THE CHURCH IN FLUX
Chapter 16
We live in New Times, that’s why everything will change.
That’s a bold statement, isn’t it! We live in new times, the Last Days as I have indicated earlier. Therefore everything will change. And if we resist, then circumstances will force us, because, as 2 Peter 3:10 indicates: in the End “Everything will be laid bare,” which basically means that all the good things we did will be revealed – a rather tiny list I imagine – and all the booboos we committed – quite a long series I am sure – will also be made public, for all to see. No wonder the Bible Book Apocalypse translates as Revelation.
Something is already happening out there. The fact that I tackle the issues of the church and lay bare the unmistakable givens that the church, as an institute, must be drastically reformed to conform to the New Testament idea of church, and prepare itself for the Kingdom to come, is, in itself, an indication that we live in the Last days.
Of course, as had become plain in an earlier chapter, there are many signs to that effect, such as Global Warming, the desperate attempts to avert an Economic Crisis, and the undisputed power of The Evil One. The Lord has promised that before the End would come the Tidings of Great Joy will be made known everywhere in the world. That too is now happening, thanks to the World Wide Web, where every thinking person in the world can access everything else, including this writing, so that even these whispers will wind their way everywhere.
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to tear down and a time to build” a quote from the well-known words in Ecclesiastes 3. Today we live in a world where we must tear down everything that carbon-based living has made possible, because it has become the curse of everything, including the edifices, both in mega-churches and in commerce our predecessors have erected in the way of super-structures.
Actually there is one Bible book that contains, in essence, most of what I have written so far. No, it is not the last Bible book, that mysterious book of Revelation. It is found smack in the centre: the book of Job.
Here’s, in brief, how I view that book. I see Job representing the church in general, a pious man, god-fearing, devout. His possessions, his immense flocks, his many servants embody the world. Job was rich and prospered, as did the church today and its people: they thrived in the 20th Century as never before, and multiplied as never before: more than tripling during that century.
Just as evil ruled during the last 100 years -disastrous wars, the Holocaust, Rwanda and Cambodia, with much more to come when Peak Oil bites, because Satan had free reign -so too did evil happen during the life and times of Job. When God shows Job the real picture – something we too are slow to grasp – then Job is converted from being ego-centered – personal salvation -to being eco-minded – seek first the Kingdom. The book concludes with the coming of the New Creation, when Job’s fortunes are restored. That’s the story in a nutshell. Here’s more detail.
For some reason Job is a favorite with poets and philosophers but not with preachers. Although I am neither, it’s also my bible book of choice. I don’t understand why so many people get turned off by God in this book. Perhaps it had something to do with his encounter with that mysterious figure called the Satan, who, out of the blue, appears in heaven and when God asks him, “what are you doing here?” says, “Oh, I was going out for a stroll, saw the door open and decided to say hello.” And then curiously, as if it were a common-day matter, the Lord says, somewhat flippantly may be, to the Satan, “Say, you get around. In your wanderings have you noticed Job out there in the land of Uz? I tell you, no better person anywhere in the whole world.”
“No wonder,” replies the Satan: “look, you have given him special protection and have favored him above everyone else. I bet you that if somebody were to ruin him financially and kill off his immediate family, he’ll curse you to the face.”
The Lord says, “Alright. It’s a deal. He is in your power. Don’t touch his body, though.”
And so it happens. Job loses everything and has no clue about the wager God made with the Accuser. Now, what is at play here?
I’ll offer two complementary options. Let me begin with the more literally explanation, the more conventional, and a look at Job’s religious background, the ruling philosophy of his day.
Job believed, with all people then and many today, that being rich in possessions was a sign of piety. And evidently the Satan is of that same opinion because he figures that, as soon as Job would lose his personal and material treasures, he would deny God.
