Who's In Charge Here (Last Part)?

The reader knows, of course, that the rules of Deuteronomy 28 don’t apply in this case.  Job has gotten it completely right.  He suffers nonetheless.  Judah after the exile learns the D28 (as in Deuteronomy 28) lesson.  Violate the rules and be cursed.  Keep the rules and be blessed.  Yet they remain a colony of foreign powers—first the Persians, then the Greeks, and eventually the Romans.

The system, it would seem, is not so simple.  We get that.  There is something deeper here than the D28 rules and their outcomes.  Job’s friends never get that.  They have not died to that closed system.  Their worship of the D28 system crowds out their openness to a new thing from God.  Thus it is Job who says “what is right” (see Job 42) in the end.

This doesn’t, however, solve very much.  Why does God permit (and/or cause) Job to suffer so much “for no reason”?  Is this the question with which, for example, April Larson continues to struggle so deeply?  “I know that this is not punishment for some wrongdoing,” she told me on June 12, 2010.  “But I still don’t understand why God allowed Ben to be taken away.”  Was it “for nothing”?

It is one thing to dismiss the simplistic explanations.  We will not use the “blame the victim strategy of Deuteronomy 28.  That is, however, only the first half of the equation.  God is not punishing anyone in particular for a sin by sending the Haitian earthquake.  We would hope that God’s aim was somewhat better and more precise if that were the case.  But knowing what a thing is not doesn’t explain what a thing is.  Does Job suffer “for no reason”?  Did Ben Larson die “for no reason”?  Can we live with such words on our lips?

The promise in Isaiah 52 is direct.  Those who oppress God’s people shall not be allowed to contradict and disrespect God.  The Hebrews didn’t offend the Egyptians, so slavery was not a punishment that had a cause.  It was a gratuitous offense against God’s people and thus against God.  The same now has been true of the Assyrians and the Babylonians—and soon will be true of the Greeks and the Romans.  God promises that this unmerited suffering shall come to an end.  The Exile shall be over, and God’s Chosen People shall be restored to the Promised Land.

This will be the question that moves the conversation along for us.  Do I fear God for nothing—that is, without consideration of gain or loss, joy or sorrow?  Do I love God for God’s sake or for my sake?