Introducing the Story of Job

"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be
burdened again by a yoke of slavery."
—Gal. 5:1

"The true worth of a man is to be measured
by the objects he pursues."
—Marcus Aurelius

Sometimes when people give testimony to their life the version they tell will differ depending on the context and content of the audience. There is the version told to a Christian audience. Then there is the version told to non-Christians. Finally, there is the truth.

Job is a book that tells things from the third point of view. We see the life of Job in a way that makes it impossible to pervert the truth into pious pabulum. My personal opinion is that the story of Job does this better than any other book in the Bible, other than perhaps Ecclesiastes.

I began this study in 1984 when my wife was pregnant for our twin sons. We had taken a vacation and were staying in a Condominium on Mackinac Island. The weather was chilly and a little rainy, so we spent the majority of the time inside the Condo. I had read the book of Job many times before and I could not explain why the Lord had so deeply moved me to re-examine this book of suffering during that time. Little did I know what was in store for me in the years to come! Although, after many years of working, editing, expanding and clarifying my writing, I still find new lessons.

To be honest, I cannot believe I have been working on this project for all these years, but in retrospect, it is clear to me what my needs have been for the lessons. The past several years there have been moments where all of hell seemed directed at me. I have seen times of dryness and frustration; times of failure and dissatisfaction; times of emotional and spiritual turmoil. Although I do not limp like Brother Jacob, I feel at times as though I have wrestled with God myself. I will readily admit the sufferings I have endured are nothing compared to the sufferings of Job. In fact, they probably have been nothing compared to the sufferings of many other members of my church or neighborhood. Nevertheless, pain is pain, and at times, my “pain” was enough to drive me to my knees, totally defeated, crying out for relief and understanding. The battles within raged on. I prayed, but somehow prayers did not “work.” I confessed the right things, read all the books and listened to all the tapes. Nothing at all worked, except lying low and gritting my teeth. That is until, for reasons entirely obscure to me, the straightjacket of oppression began to loosen a little—at least enough for me to get on with my life for another day or so before the screws tightened again. What else could I do? How was I to fight this? In retrospect, I can see that a large part of my anguish was rooted in the fact there really was nothing I could do to control what was happening to me. I was helpless, and it is this, perhaps, that is the soul of suffering, this terrifying impotence. Perhaps it is a small taste of what, for some, will be the final and most terrifying impotence of all, which is death.

Christians do not like to think about being absolutely helpless in the hands of our God. With all of our faith and with all of His grace, we still prefer to maintain some semblance of control over our lives. When difficulties arise, we like to think there are certain steps we can take, attitudes we can adopt, or positive confessions we can make to alleviate our anguish and be happy. Sometimes there are. However, anyone who has truly suffered will know that when it comes to the real thing there is no help to ease the pain, at least no human help whatsoever. Simply put, when we are in a deep dark hole we cannot think our way out; neither can we hope, sing, pray, confess, or even love our way out. In fact, there is absolutely nothing either we or anyone else can do to better our situation. Only the Lord Himself can do that, and when he does, as Exodus 6:6 puts it, “Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke.” How will we know? You will know because nothing and no one else could possibly have done it. In this kind of crucible, we come to a new understanding of what it means to be saved, what it means to be snatched away from the brink of destruction. Here we get down to the bedrock of the gospel.

As I read and re-read this story of Job, I see growing within me a brand-new dignity to being human and to all that being human entails. It has given me the freedom to doubt, to be overwhelmed, to fail, to fear, to be angry, to have passions—in short, to be completely myself. This describes the kind of man Job was. What I discovered through my study is that it is all right to be a human being. I found out that mercy is the permission to be human.

At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, I might confess that I wrote this study not with ink but with blood. I composed virtually every page under great pressure, at odd moments, on little scraps of paper. I did not write this in an ivory tower but in an ebony hole. There are no easy answers to suffering—there is no such thing as getting a grip on oneself or pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. The only bootstrap in the Christian life is the cross. Sometimes laying hold of the cross can be comforting; but other times it is like picking up a snake. Christ Himself found this out when He cried, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Have I, or do I, get angry with God? You bet. I have stood in the middle of my living room and screamed at Him. I pounded my fists on the floor. Once I slammed a door so hard that the molding shattered. I have gotten far angrier with God than I have ever been with any human being. I do not defend this behavior. Frankly, even as I remember my fits of anger I am lead to repentance. Although, in the course of it, I did learn such feelings are not at all incompatible with faith. On the contrary, faith involves our deepest passions engaged by the reality of God. Precisely because He is more real to us than anything else is, He is able to sound both the top and the bottom of our registers in a way no one and nothing else can. The person of faith is one who, like Job, knows what it is to be torn apart by the enormity of God.

The story of Job brings out the best and the worst in us. In effect, the book says, "This is what faith is often like. Do not be surprised if you find yourself confused, doubting, afflicted, and all but crushed. It does not mean you have lost favor with God."

To drive this message home, the book of Job does more than just address itself to the problems of suffering faith. It also addresses the problem of complacent faith, and it does this in the form of Job's three friends—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. Pharisees have trouble with this part of the story because it strikes too close to home. I say this out of personal experience, because as I came to write about Job's friends I found myself increasingly troubled about them. In many ways, the characters of these men began to appear just as complex and puzzling as that of Job himself. What made them tick? I wondered. In addition, where exactly did they stand with God? These were vital questions, I felt, and yet the more I thought about them and tried to reach some conclusions, the more disturbed and even angry I grew. Only gradually did it dawn on me that these feelings had less to do with Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar than they did with me. What I mean is this: while I had begun this study thinking that I deeply identified with Job in his suffering, I ended up realizing that I identified just as deeply with Job's friends in their loveless pharisaism. There is no doubt that the Word of God is a two-edged sword! While Job is primarily a tale of one man's pain, there is also an implied sequel to the story. This concerns the peculiar suffering of the man's three friends as they come face-to-face with the treachery of their feelings of authority and expertise.

A friend of mine was going through a time of particular spiritual oppression, when he could not shake the sense that God was implacably disappointed in him. His wife in her interminable wisdom gave him a Valentine card. The card read "You're okay with me, Valentine," and she wrote on it, "To Mike/Love God." Isn't it funny how a person can be a Christian, yet not really know the gospel? Isn't it strange how Christ can live inside us without our really enjoying Him? This gospel, it turns out, is not only good news—it is much better news than any of us has yet imagined.