However, even though Job is reduced to utter poverty, his faith remains steadfast, evident from his famous words: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Quite the statement, that. Just imagine that we, you, I, in one day, see our immediate family killed in a car accident, a drunken driver being the cause; then lightning strikes, our house burns up and we have forgotten to renew the insurance; next, due to a market crash, our portfolio is wiped out, our job disappears, and all we have left are the clothes on our body. What would our reaction be? Like Job? Not likely.
And that is only the beginning. Again a mysterious Satan visit. Again God gives him permission, this time to affect his health. So Job becomes an AIDS sufferer, quarantined, placed in isolation, somewhere in nowhere. There his wife approaches him and angrily shouts, “Do you still cling to your pious ways? They are no use to you now. Curse God, if he exists and then die like a man!” But Job remains unperturbed: “Shall we accept the good from associating with the God, and the evil not accept?” Job manly refutes her words, but the real agony starts when his close friends arrive.
Of course the big news about Job’s misfortune had spread rapidly through the land (imagine Bill Gates gone broke!), and three friends from far away heard it too and made ready to pay him a visit. Weeks must have passed for this to happen. They often had been Job’s guests at his lavish banquets where they had enjoyed vigorous but agreeable discussions ranging far a-field. When they see Job in the distance, sitting on a small hill, they stop, sit down and look at him for 7 days and 7 nights, without saying a single word.
Job too remains quiet, even though his mind is in overdrive. Somehow their body language reveals to him their thinking before they even utter one word. And as they sit there and he sits there, he gets madder and madder, because he is utterly at a loss. Job tries to fathom why he is suffering so much. Somehow he could bear it as long as nobody sees him. But now he has become a public spectacle. Continuously his mind revolves around the basic question: “God is doing this to me. No, God can’t do this to me. Yes, it is God. No, it isn’t.” He is going crazy. His mind, already weakened by his sickness, cannot think straight anymore.
Of one thing he is sure: he already knows what these three are going to tell him. A long time ago – at least it seemed a long time ago – when they talked, often till deep in the night, they agreed, God’s favor is reflected in a multitude of offspring and material blessings. And, of course, the opposite is true as well: personal calamity spells sin: the greater the punishment, the more serious the crime against God.
Then he had thought like them. Not anymore. What is happening to him has not happened because he has sinned. No. No. With all his power in his weakened body he now denies this theory. And yet, he still does not know the alternative, he just can’t grasp why God is treating him this way.
As his friends sit there for what seemed like an eternity, silently and disapprovingly staring at him, it dawns on Job that they are his friends no longer, because people who do not understand your deep-seated anguish, are friends no more.
Suddenly his mind snaps, his patience gone. Who ever said that Job was long-suffering, had it all wrong. He burst out in a fit of total anger: anger at himself, anger at his own uncertainty, anger at his friends for their cold orthodoxy, their Calvinistic certainty, anger at God for whatever. And he burst out: “God curse the day I was born and the night that forced me from the womb”
The entire third chapter is one long condemnation. Job: “Why couldn’t I have died as they pulled me out of the dark. Now I would be at rest, I would be sound asleep.”
His outburst opens a flood of words. First Eliphaz. Not a word of pity. Only more hammer blows: “These words will perhaps upset you” so he starts optimistically. “Once you brought relief to the comfortless, but now, when disaster comes to you, you rebel. Tell me, whoever perished, being innocent?”
That’s how the first friend starts: pious words; cruel words; conventional words. This fellow knows exactly what God thinks or does.
But Job does not buy his line. No longer. In Chapter 7 he challenges God and demands an impartial judgment. Job knows that in his particular case, even though God has caused him all this misery, only God can be the true judge. So it is no wonder that Job screams at God, “Why have you made me your target? How come that I am in this miserable condition?” Here Job plays an dangerous game. He thinks, correctly in my opinion, that he can honor God only through fighting with God. That’s a new angle: Praise God through battling with him. Arguing with God about what has happened to us. Not just meekly say: “OK God, I take what you give me.” No, Job is different.
