I haven't blogged in awhile...It's been a quiet couple of months...lots and lots has happened but, to be honest I haven't felt it. My heart has been quiet and so I've felt I had to say less...not just that I had less to say. I think there is a reason for that. It has been an interesting last couple of months...lots of ups and downs..but mostly ups and it's been great...I stood in the back of my congregation in Eureka and decided somewhere in my heart about 6 weeks ago that if God had me here for a reason...I should live in that. I should believe that this is what He has for me..and if He is giving it..it is always in my best interest...I needed to trust that...
But I'm not good at that, nor am I used to not feeling anxiety, not worrying. I think generally when I look back on the entirety of my life it has been characterized by the downs...or I have characterized it by the downs.
It has been easy to say these are the highlights of my life and really mean the lowlights. I have been pointing to all the things that changed my path that made me who I am, but not being able or willing to own many of them because they were things that happened to me, not me deciding to do good things with that which I have been given...shirking the rotten parts as God given poisons...necessary evils for a vague greater good with which I have to live. They are the fuel for silent bitter looks stabbed at heaven when I want to feel the victim...
I was reading Job recently..I know I know, the classic my life sucks book, but that is why it stuck out. I've read Job a number of times, but it felt a little different this time.
When I was in college an English Class I took had read a synopsis of Job from a Native American spiritualist writer who was critiquing Job for being such a fool. He was saying how foolish Job was for trusting God and how Job was really worshiping a narcissistic and sadistic God who was impartial at best, probably more evil than anything if he allowed this to happen. The class talked about how at the end when God gives Job a bunch of more good things, children, livestock, esteem, etc that love and happiness is not so simple. You cannot just replace children. I would have to agree if I thought happiness and even familial relationships were the only point.
I used to think that was a story about how hard a man named Job's life was. I used to think it was about how God can do whatever He wants and there is no answers for your misunderstanding it...no real rhyme or reason and in the end, when it's all over and life has been hard...well you better suck it up and deal with it because you're not God and He gets to do what he wants so ..eat it.
But I am not sure that is true anymore. I was talking with a friend recently who reminded me that this may not be the case.
My friend asked: "Was the point of the book that Job was righteous? Was it that he was good enough and God just does stuff to test people or prove them as good as he knows they are?" I have always wondered if there was something to this...I mean God himself tells Satan how awesome Job is...but that's not consistent with what happens afterwards.
"No,"I said. "God actually rants at Job for like 10 Chapters about how Job wasn't around when God invented snow and ice cream and how Job doesn't know how to make plants grow or tame large sea mammals. So that can't be it."...but then I started thinking "I actually thought Job came across a little bit arrogant. I mean really he was telling God what to do..." and that's when it hit me...
There is this verse that I had to memorize for some church thing when I was like 15 and somehow I still remember it...It says "And we know that God works for the good of those who love him who have been called according to his purpose."...If this is true then even the worst things...even the things that seem beyond reason or redemption...for the Christian...have their purpose.
When the story begins it's all about how Job is blessed and esteemed by fellow men. It told how he was wealthy and feared God and even performed extra sacrifices for his children in case they sinned and didn't know it. This had always seemed a good thing to me...
But why was it good?...Was he keeping God happy? Or owning God? Manipulating God?...Surely not, such a righteous man would not try such a thing...would he?
When shit hits the fan Job's children all end up dead, his currency and status taken, his wife is ashamed of him...and all his friends thought he was a filthy sinner.....Job is left sitting on a pile of rubble scraping boils off his skin...it was pretty sick really. I mean really God took his dignity...
I had always thought this seemed pointless...It was a story blow hard preachers could point to and say "See, God can't be mocked! Fear Him! Deal with life!"...
but that didn't seem consistent with the God of the Bible and the person of Jesus. He never seemed to say "My ways were beyond yours...so...don't ask questions!".
Job rants for a number of chapters progressively becoming indignant at his friends accusations and this all crescendos when he proclaims his wish to stand before the throne of God and plead his case. He claims he is sure God would change the verdict and the "punishment." But it is in this that Job reveals his arrogance...and the way he'd been living his life.
After a while I came to realize that I had to look beyond the circumstance, I had to look beyond the "good stuff" and "bad stuff." I had to look at what was being produced.
