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Like Job in the first reading, we all come upon times of chaos, times of stress. There are so many aspects to life for which there are no solutions. People have lost a loved one. Who has a solution to make the pain go away? Some members of our parish have chronically ill children. Parents are exhausted as their hearts are being torn to pieces. In some families, alcohol, drugs, psychological problems, or infidelity have broken up a marriage and a home. How can the family return to its state before it was devastated? It cannot. There is no quick fix solution. Like Job we all experience what he called months of misery and nights of terror. Perhaps, we do not suffer to the extent that Job suffered, but life brings with it many challenges, including challenges to our faith that God will get us through the crisis.
The Book of Job is the summit of literary work and a great investment of time, if ever you wondered about the problem of pain and suffering. From the pit of pain at the loss of his family, his possessions and even his own physical well-being Job is struggling to stay faithful. He is a most conventional or normal human being. He has lost everything except some trust in the value of life, and very little even of that. His “ouch” we all know in our own personal lives.
Persistent suffering affects our mind and body. Though in great pain and believing death imminent, Job vacillates between faith and doubt in the Lord. Having observed persistent suffering at hospital and home visitations, I have seen this wavering of the mind between faith and doubt. One moment, the afflicted express great faith, the next moment, and great doubt. Such suffering changes the emotional state, which in turn, affects the personality. The Job of chapter three seems a different person from the Job of the first two chapters, but not completely so. His great faith returns from time to time, but now Job, his body wasting away and his mind racked by pain and loss, expresses doubt and confusion. And most disturbing, Job, and his friends, all believe that calamities and tragedies were judgments of God because of sin, and that prosperity and blessing were one-for-one rewards because of a person’s righteousness. Though having many problems, for Job this is the problem. Then Job recognizes that God may not vindicate him in this life, but God will vindicate him yet. Even if it comes at the resurrection, his own eye will see his Redeemer, his Vindicator. Job has faith, not a vague notion of positive thinking—a faith in faith. Like all saving faith, Job’s faith has an object upon which it relies. Job’s faith, trust, and reliance focuses upon God, his Redeemer. He believes, against all odds, that whether in this life or in the life to come, His divine Redeemer lives and that He will vindicate him. This is the victory that overcomes the world.
If we are to advance in faith, we need the same vision of God that Job experienced. While God probably will never speak to us out of a whirlwind, we have a surer word: the Bible. As read and mediated upon with the blessing of the Holy Spirit, the Bible increases our faith to rely upon God. Indeed, as we live by faith, God becomes the Living God by demonstrating His presence in our lives. Our present life of vulnerability due to Covid-19 could be a good lens through which to understand the lessons that the Book of Job teaches that we humans do not have the ultimate answers as we have limited vision. Throwing ourselves into the arms of the Divine, trusting that the ‘best for ourselves’ is always willed by our loving God, we can cry out with Job: “I will trust Him even if He slays me.”
Fr. Tom Kunnel C.O.