“O that thou wouldst hide me in the grave, that thou wouldst keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldst appoint me a set time, and remember me! If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee: thou wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands.
”
Like a child escaping from the dogs of the street, Job flings the door to the wall, and rushes to seek the presence of the living one. He would cast his load at the feet of his maker! But alas—nowhere can he see his face! He has hid himself from him! “Oh that I knew where I might find him! That I might come even to his seat! Will he plead against me with his great power? No! but he would put strength in me. There the righteous might dispute with him; so should I be delivered forever from my judge. Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him; but he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”
He cannot find him! Yet is he in his presence all the time, and his words enter into the ear of God his Savior. The grandeur of the poem is that Job pleads his cause with God against all the remonstrance of religious authority, recognizing no one but God. And grandest of all is that he implies that God owes something to his creature. This is the beginning of the greatest discovery of all—that God owes himself to the creature he has made in his image, for so he has made him incapable of living without him. This, his creatures’ highest claim upon him, is his divinest gift to them. For the fulfilling of their claim he has sent his son, that he may himself, the father of him and of us, follow into our hearts.
Commentary
Honesty in Prayer
by Dave Roney
“Wisdom shall die with you, for you are the knowledgeable people.” (Job 12:2)
The words used in the above verse are my own; “You are the ones in the know,” Job is saying; “you are the repository of godly sentience and wisdom; God help us—For, when you die wisdom will surely perish from the earth!” It is Job's stinging accusation against his three friends who were accusing him. God would also later accuse them! In the second chapter of Job we read that these three friends made a pact to go to Job and comfort him, and that for seven days they sat with him in silence—better for Job, for them as well, had they continued to maintain their silence!
Publicly our Faith is virtually bathed in the positive, saturated with joy, accompanied with upbeat music and sermons in the churches, testimonies graced with encouraging accounts of God's miracle working power in lives, to transform them, and to heal, restore, and bless. This is how it ought to be, our lives expressing that Joy which comes only from God.
That is not what I will address today; are you familiar with the fiddler crab? He has one disproportionately large pincer, and one atrophied. That is similar to how many believers see their Christian lives, on the one hand great transcending joy, on the other but small attention paid in our public lives to sorrow, grief, pain which cannot be alleviated. But amidst the smiling faces in the pews, among those with hands raised in praise, and voices exulting in hymns, are those who are completely crushed, who feel as strangers to the celebration, who within themselves, their private lives, feel abandoned, forsaken, alone—those whose prayers reach only to the ceiling, who cannot longer detect any comfort from or the presence of God.
It is of and to these I speak. To those for whom, because of their pain, Christianity has come to seem shallow, whose spirits are as dulled as has their faith become to them, who hear truths which are to them only platitudes and cliches.
So much attention is paid to the goodness and good things of the Christian life that many of us know little of how to address and deal with abject misery. We don't know what to say to those suffering, neither how to deal with suffering when it befalls us. We're not acclimated to the darkness; when light fades we are lost, at a loss for words, at a loss for how to help, and we lack the wisdom to know when to speak and when to remain silent. We feel, as believers, that we must say something as though it were our duty in every case.
Years ago I had a friend who contracted cancer which proved to be untreatable, and on my way to see him in the hospital I pondered what to say to him and rehearsed it in my mind; but upon entering the room and seeing him all the words dried up in my mouth. The lesions had broken out over his entire body, his eyes were sunken, he was skeletal, his breath came in gasps and his words in hoarse, belabored, whispers. I could only speak best by a humble touch, a smile, and then I left. He died later that same day. Many times when we would speak, even though what we speak be the truth, it becomes as, perceived as, a lie if spoken at the wrong moment. Looking down on my friend, to what profit for him would it have been for me to say “Well, as you know, all things work for the good to them that love God!” Technically correct, but such words would have been bitter to him whose suffering was so hard that he could no longer see any light from above. That would have been the most insensitive thing I could have said to my friend in his final, agonizing, moments—the only way such words would have benefited him would have been for him to speak them.
There are depths of grief so deep as to be impenetrable, suffering so vast as to become insufferable, pain that goes beyond the limits of what the rational mind is able to grasp. Not the spiritual discomfort of a stubbed toe, but that gangrenous infliction, the infection of misery that eats up and destroys the entire life, body, mind, and spirit. We see it all around us, perhaps we are now caught in the terror of it, if not we are certainly subject to it in our futures; pressed too hardly there is no created thing, no creature, which will not eventually break down. Would the pious condemn me for saying it? Then look to the Man among, yet above, all men hanging on His tree and screaming what his tortured lungs, His gasping breath, would tolerate; “My God! My God! Why have You forsaken Me?” Would anyone come along side Him in that moment and say “Now, now, Jesus; you know He hasn't forsaken You.”
