Carefully Evaluate Explanantions

Job 3:1-14:22
Related Sunday School Lesson, Family Bible Series, Nov. 13

It never fails. Anytime a tragedy of immense proportions strikes a home, a family or a nation, someone always asks, “How could God let this happen?” As if, in some way or another, God caused the tragedy or He was unable or unwilling to prevent it. The notion that bad things happen to bad people has a basis in Scripture, but many people mistakenly explain all bad things that happen to people as judgment from God. Others go to the opposite extreme and explain all tragic events as the results of human choices or simply bad luck.

In between are various explanations, such as God’s administering discipline, teaching His people, or working out His wider purposes. Believers should reject simplistic, blanket explanations and carefully evaluate explanations offered for life’s confusing circumstances in light of God’s revealed truth about Himself and His ways.

Human explanations for suffering and loss often fall short of understanding God’s purposes for allowing them. As we look at the life of Job, we can learn how to deepen our relationship with God when faced with suffering and loss.

Job’s friends offered explanations for his problems based on a common belief that Job’s adversity was God’s punishment for his sin. Their explanations appealed to justice, tradition and reason. These three men were truly friends who wanted to help Job (2:12-13). But their advice to Job was based on mistaken assumptions. Job rejected their explanations, knowing they did not fit the facts of his case.

Flawed Appeal to Justice (Job 4:6-8; 5:27)

After seven days of silent suffering, Job spoke, not to curse God but to curse the day of his birth. Job asks, “Why did I not die at birth?” His friend, Eliphaz, then speaks in response to Job’s cry. Eliphaz says in 4:6, “Those who plow iniquity and those who sow trouble harvest it.”

Eliphaz’s words mistakenly imply in 4:6-8 that Job’s suffering was evidence of God’s justice (chapters 1 and 2 refute that). Beginning in 5:8, Eliphaz urged Job to turn to God, again implying that Job had turned away from God. Eliphaz emphasizes man’s weakness in the face of God’s justice (5:7-8).

After Eliphaz had spoken, Job explained in 6:1-3 that his outburst was more emotional than rational. In other words, it was a natural human response that all of us experience from time to time. Honest expressions of pain and emotion are not prohibited by God. In fact, Jesus Himself experienced real human emotions of anguish as well as joy. We should learn to affirm honest expressions of pain and encourage acceptance of emotional words from those who are suffering.

Eliphaz, appealing to God’s justice, argued that Job simply had received what he deserved; but Job declared his unawareness of having done wrong. Certainly, suffering does come because of sin and error. But to say that all suffering is a result of God’s justice because of sin or wrongdoing is a gross misunderstanding of the character of God and His dealings with mankind.

Flawed Appeal to Tradition (Job 8:4-8)

When tragedy struck Job’s life, instead of listening, supporting and encouraging, his friends all shared a common belief that Job’s adversity came because he was guilty of sin. In his argument, each friend offered a slightly different foundation for that belief. Bildad’s appeal to tradition appears in verse 8, “Please inquire of past generations and consider the things searched out by their fathers.”

Eliphaz based his thinking on observation and experience, but Bildad was a traditionalist who looked to wisdom in the past. Bildad, appealing to traditionally accepted ideas, argued that what happened to Job and his children was a consequence of their sins.

Just as appealing only to God’s justice is a flawed approach to explaining all suffering, looking to tradition is inadequate as well. Applying traditionally accepted explanations to every case of human suffering is narrow and shortsighted in seeking to understand God’s ways. We should avoid making judgmental assumptions about friends who encounter suffering or God who filters it through His fingers.

Flawed Appeal to Reason (Job 11:13-15)

Job’s friend Zophar appealed to human reason to explain why Job was suffering. Zophar states, “If you would direct your heart right … if iniquity is in your hand, put it far away … then, indeed, you could lift up your face without moral defect ...” Zophar appealed to human reasoning to explain that Job was being punished by God and that he needed to repent, but Job rejected Zophar’s explanation along with those of the other two friends. Zophar mistakenly tries to apply human reason to a situation that is clearly beyond the grasp of human understanding.

Logical explanations of the causes and reasons for human suffering can be flawed because no one ever knows all the facts about a particular case. We cannot see what God sees and should not pretend to know what He knows.

Flawed Appeal to God (Job 13:20-24)

Job begins his address to God in 13:20, but God chooses not to answer Job at that time. In this part of his defense, Job first expresses his disappointment in his three friends, then his declaration of faith in the Lord and finally his desire to bring his case directly before God.

Job’s appeal to God is in verse 15, where Job expressed the hope that he would be able to defend himself before God. Certainly, Job’s hope was clearly in God despite the despair he still felt. His appeal to God, however, is flawed because he thought his suffering was the result of an inappropriate application of God’s judgment. God is never improper or in error in allowing anyone to encounter suffering.

Though the complete answer to any particular experience of suffering may not be clearly evident, we must carefully evaluate any answers or explanations based on God’s Word. The standard set in Scripture is the only proper standard to apply when seeking to understand why God allows suffering to occur.