When God steps into Job's rant and asks him if he knows how to make ice cream God shows Job that although Job thought he knew himself well, he didn't. God, in His actions was showing Job himself, his ability..and inability. He was showing Job that even though he was a great man...he was not God. Sometimes we all need to be reminded of that. Through suffering God produced faith, righteousness, and humility in Job...Job thought he had had God figured out, he was doing the system that would mean God would have to give him good things...
He thought he could say "Look God, I deserve all these good things!" and proclaim loudly when suffering arrive "You are basically stealing from me!"...
Job's story although tragic is not that unlike many others I have heard, terrible things happen to unsuspecting and often quite "good" people...by human standards. I think what God was doing, is what he is doing in all our lives through suffering. He was helping Job know Himself better and see God as the ultimate provider and lover of his soul.
God's goal as "The Person of Goodness" and "The Person of Love" is to show us what really matters. If we cannot see how small we are and how God is a person and not someone to be manipulated we can not truly accept Grace from Him for a part of us believes we are beyond his charity, we are creating a work in Him and not the other way around. If we cannot see our need, than we cannot see the value of the cross and Jesus' life, death, burial and resurrection. If we receive all we need on this earth and are allowed to think we have "arrived" and are beyond a "fallen" world then we fail to see the world and ourselves the way we are...broken and in need.
Real love does not long for our comfort here in this life, but our knowledge of our need so that we may be comforted in and for eternity. It is a hard truth, but it one that demands not a perfect obedience to God, but a perfect trust in His ultimate goodness..even in the tears, even when it is hard and I, we, do not understand.
Death comes to us all. It would have come to Job's children even without Satan's intervention, even if Job did all the sacrifices right for a hundred years, his children would still die. God used the manner of suffering and death and Job's loss of privelege to show him...and millions around the world since...that God is over and in all things and although he doesn't create evil, he allows it, but his purposes are not pointless as I had thought, but point us towards seeing our own misconceptions about reality, how we try to own, use or manipulate creation...and God.
It is in that that I can take each day and trust Him to be that which I lack, that my low lights are not the definitions of my life, but my hopes being directed back towards the source of those good things I loved in the first place.
At the end of the day, each of us has the same choice to ask... Is God good? and Do I believe he has his best for me today? If the answer is yes, then that is enough...
-J.H.S
But I'm not good at that, nor am I used to not feeling anxiety, not worrying. I think generally when I look back on the entirety of my life it has been characterized by the downs...or I have characterized it by the downs.
It has been easy to say these are the highlights of my life and really mean the lowlights. I have been pointing to all the things that changed my path that made me who I am, but not being able or willing to own many of them because they were things that happened to me, not me deciding to do good things with that which I have been given...shirking the rotten parts as God given poisons...necessary evils for a vague greater good with which I have to live. They are the fuel for silent bitter looks stabbed at heaven when I want to feel the victim...
I was reading Job recently..I know I know, the classic my life sucks book, but that is why it stuck out. I've read Job a number of times, but it felt a little different this time.When I was in college an English Class I took had read a synopsis of Job from a Native American spiritualist writer who was critiquing Job for being such a fool. He was saying how foolish Job was for trusting God and how Job was really worshiping a narcissistic and sadistic God who was impartial at best, probably more evil than anything if he allowed this to happen. The class talked about how at the end when God gives Job a bunch of more good things, children, livestock, esteem, etc that love and happiness is not so simple. You cannot just replace children. I would have to agree if I thought happiness and even familial relationships were the only point.
I used to think that was a story about how hard a man named Job's life was. I used to think it was about how God can do whatever He wants and there is no answers for your misunderstanding it...no real rhyme or reason and in the end, when it's all over and life has been hard...well you better suck it up and deal with it because you're not God and He gets to do what he wants so ..eat it.
But I am not sure that is true anymore. I was talking with a friend recently who reminded me that this may not be the case.
My friend asked: "Was the point of the book that Job was righteous? Was it that he was good enough and God just does stuff to test people or prove them as good as he knows they are?" I have always wondered if there was something to this...I mean God himself tells Satan how awesome Job is...but that's not consistent with what happens afterwards.
