys with an answer that we have been missing? Have we considered the record of Job’s experience as providence long ago provided, because God knows of our agony and need for reassurance?
Job was a man God Himself described as “blameless and upright . . . , one who fears God and shuns evil” (Job 1:8). Surely such a person can confidently claim God’s promise of protection in Psalm 121:3: “He will not allow your foot to be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.” But as we know, Job experienced devastating vicissitudes, one following the other in rapid succession: he lost all his property, all 10 of his children in one day, and finally his health (see Job 1 and 2).
In those days it was believed that specific sins brought specific punishment from God. Job’s three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, who came to comfort him, reminded him of that and urged him to repent so that he could be forgiven and his trials assuaged. Even young Elihu supported their view. According to him, God “repays man according to his work” (Job 34:11).
Job himself believed this theory. Thus the most painful part of his experience was his inability to explain the contradiction between his head and his body, between his theory and current events, between belief and experience—why an innocent person such as he should have such trials.
His friends insisted on the obvious explanation. The implications of Job’s claim to innocence were inconceivable: “Does God subvert judgment? Or does the Almighty pervert justice?” (Job 8:3). The innocent did not suffer as Job was suffering, and for Job to suggest otherwise was to imply that God perverted justice. Outrageous! The obvious conclusion, therefore, further confirmed by the fact that Job could think so outrageously, was that Job had to be guilty.
Job, however, vigorously defended his innocence. His language was categorical: “My foot has held to His steps; I have kept His way and not turned aside. I have not departed from the commandment of His lips; I have treasured the words of His mouth” (Job 23:11, 12). He even made a covenant with his eyes not to look lustfully at a woman (Job 31). And through the ordeal His greatest desire was to have a reason for his suffering. Had God been a man, Job would have taken Him to court in pursuit of some explanation or justification for his treatment. Reluctantly he had to concede that God “is not a man, as I am, that I may answer Him, and that we should go to court together” (Job 9:32).
Through three cycles of charge and countercharge Job and the friends insult each other. Zophar asks: “Should not the multitude of words be answered? And should a man full of talk be vindicated? Should your empty talk make men hold their peace? And when you mock, should no one rebuke you?” (Job 11:2, 3).
But Job gives as good as he gets, retorting to Zophar’s speech: “No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you” (Job 12:2)! He chafes at their insensitivity and cruelty: “These ten times you have reproached me; you are not ashamed that you have wronged me” (Job 19:3).
But though he complains at their denunciations, it is not their approval that he longs for. It is an explanation. And finding God is fundamental to getting that explanation. Hence his cry: “Oh, that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come to His seat! I would present my case before Him, and fill my mouth with arguments” (Job 23:3, 4). God’s voice alone will satisfy him.
The answer to our question as to why God allows the righteous to suffer calamities may seem to produce a deafening silence from God.
Yet, when God comes, when God speaks, Job is clearly unready to cope with it. After an eternity of silence God speaks. His speech is recorded in Job 38-41. Surprisingly enough, God’s speaking does not bring Job much explicit explanatory information. It does not tell Job what we have known from the beginning. Job does not see behind the scenes recorded in Job 1 and 2. He is not told of Satan’s demand to torment him to prove that he does not serve God for selfish reasons.
And the message of the book is consistent for just this reason. For no one of us in life is normally given an explanation—whether beforehand, during, or after our trials—stating that because of God’s conscientiousness Satan has forced Him into an awkward situation in our case, one that requires God to allow us to pass through some particular ordeal. We hear no voice and read no script on our own horror that lets us know we are God’s test. And as it is with us, just so is it with Job. God does not clarify for Job His exchanges with the adversary.
Rather, God asks Job tough questions, prefaced with a challenge: “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me” (Job 38:2, 3, NIV).2 Among God’s several questions are the following: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? To what were its foundations fastened? . . . Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loose the belt of Orion? . . . Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you set their dominion over the earth? . . . Who has put wisdom in the mind? Or who has given understanding to the heart?” (verses 4-36).
Before God ends His questioning, He challenges Job again: “Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who accuses God answer him!” “Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself?” (Job 40:2, 8, NIV).
Of course Job could provide no answer to any of God’s questions. He did not have to. God was not seeking information; He was sending a message. And Job got the message God was trying to get across to him: finite wisdom can never fully understand infinite wisdom. If Job could not unravel God’s wisdom as displayed in nature, how could he ever understand the way God dealt with him?
In the end, though the reason for his suffering was never revealed to him, Job was satisfied with the new revelation of God’s greatness in wisdom, and he had a new appreciation of his own smallness in wisdom. He concedes: “You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despi
se myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:3-6, NIV).
Perhaps at present the answer to our question as to why God allows the righteous to suffer calamities may seem to produce a deafening silence. But this is exactly as Job experienced it throughout his trial. And through the book of Job God has responded to our questions. He invites us to look at nature to appreciate the fact that His wisdom cannot be unraveled by finite wisdom. He chose not to reveal the reason Job suffered; He would not later reveal why He allowed John the Baptist to be beheaded; and He does not give personal clarifications to any of His children about why they suffer. Rather He invites all to trust His wisdom, as Job eventually did.
Today God’s children have a great advantage that Job did not have. We have his story. And we have an even greater advantage, indeed, an incomparable advantage: We have the cross. When we look at God’s love for us displayed on the cross, when we consider the condescension that brings God the Son to earth to bear and redeem us from our misery, we find the answers to every perplexity that has ever occurred or could ever occur.
And the promise of the One who so loved us is made indisputable by His sacrifice. For “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32). Surely we now know beyond the shadow of any doubt that He will give us heaven, where, in the words of Ellen White, “all that has perplexed us in the providences of God will . . . be made plain. The things hard to be understood will then find explanation. The mysteries of grace will unfold before us. Where our finite minds discovered only confusion and broken promises, we shall see the most perfect and beautiful harmony. We shall know that infinite love ordered the experiences that seemed most trying. As we realize the tender care of Him who makes all things work together for our good, we shall rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”3