On the one hand we have those saying “God's will be done” as though He ever could be the root and source of suffering. On the other hand are those, a growing sect among us, whose “gospel” is that of prosperity, of health, wealth, and success now; those who say “name it and claim it,” “all things are possible if only you believe.” Believe strongly enough and you will be healed, your finances squared away, your mate restored to you—and if you are not healed, then it is your fault; you don't have the right amount or quality of faith! The televangelist is there extending one hand for you to put money in and with the other extending to you his miracle spring water which, if you have the faith and use it, will cure your ills. And the gullible, desperate, reach out with the last shred of hope, only to fall into deeper despair when the sham is experientially proven a lie.
What do you say to the mother whose two year old is dying in her arms from leukemia? Or to the boy whose father has been murdered right before his eyes? Or the godly young virgin who's just been severely beaten and gang raped? Or the faithful wife whose husband of many years has left her for a younger woman? What do you say to yourself when such examples are you yourself? Or when your emaciated, pain racked body, is lying there in the hospital bed dying? What do you say to this God Whom you've adored and served, yet Who seems for all that is real to have withdrawn from you? Where is His face, His smile, His benevolence, His comfort? It is as though you are completely alone, hopeless. This is the lowest point of life, a living death, it is that to which Job had come to; and Job is not the only one.
David's Psalms are the source of comfort and sermons, and when he is downcast or discouraged, in the end of the Psalm he bounces back and praises God. But what preacher ever chose the 88th Psalm for his text? That Psalm begins, continues, and ends in despair—more, in fact, is this; in it David blames God. Here is only a part of his accusation against God:
“O LORD, why do You cast my soul away?
Why do You hide your face from me?
Afflicted and close to death from my youth up,
I suffer Your terrors; I am helpless.
Your wrath has swept over me;
Your dreadful assaults destroy me.”
David, like Job, has here begun to talk, to be utterly honest, to have shed the false and superficial, the theologically correct attitude, and to speak from the unvarnished chasm of internal pain and suffering which overwhelmed him: when we come to Job 10:3 we find the suffering man speaking with the same forthrightness as David; “Does it seem good to You to oppress, to despise the work of Your hands and favor the designs of the wicked?” He says of God “Although You know that I am not guilty there is none to deliver out of Your hand.” It is gloves off, the tortured man raging, in effect saying “I'm going to say what is real to me and let the chips fall where they may!” The entire 10th of Job mirrors what is found in the 88th Psalm of David. And those who've studied the Psalms will not be surprised when I say that in at least forty-five of them David complains about God.
How did the friends of Job respond to his outcry? In pious outrage; how dare he speak so? Surely his calamity came back upon him because of sin in his life; he was to blame; it was his own fault. And Job replies to them as recorded in the verse chosen for this reading; “Wisdom shall die with you, for you are the knowledgeable people.” (Job 12:2) It is said in derision, as a scold, Job's sarcasm dripping from the words—not very Godly of him, you say?—bear in mind that Job is by now gone beyond any semblance of what is considered orthodox; he is speaking in earnest, more honestly than at any other point in his life, exposing to full view, to God and to man, the boiling cauldron of raw emotions within which were shattering him.
Throughout the book Job is praying—if you understand prayer to be communication—then the book itself is a book of prayer; not the tidy little “just so” prayers, those which have a “happily ever after” ending, but visceral, real, honest, prayer that wears no gown but is naked, neither presents any expected reverence, nor resorts to reasonable faith—it is the gut level cry of the tortured.
The evidence of good men felt forsaken runs throughout Scripture; Gideon, “If the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us?” Jonah; Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live!" Isaiah; “You have hidden Your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities.” Elijah came to a brook, sat down, “and prayed that he might die.” Moses despaired; “Why, Lord? Why have You brought trouble on this people? Is this why You sent me?” Jeremiah says to God “You have seduced me; You were stronger than I and You overcame me!” Add all of these, and more, to Job and David; the very men you most admire in Scripture are the ones who railed against God, accused Him, felt abandoned and betrayed or slighted by Him in their lowest moments. Hear Job in one of his complaints:
"God has cast me into the mire, [blame]
and I have become like dust and ashes.
