Clearing Away the Underbrush

It is very important, in dealing with this perplexity, to get rid of some of the false answers, if we are to understand the true ones.

The Book of Job deals in a special way with this problem. In the prologue to this religious drama, God agrees that Job may be tested to see whether his faith will hold up in the pinch. The test proceeds:

1. Job receives word that his vast flocks of cattle have been captured or killed.
2. Then word comes that the same fate has befallen his servants.
3. A messenger reports that his sons and daughters are all dead.
4. He has no sooner learned these things than his body breaks out in ugly, painful sores.

Will he not now "curse God, and die," his wife asks. (His wife, incidentally, is so nasty that her survival, when all the rest of the family have been killed, is perhaps the greatest test that Job faces.)

The problems are not new problems, nor are they old problems. A modern version of Job could be written, in which Job heard within ten minutes (a) that his house had burned down, (b) that his bank had failed, (c) that his son had been killed in battle, (d) that his daughter had died in an auto accident, and who in the midst of all this (e) found that he had polio. He too would ask the question Job asks: "Why has this happened to me?"

Three "friends" (the quotation marks are used advisedly) come to give Job the straight answer. Most of the book is devoted to their discussion with Job, in the course of which it becomes clear that the author wants to show the inadequacy of the "friends'" answers. Let us look at two of the rejected solutions.

1. The "friends'" main theme is that all suffering is the consequence of sin. If you are "good," everything will be fine. But if you are "bad," you will be punished. Each of the "friends" gets an oar in for this one.

ELIPHAZ: Who ever perished, being innocent?
Or where were the righteous cut off?
Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity,
And sow wickedness, reap the same.

( Job 4: 7, 8)

BILDAD: God will not cast away a perfect man,
Neither will he help the evildoers.

( Job 8: 20)

ZOPHAR: The triumphing of the wicked is short,
And the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment.

( Job 20: 5)

Now this is a nice formula. It looks well on paper.

Goodness = Prosperity. Badness = Suffering.

Only one question remains to be asked: Is it true? The Book of Job shows that it is not true. The problem is precisely that Job is a "good" man whose lot is not prosperity, but suffering. The "friends" can solve the problem only by denying that it exists. Since badness = suffering, Job must be bad. Period. Case dismissed. But the book presents Job as an upright, righteous man. The formula, in other words, doesn't always work. To put it in modern terms, the fact that a man is rich doesn't necessarily mean that the Lord has blessed him. It may mean that he has found ways to evade his income tax. The fact that a person is poor doesn't necessarily mean that he is evil. It may mean that he is too honest to accept bribes. The formula doesn't always work.

But the thing that really undercuts the argument of Job's "friends" is the suffering of "innocent" people. Is a starving baby in India more "sinful" than a well-fed American baby whose father makes $10,000 a year? Were the children killed in the Korean war more "sinful" than children in America who are alive simply because the actual fighting took place there rather than here?

Furthermore, if you take this position seriously, you run the risk of making religion nothing but a gigantic celestial fire insurance policy: "Be good so God will reward you, for if you are not good, he will surely punish you -- and you don't want to be punished, do you?"

2. Another answer that Job's "friends" try out is that God sends suffering to help us "grow." Suffering is a good thing, since it teaches us to rely on God, and we should never question his ways.

ELIPHAZ: Happy is the man whom God correcteth:
Therefore despise not thou the chastening of the
Almighty.

( Job 5: 17)

The view is suggested elsewhere in the Bible: "The Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights" ( Prov. 3: 12, and see Heb. 12: 7).

Now there is clearly more point to this argument than to the other one. It is true that a father may have to discipline a son out of love, so that the son can grow and mature. Such a position, however, accepted as an adequate answer to the problem of evil, can become a device for "excusing" evil and ceasing to be concerned about it. Notice the extremes to which such a view could lead us.

"O. K., so he broke his leg. Don't set it. The pain will help to build his character."

"There's no need to have a hospital here. People 'grow' by enduring suffering."

"Why bother to clear out that slum? The children will have more character if they grow up in a tough neighborhood."

No thoughtful person would agree with those statements. And yet they follow with fatal ease if you assent too glibly to the view that suffering builds character and is thereby justified.

Thus in both these answers of Job's "friends" there is just enough truth to make them risky propositions. It must certainly be true that some suffering is punishment for sin, and that some suffering is disciplinary in character.

It's when you substitute "all" for "some" that you run into trouble.

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