.::discover::understand::be::.

my job description

i had to write a mini-article for our newsletter at watermark. i wrote about what we have been doing in cession. i have a strong feeling the article will be editted down quite a bit so i suppose you all have a chance to read the full monty. enjoy...


Job Description

That’s the name… Job. Not the alternative word for occupation. A Job description. Typically Job’s name is synonymous with suffering and pain, agony and turmoil. After all, the poor guy loses everything; family, home, livestock, and even reputation. But he doesn’t lose what is most important. Maybe that is what the book should be known for: what Job doesn’t lose. In that light we find a story about how God believes in us and a story of God’s faithfulness and ultimately a story about the beauty that is found in the mystery of God.

At cession this past month we have been reading the Book of Job with different eyes and listening with different ears. Which has lead us to ask different questions and helped us discover a different Job. And with the discovery of a “different Job*”, we find new implications and new applications for our walk with God through Jesus.

We see that the relationship between the pain we experience and the wrong we commit is not necessarily a direct relationship. Sometimes there is no relationship at all, and that can be frustrating to say the least. But what does this say about God? About suffering? About justice? Flip it around… if we do not see a direct correlation between suffering and doing wrong what is to be said about doing right and finding joy? I think we ask the wrong question when we read this book and ask “what causes what?”. But the question should be “how do you define joy?” or “what determines my happiness or suffering?” Those can be tough questions and with even tougher answers.

We see that Job doesn’t just roll with it. He boldly vocalizes his angst and makes poetry out of pain. He refuses to play the “poor ‘ol me” card. He refuses to be defeated. His commitment to God never wavers and he never curses God. Question? Yes. Curse? No. In fact it is even suggested that his commitment intensifies.

In this time of questioning and facing His suffering Job discovers something that eludes many of us - the mystery of God. He does more that discover he embraces, he walks in, he finds joy in the mystery. He even comes to respect the mystery of God. In the mysterious unknown of God, Job finds himself in a state of worship, full of wonder, love and praise.

We also see that Job is not alone in his suffering. But he may be better served alone. His friends show up with all the answers to why Job suffers and bestow their wisdom on him by answering all the questions Job posed to God. “Sufferers attract fixers the way roadkills attract vultures.” And like vultures, the answers his friends offer slowly pick at him, doing nothing constructive. Many of the answers they give Job may be “technically” true, but it is the technicality that makes them empty answers. “They are answers without personal relationship, intellect without intimacy.”

The answers are secularized wisdom – they are religious. They are man’s understanding of God. Not God! Job rages against such answers that are absent of the living realities of God. They are answers severed form their Source – absent of the Living God. “We cannot have truth about God absent from the mind and heart of God”.

In beginning, Job had everything and God. In the middle, Job had nothing and God. In the end, Job has a future and God. God is the constant.

There is a lot to be looked at in the book of Job. It says a lot about God. It says a lot about us. It says a lot about our ideas of God. It says a lot about God’s idea of us. It’s a story of a guy who on the outside has it all, and on the outside, loses it all. His friends turn on him, attempting to show him that he has a wrong understanding of God that has lead him to lead a “wrong” life. Yet, he never fails in his commitment to God. Job follows Him through it all… “His will be done.” And in the end, the Father restores His Son.

Amazing story. It gains even more wonder and mystery when you consider that many theologians argue that the Book of Job may be the first book written, before even Genesis. If this is true, and we most likely will never know, it may deserve another look. The thought that this is the first story God has for us, makes this little “book of suffering”, this little “book of wisdom”, all the more mysterious, all the more powerful.

Read it again, with new eyes. Or read it for the first time. In all the mystery, it may draw you, like it did Job, into a state of worship, full of wonder, love and praise.

posted by nathan sean @ Wednesday, February 01, 2006