I cry to you for help and You do not answer me; [blame]
I stand, and You only look at me. [blame]
You have turned cruel to me; [blame]
with the might of Your hand You persecute me. [blame]
You lift me up on the wind; You make me ride on it, [blame]
and You toss me about in the roar of the storm." [blame]
(Job 30:19-22)
From the daily reading MacDonald says:
“He [Job] would cast his load at the feet of his Maker! But alas—nowhere can he see His face...He cannot find Him! Yet he is in His presence all the time, and his words enter into the ear of God his Savior.”
What? Even the words by which Job unjustly blames his Maker? Indeed, those as well as praises. Would a mother cast out her suckling babe because it was cross with her, with himself? Do you suppose that the faithfulness of God is contingent on our faithfulness to Him? Is He at all bound by our understanding, or lack of it? God would a thousand times more hear a man blame Him unjustly, were it an honest complaint, than to hear the drippy sentimentalism of of a thousand wagging tongues sending out their pious cliches.
What does an honest God seek from a man but honesty? He must search his soul and say only that which is to him true, be it true or not. The man on the death bed; he must be honest. The man who would comfort him; he must likewise be honest. The preacher must be honest with his flock, the flock honest with him and with one another. Honesty has as a handmaiden transparency; and when a man is entirely transparent, that is honest, those things which are within him will expose themselves. Such is the case with Job. Such was the case also with the Savior as He was dying. The honesty may offend us, especially if we are living in some make-believe world of the “just so's,” where the righteous are rewarded and the sinners prosecuted, and by that we are able to become judges.
And we who do not presently bear the burden of insufferable agony must be gracious enough to allow a man to speak openly and not feel it our duty to correct, to quote Scripture, to instead speak little and often enough to speak not at all except we know beyond doubt the Spirit guides otherwise. I have watched, in the funeral parlor, those who would attempt to bring relief to the grieved by words, politely received but little encouraging; and I have watched, nearly fascinated, to see a loving friend or family member merely place a hand on the shoulder; and this often elicits a stream of tears, if the bereaved is not beyond tears, and a silent embrace which speaks more in such moments than all the words in the world could speak.
THE DIVINEST GIFT (and the Claim We Have on God)...
by Dave Roney
“—You shall desire the works of Your hands. ”
from Job 14:13-15
I see two men representing humanity, one sitting in ashes the other lifted up on a cruel cross; the sufferings of the two are quite similar, their ghastly ordeals with pain, with loneliness, with seeming hopelessness, rejection, of weakness, of being misunderstood, scoffed at, chastised, of thoughts turned to death. "Job cries out to the Might unseen," and so does our Ransom in His darkest moment of the darkest hour, "My God! My God!;" like Job before Him, our Lord "asserts his innocence and will not grovel." The identity cannot be pressed too hardly, for indeed there are major differences separating between the two sufferings; but Christ was enough a man that in His own flesh he bore all of old Job's suffering and made it His own while Job was divine enought to declare in the preceding chapter "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” Thus I perceive a direct link between the two.
Even so, concerning Job's understanding, "The thought had not yet come to him that that which it would be unfair to lay upon him as punishment, may yet be laid upon his as favor." And of Christ, the major difference is that He had thought of it, did know it was laid upon Him as favor and no punishment; what could not be said of Job was surety in Christ; "For the joy that was set before Him He endured the cross, scorning its shame..." (Heb. 12:2). And with the light that shines through such thought begins the unraveling of the old Penal Substitution theory.
In the daily reading from the 24th MacDonald says Job "is the instance-type" of humanity. The framers of what is known as "Reformed" theology, seeking to bind up their tenets coherently, have ascribed to Adam the position of "Federal head of our race" and by that concluded all who are the seed of Adam and children of Eve are born with an inherited sinful nature. Scripture nowhere assigns this "Federal" position to Adam nor declares anyone to be born sinful; Adam is indeed a head of our race, as forebear, as father, as through procreation is the Seminal, but no Federal, head of humanity. To ascribe to him the cause of our sinning is absurd for it would make God unfair; it would be to condemn a child for sin his father committed.
Let me here provide a simple example. In our Appalachian chain there are mighty hemlocks towering above the canopy, and these for some years have been attacked by a blight which has killed many of them; let a hemlock stand in the place of Adam. These trees, though themselves diseased, produce annually seeds which are free from the malady though are subject to the same fatal infection as their forebears. And each of us since Adam, living in a diseased and broken world, have fallen victim to the malady of sin by our own will and actions apart from anything in Adam. Do not men know that Adam is the son of God, and that He is the Father of our father (Luke 3:38)? and that God Himself is therefore, through regression, our ultimate Father and our only Federal Head? Every person can, as Job, "plead his cause with God against all the remonstrance of religious authority, recognizing no one except God." Better our lot by far, infinitely better, that a pure and loving God be our Federal Head than any man, even the best of men.