And then comes the next speaker: Bildad: Of the same stripe as Eliphaz, only more so, and even less honorable. He makes a snotty remark how Job’s kids were spoiled brats. Says he “Your children must have been evil: he punished them for their crimes.” In his further remarks he shows that he actually is afraid that whatever happened to Job might happen to him as well. His insecurity is best portrayed by his vision of God. He tells Job: “listen, this is what God wants, because God never betrays the innocent.” To Bildad too God is an open book: for him no reserve, no real fear of the hidden God.
To Job God is a mystery. God is THE mystery. That is His essence. After all, a god we can understand is no god. A crucial point of the book of Job is the relationship between God’s revelation on the one hand and God’s hidden-ness on the other. The paradox both Christians and agnostics face, is how God can reveal Himself when He is hidden, when He is the Totally Incomprehensible One, Mystery Incorporated. Job, before his ordeal, had a clear picture of God: if he behaved properly, God would bless him. It was just that simple. An article in TIME on the Mormons said unashamedly that “material achievement in the USA remains the earthly manifestation of virtue.” That’s why we will have a depression, probably worse than The Great Depression.
To Job that idea of prosperity being a sign of God’s blessing, has been shattered. His earlier notions about God have been found wanting. With Bildad and his companions, their concepts about God have become their god. For them there are no divine secrets and no sudden surprises, no mysteries. They know exactly what God has in mind for Job and so their awe for God has disappeared and their so-called piety has become a form of godlessness.
We see this phenomenon a lot in orthodox religion, where the law is more important than love. The friends are the typical, judgmental orthodox believers, be they Christians, Muslims or Jews who sense exactly why Job is in this state: it is God’s punishment. Period. True, when Job was rich and healthy, his friends valued his opinion, but not anymore. Now something has changed and it is not they. It’s Job. His suffering has made him a different person. Now the God Job relies on is a totally different God. Who is right? Job honoring a mysterious, unknowable God or his companions who revere a God about whom they know everything?
Eliphaz bluntly tells Job in Chapter 15: “Job, you are undermining religion and crippling faith in God.” Buddy Bildad dooms him to hell in Chapter 18: “Brimstone will be strewn on your household.” But Job stubbornly clings to his faith when he says in Chapter 19:25: “I know that my Redeemer is alive and that in the end He will stand upon the earth. He will plead for me in God’s court; he would stand up and vindicate my name.”
Those are truly amazing words. Unbelievable what suffering can do to people: it can totally change them. The Satan had not counted on this sort of conversion, a conversion brought about by the suffering God inflicted upon Job. He had figured that Job’s theology would be stagnant, a theology teaching that religion never is for nothing.
I once heard a radio preacher say that the road to prosperity is simple: “start everyday with prayer, go to church, tithe, of course give to his radio or television program and read the bible.”
The Satan wanted to score a fast one with God, and prove once and for all that Job would deny God as soon as he had become a welfare bum. But he failed in Job, because this sort of tit for tat is the theology of the devil.
Job’s story tells us that there are no immediate rewards to religion and by this I don’t mean that being religious does not benefit people now. It does. Religion, any living and evolving religion, gives people in general, a moral focus, stability, security and a purpose in life.
Suffering teaches us wisdom. Faith finds expression in wisdom and in Chapter 28 we see the continuation of Job’s conversion, because conversion is always a slow process, just as acquiring wisdom is. Here Job confesses his basic ignorance. He, who once was a very rich man, now confesses that being well-off can hinder the development of wisdom, something we, prosperous Westerners, forget at our peril. In his suffering Job’s conclusion is wonderful: “Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to shun evil, that is understanding!”
After all these torrents of words, silence. “What next?” these former friends wonder.
Then the Lord spoke to Job out of a whirlwind. God Himself answers Job personally. The Hidden One remains hidden, but not completely. God addresses Himself to the one person who has asked constantly “Why”. The other four men knew the answers, gave the pious platitudes, were comfortable, and avoided the touchy issues. Job, who had suffered, and wondered why, to him God directed himself.
