Articles
Job And The Problem Of Evil
Job And The Problem Of Evil
Having read the first chapter of Job, WE know what is going on. God is good. Satan is the adversary. Satan (with God's permission) brings the evil. It APPEARS as 'natural' things - men, storms, sickness, etc.
Job and his friends understand that God DOES such things. They are not 'miracles of punishment' but they are seen as God's punishment / chastisement for evil. The conclusion is drawn that if someone experiences such events then they must have done evil.
Job struggles with this. He KNOWS he didn't do evil that would warrant all this, YET he is suffering. If GOD brought this - which he agrees with - then God must be making a mistake. Through all this, Job refuses to abandon God and continues to worship / serve God. He just wants to straighten out the mistake…. He CANNOT 'confess' - for he knows he didn't do "it"!
Job questions 'divine providence' and thus reflects, as the three friends see it, irreverence towards God. Job is questioning the whole justice of God. They set out to teach Job about God, providence, evil, suffering.
As L. A. Mott commented, they don't see him as a wicked man but as a godly man who has fallen into sin. At first they conclude that God is not punishing as much as He is chastising Job in order to turn him from the error. They understand that if Job would just submit to the chastisement and repent, the suffering would end and he would be restored to his blessed life.
Such teaching is GENERALLY true but it is irrelevant in Job's case. It is a case where a truth is pushed to an extreme that is outside of the very realm of that truth. Several ideas begin to get pushed here.
- God is behind ALL suffering of men.
- ALL suffering of men is punishment / chastisement from God.
- Godliness keeps one from ALL such situations in life.
God DID use such things to chastise people! It just cannot be said that ALL such events are thus caused by God. Hence not ALL such situations are to be understood as punishment for evil doing. Thus, even godly people will experience these situations.
Weather happens. God does use it even as the friends indicate, but here, it was Satan that brought it about. Here is was not a chastisement for doing evil, but a testing of Job's trust in God.
Men do bad things to other men. God raised up various kings and nations to chastise and punish His people for unfaithfulness. Yet, it is NOT said that ALL actions of men are the determined decree of God. Men CHOOSE. Here, Satan was able to bring about such evil choices in men.
Sickness happens. Again, the bible plainly records that God did on certain occasions send physical infirmity as either chastisement or punishment. Some in fact died because of such affliction. Yet, most people get sick because of natural breakdown of the body and immune systems. Sometimes WE bring such upon ourselves as we abuse our bodies. There are out breaks of plague and disease.
On and on we can go. Some suffering indeed is the result of providential dealing of God. We also see that some was due to Satan, some to men, some to physical 'laws of nature' (storms, earthquakes, sickness, etc.). What the friends do is to ignore all causes but God. They thus drew three conclusions that were of limited truth but were not at all valid in Job's situation.
We must be careful how we handle truth. We must be careful we begin accusing people of evil. We must be careful when we speak 'for God'.
Hugh DeLong