One result of spiritual brokenness is pain, suffering, and death; another, the worst, is separation from God; but this is not the only separation. It is darkness, it is the result of His children pulling away from Him and going their own way as Prodigals. But it is also that darkness of the veil behind which He to large degree remains obscured; for He would walk with us as He supposedly did with Adam, and come into our midst as did He in the form of Christ Jesus, but He must for a time withhold Himself from His world; His face is hidden, His hand yet ever upon us, we walk by faith until we will, one Day, walk by sight. "He [Job] cannot find Him, yet he is in His presence all the time!" Here enters a profound thought;
"God owes something [that is to say is obligated to] His creature! This is the beginning of the greatest discovery of all—that God owes Himself to the creature He has made in His image, for He has made him incapable of living without Him. This, His creature's highest claim upon Him, is His divinest gift to them."
And, from another place, "He created them with needs which only He could meet." And those needs are, firstly, for He Himself more than any things about Him. And God will be no debtor to any man but has, even before the foundation of the cosmos, set the account right, which He has done in Christ, the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."
I have often thought that our definitions of Grace are entirely inadequate and that, at times, widely and woefully miss the mark. We may think that it is all of grace for an earthly parent to provide for their children, but that would not include the part of Grace which has to do with parental responsibility; for true grace is not only that which is received, but also that which is given. In a sense the small child has done nothing to "merit" provision, and that the needful things of life come to him as that "unmerited favor" which we call grace. Yet, in the same instant such needful provision is owed to the helpless child by those who brought him into the world. There is in grace the thought of God doing what He ought to do, is responsible to do, which He freely, thus graciously does, and does in the selfless devotion of His Fatherly Love Divine.
Does it sound alien that God is obligated to us in salvic Fatherhood, and that Christ is the Father's means of providing for us what He is by His Fatherhood obligated to impart? It is here I speak of the "remonstrance of religious authority," pushing back on the Penal Substitution Theory of the Atonement, which declares that Jesus "paid for our sins," standing between us an an angry God. I am saying neither did He die in payment for sins, nor that God's supposed Wrath was poured out one Him, but for and out of Love God our Father sent Christ and Christ died out of the same Love willingly and obediently; that He would in His great rapprochement change the hearts of men so that they themselves would become the executioners of their sins, crucifying their sins and turning from them, turn to the God Who is Love, become obedient to Him, become His true children, and be partakers of the Divine nature, being then redeemed, restored, and reconciled.
It is to say that Christ might die in payment for His sins, had He any, but He could never die for my sins; for those I am responsible; it is I who must slay Self and sin within me; it is me, alone, who must as St. Paul be about "dying daily" and "crucifying" Self: As He has died for (because of) sin, I must die to sin that dwells in me. The Justice of God is on two sides, ultimately, on the sinner's side, it is this: That on the one hand He would have the sinner to be the executioner of his own sin, would have him turn from the sin and repent of it (for God cannot force it on a man; "He cannot ravish but only woo"), begin to be obedient, count sins as does God, become like Christ and the possessor or real, and not some supposed imputed, Righteousness. And on the other hand, the Divine Justice is for God to forgive the penitent, to forget sins past, and find therefore no cause for condemnation in His child. This is no God Who hates sinners, Who is afar off, Who demands blood to assuage His anger; it is the true Father of Jesus, the God Who has shown Himself indelibly clear in the cruciform figure bleeding, suffering, dying, on Mt. Calvary with a heart shattered for Love. To see God one must see Christ, for the Father is exactly like Jesus.
The obligation of man, which is that of every person, is to give him or her self to God fully, freely, without reservations, even as God has given Himself to us. And that we, created in His image, reflect what is eternally in Him. He has laid claim to us, and we therefore boldly lay claim to Him. What is the greatest gift a man can give to God but himself? What is the greatest gift of God to mankind? It is He Himself. He is the Divinest Gift to us...
"This, His creatures' highest claim upon Him, is His divinest gift to them. For the fulfilling of their claim He has sent His Son, that He may Himself, the Father of Him and of us, follow into our hearts."
And in another starried place, drawn out from such a vast sea of constellations, is this:
"I saw, shadowed out in the absolute devotion of Jesus to men, that the very life of God by which we live is an everlasting giving of Himself away. He asserts Himself, only, solely, altogether, in an infinite sacrifice of devotion. So must we live; the child must be as the Father; live he cannot on any other plain, struggle as he may. The Father requires of him nothing that He is not or does not Himself, Who is the one prime unconditional Sacrificer and Sacrifice."
--from the pages of Wildred Cumbermede