"No,"I said. "God actually rants at Job for like 10 Chapters about how Job wasn't around when God invented snow and ice cream and how Job doesn't know how to make plants grow or tame large sea mammals. So that can't be it."...but then I started thinking "I actually thought Job came across a little bit arrogant. I mean really he was telling God what to do..." and that's when it hit me...
There is this verse that I had to memorize for some church thing when I was like 15 and somehow I still remember it...It says "And we know that God works for the good of those who love him who have been called according to his purpose."...If this is true then even the worst things...even the things that seem beyond reason or redemption...for the Christian...have their purpose.
When the story begins it's all about how Job is blessed and esteemed by fellow men. It told how he was wealthy and feared God and even performed extra sacrifices for his children in case they sinned and didn't know it. This had always seemed a good thing to me...
But why was it good?...Was he keeping God happy? Or owning God? Manipulating God?...Surely not, such a righteous man would not try such a thing...would he?
When shit hits the fan Job's children all end up dead, his currency and status taken, his wife is ashamed of him...and all his friends thought he was a filthy sinner.....Job is left sitting on a pile of rubble scraping boils off his skin...it was pretty sick really. I mean really God took his dignity...
I had always thought this seemed pointless...It was a story blow hard preachers could point to and say "See, God can't be mocked! Fear Him! Deal with life!"...
but that didn't seem consistent with the God of the Bible and the person of Jesus. He never seemed to say "My ways were beyond yours...so...don't ask questions!".
Job rants for a number of chapters progressively becoming indignant at his friends accusations and this all crescendos when he proclaims his wish to stand before the throne of God and plead his case. He claims he is sure God would change the verdict and the "punishment." But it is in this that Job reveals his arrogance...and the way he'd been living his life.
After a while I came to realize that I had to look beyond the circumstance, I had to look beyond the "good stuff" and "bad stuff." I had to look at what was being produced.
When God steps into Job's rant and asks him if he knows how to make ice cream God shows Job that although Job thought he knew himself well, he didn't. God, in His actions was showing Job himself, his ability..and inability. He was showing Job that even though he was a great man...he was not God. Sometimes we all need to be reminded of that. Through suffering God produced faith, righteousness, and humility in Job...Job thought he had had God figured out, he was doing the system that would mean God would have to give him good things...
He thought he could say "Look God, I deserve all these good things!" and proclaim loudly when suffering arrive "You are basically stealing from me!"...
Job's story although tragic is not that unlike many others I have heard, terrible things happen to unsuspecting and often quite "good" people...by human standards. I think what God was doing, is what he is doing in all our lives through suffering. He was helping Job know Himself better and see God as the ultimate provider and lover of his soul.
God's goal as "The Person of Goodness" and "The Person of Love" is to show us what really matters. If we cannot see how small we are and how God is a person and not someone to be manipulated we can not truly accept Grace from Him for a part of us believes we are beyond his charity, we are creating a work in Him and not the other way around. If we cannot see our need, than we cannot see the value of the cross and Jesus' life, death, burial and resurrection. If we receive all we need on this earth and are allowed to think we have "arrived" and are beyond a "fallen" world then we fail to see the world and ourselves the way we are...broken and in need.
Real love does not long for our comfort here in this life, but our knowledge of our need so that we may be comforted in and for eternity. It is a hard truth, but it one that demands not a perfect obedience to God, but a perfect trust in His ultimate goodness..even in the tears, even when it is hard and I, we, do not understand.
Death comes to us all. It would have come to Job's children even without Satan's intervention, even if Job did all the sacrifices right for a hundred years, his children would still die. God used the manner of suffering and death and Job's loss of privelege to show him...and millions around the world since...that God is over and in all things and although he doesn't create evil, he allows it, but his purposes are not pointless as I had thought, but point us towards seeing our own misconceptions about reality, how we try to own, use or manipulate creation...and God.
It is in that that I can take each day and trust Him to be that which I lack, that my low lights are not the definitions of my life, but my hopes being directed back towards the source of those good things I loved in the first place.
At the end of the day, each of us has the same choice to ask... Is God good? and Do I believe he has his best for me today? If the answer is yes, then that is enough...
-J.H.S
One of the best short treatments of Job I have ever read, Jordan. Thanks to Andrew R for connecting me. BTW that church thing you had to memorize a verse for was probably confirmation.
ReplyDeleteRick Bridston