The book of Job is told as a series of conversation – conversations between God and Satan, between Job and his friends, and between Job and God - because being in conversation with God is what the book is all about. At the end of the book Job says to God, “In the past I knew only what others had told me, but now I have seen you with my own eyes” and this is perhaps the key statement to understanding what is going on in this book.
The book of Job is concerned with the problem of pain; why does suffering occur and why do good people suffer? But the book does not provide answers to these questions. Job’s friends try to tell him that because he is suffering then he must be at fault in some way. But Job knows that that is not the case and this is confirmed at the end of the book when God is angry with Job’s friends because they did not speak the truth about him as Job did. Instead of accepting the advice of his friends and saying that he is at fault, Job decides to state his case to God and by doing so starts a conversation with God in which he begins to see God with his own eyes instead of hearing about God from what others had to tell him. The important thing that happens in this book; the thing that changes Job and his situation is that he begins this conversation.
It is part of this conversation with God that we have heard read today (Job 38:1, 12-21, 40:3-5) and what we have heard is mainly God’s contribution to the conversation. One of the most obvious things to jump out at us from what God says is that he doesn’t provide any answers to Job’s questions. Instead, he asks a series of other questions which give Job a sense of the awesome nature of God as creator and sustainer of life. It is God who created and ordered the world and who understands its patterns and cycles of life: the times of birth for mountain goats and wild deer; the freedom of wild donkeys; the strength of wild oxen and horses; the speed of the ostrich; the flight of the hawk and the nesting of the eagle. All of these and more God created and understands their pattern of life and their place in the tapestry of nature and circle of life. All of these and more God understands while Job does not.
It is easy to read these passages and think that what God wants to do is to belittle Job by making him realise just how insignificant he is as a human being and therefore that he should simply respond by accepting what God does and says. Job seems to feel like that too because when God challenges him to answer his questions Job throws up his hands and says, “I spoke foolishly, Lord. What can I answer? I will not try to say anything else. I have already said more than I should.” Often people read the book of Job as though that is the answer to the problem of suffering; it is all in God’s hands, we can’t understand and therefore we should just trust him.
But that isn’t what God wants at all. Instead, God goes on to say, “Stand up like a man, and answer my questions.” God challenges Job to give an answer to his questions and says that it is in the nature of his humanity that Job should answer these questions. God wants to be in a conversation with human beings where we take responsibility for our lives and our world. Where we find answers to the questions that God poses to human beings but where we find those answers in conversation with God.
When we are out of conversation with God or only have knowledge of God through others, then we are not working in partnership with God for the benefit of the world in which we live. That is the situation in which humanity finds itself in relation to the questions that God asked of Job: Do you know when mountain goats are born? Do you know how long wild deer carry their young? Will the wild ox work for you? Human beings now know the answers to these and many of the other questions that God asked of Job. That is not wrong. God wanted us to be able to explore his creation and find answers to those questions. But he wanted humanity to do that together with him, in conversation with him. Instead for most of human history, we have ignored God and explored his creation on our terms and in our way exploiting creation for our own gain. We know now where that has got us; that we stand in danger of destroying God’s creation and ourselves along with it. We have a desperate and urgent need as human beings to be talking to God about the answers to the questions he posed to Job.
God wants us to be in conversation with him and when we are, as Job found, it transforms our understanding of ourselves and our world. Throughout history God has been seeking people who will be in conversation with him and who through that conversation will transform his creation for good and not for ill. Because of our selfish exploitation of the world and its resources it seems that we stand on the precipice of an ecological disaster. Will that realisation be sufficient to bring our generation back into conversation with God just as the destruction of his world propelled Job into his challenge to God which opened a life-changing conversation through which he saw God with his own eyes?
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Marvin Gaye - What's Going On?
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