The curious thing about the Lord’s sayings is that they all come as questions. “Where were you when I founded the earth? Who determined its measurements – if you know? Do you know the seasons of the mountain-goats? Have you marked the calving of the deer? “Do you give the horse its strength” Do you cloth his neck with thunder? Do you understand the sea and can you grasp from where all these waters come and what purpose they serve? Have the portals of Death been rolled back for you?” No wonder John 3:16 is the key passage in the Bible, showing God’s love for his creation, his Kingdom.
Now it dawns on Job that his suffering, which he had made the central point of the universe, is nothing compared to God’s greatness, to his over-arching wisdom. While God hurls these questions at Job, a strange peace descends on him. He starts to realize that part of the secret of salvation is that God does things just for the sake of doing things. He now starts to see that all of life is a miracle which needs neither a reason nor a cause but no other ground than God’s creative act, no other purpose than His own glorification, in which salvation is included.
His suffering has sharpened his thinking and he discovers to his amazement that in and above all other useful, moral, beautiful goals, rises the one great given that God be known, be lived, be confessed, and believed as the only Godly being. His Essence is nothing else but to live and to give life.
God’s aim for humans is to have all people participate in His fullness. We, humans, are not the only focal point. We are not the totality of creation, although we often think so. John 3:16 explicitly says: God so loved the world, the cosmos that He sent His son. In the world we ask for reasons, but when ask for a reason for the world there is only one answer: the answer is that the pivot of life is God and God alone, and the Kingdom He has created, whose welfare must be the goal of all Christians. We may think that we are powerful with our tools and brains. We are not. Writes one of the greatest brains in science, John Wheeler of Princeton in The End of Science, “As the tiny island of our knowledge grows, so does the great shore of our ignorance.” We, at the height of our scientific powers, are discovering that the more we know, the more we discover we don’t know. The real Answer, the key to the Universe is now as elusive as ever and more and more scientists are admitting that. What God wants Job to understand is that God is infinite in His creative powers, infinite in the beauty of creation, infinite in the design of His work of Art. God wants Job to marvel at His ingenuity. He wants Job to be astounded by the revival of nature in the spring, by the multitude of flowers which adorn the landscape, by the erratic flight of the swallows, the steaming heat of the summer, the almost plaintive sounds of autumn, the stark dignity of the winter landscape. He wants Job to affirm that his first duty in life is the enjoy God forever, and this pleasant duty starts with marveling at his creation.
When God is finished, all Job can do is to exclaim in utter surrender in Chapter 40: “How can I reply to you? I lay my hand on my mouth. Once I have spoken, but I cannot answer; even twice, but I can no more.” His conversion is affirmed when he confesses in chapter 42:
“I know you can do all things and nothing you wish is impossible.
Who is this whose ignorant words cover my designs with darkness?
I have spoken of the unspeakable and tried to grasp the infinite.
Listen and I will speak. I will question you: please, instruct me.
I heard of you with my ears; but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore I will be quiet, comforted that I am dust.”
Job did not find a solution for his questions, but he did find deliverance from his questions. Job never saw God but his new-found comfort was that God saw him, because Job came to Him with questions: “Why did you do this, Lord? Why did that happen to me, Lord?”
The meaning of the book of Job is not that Job could solve the problem of his suffering in his life or that we can solve the pain and injustice in our lives. One of the basic truths of the book of Job – and also the thrust of this book – is that we must not take generally accepted truths for granted but that the most commonly accepted ideas about God and creation have to be probed and questioned without ceasing.
We never arrive; we never can say: we know enough. As long as we live we have to keep up our search for Truth, and we joyfully must accept this: semper reformanda, always keep on reforming! Especially now as we live in new times: that’s why everything must change. More about that in the next chapter, which continues the Job saga.