When Theology Meets Experience

Talking about God, talking to God, and the experience of suffering & wilderness

Programming Note: Each day, I am going to provide the full text of the Job passage. We will read the whole of the book during Lent. It will make for some pretty long entries sometimes, including today. Even so, Job is presented in poem-form, not paragraph form, so it’s not as long as it actually looks. Hang in there!

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There is something interesting we need to note about the nature of Job. The friends, in all their words and conjectures, never address God. They only ever talk about God. Job, the one who is suffering, does respond directly to them, but he quite often turns his response directly toward God. We see it in today’s passage, wherein Job first responds to Eliphaz, but then makes what seems like a natural turn to speak to God.

Isn’t that something?

The one who is actually suffering, tends to want to deal directly with the situation at hand. Wounds are felt. Loss is not just a theoretical hole - it’s real and experienced.

Can I get a bit personal, more than I ever really intended in these daily reflections? There have been significant times in my life, mostly surrounding education, wherein thinking, and talking, and writing about things were very important. I am grateful for those seasons of learning and development. I am who I am - in great part - because of these seasons.

But man, were those such privileged times. It’s from a position of privilege that someone can sit and think about good and evil and make conclusions in the head. It’s just very hard to truly understand the world from the outside, without having experienced it firsthand.

There’s this great scene in the film, Good Will Hunting, in which Sean Maguire is lecturing the young, orphaned Will about the learned life and the lived life. He concludes, “Do you think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you?”

I think this is where grace is so important. Whether we’re in the situation of difficulty ourselves or we’re walking with someone else who is. Eliphaz - and Job’s other friends - are sincere. But each is a bit of a blowhard within these speeches.

What we read today in Job’s response is real. He’s not always right about the particulars of theology, but his response is always real. These responses are quite psalm-like in that the goal is not necessarily pinpoint accuracy, except about the person’s feelings. And God honors that. God desires it. Because honesty just might be the first and foremost of all Christian ethics. It is certainly the beginning of the road to healing.

It’s part of what’s powerful about Luke’s gospel. The writer does seek accuracy, at least to begin, in terms of historicity and firsthand accounts of what Jesus did. But within it all, Luke discovers and delivers to his readers the raw and real experiences within Jesus’ story - Mary’s inner thinking, John the Baptist’s lived experience, and so on.

John the Baptist’s experience is interesting. To enter into proximity with God and his Word, John decides to go to the wilderness. Not the heart of Jerusalem, the Temple, or the rabbinical system (“seminary”), but to the wilderness in the denial of human technology and comfort.

This is an interesting move, and one many make during the season of Lent. More simplicity, less attachment. Job’s situation of need was forced upon him. John’s was chosen, albeit much lesser in severity.

(Jesus will do the same in the next chapter.)

In the end, wisdom does not belong to the one who explains suffering best, but to the one who dares to bring it honestly before God.

Luke 3:1-6

In the fifteenth year of the rule of the emperor Tiberius—when Pontius Pilate was governor over Judea and Herod was ruler over Galilee, his brother Philip was ruler over Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was ruler over Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas—God’s word came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. John went throughout the region of the Jordan River, calling for people to be baptized to show that they were changing their hearts and lives and wanted God to forgive their sins. This is just as it was written in the scroll of the words of Isaiah the prophet,

A voice crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way for the Lord;
make his paths straight.
Every valley will be filled,
and every mountain and hill will be leveled.
The crooked will be made straight
and the rough places made smooth.
All humanity will see God’s salvation.”

Job 6-7

Job responded:

Oh, that my grief were actually weighed,
all of it were lifted up in scales;
for now it’s heavier than the sands of the sea;
therefore, my words are rash.
The Almighty’s arrows are in me;
my spirit drinks their poison,
and God’s terrors are arrayed against me.
Does a donkey bray over grass
or an ox bellow over its fodder?
Is tasteless food eaten without salt,
or does egg white have taste?
I refuse to touch them;
they resemble food for the sick.

Oh, that what I’ve requested would come
and God grant my hope;
that God be willing to crush me,
release his hand and cut me off.
I’d still take comfort,
relieved even though in persistent pain;
for I’ve not denied the words of the holy one.
What is my strength, that I should hope;
my end, that my life should drag on?
Is my strength that of rocks, my flesh bronze?
I don’t have a helper for myself;
success has been taken from me.

Are friends loyal to the one who despairs,
or do they stop fearing the Almighty?
My companions are treacherous like a stream in the desert,
like channels that overrun their streambeds,
like those darkened by thawing ice,
in which snow is obscured
but that stop flowing in dry times
and vanish from their channels in heat.
Caravans turn aside from their paths;
they go up into untamed areas and perish.
Caravans from Tema look;
merchants from Sheba hope for it.
They are ashamed that they trusted;
they arrive and are dismayed.
That’s what you are like;
you see something awful and are afraid.

Have I said, “Give me something?
Offer a bribe from your wealth for me?
Rescue me from the hand of my enemy?
Ransom me from the grip of the ruthless?”
Instruct me and I’ll be quiet;
inform me how I’ve erred.
How painful are truthful words,
but what do your condemnations accomplish?
Do you intend to correct my words,
to treat the words of a hopeless man as wind?
Would you even gamble over an orphan,
barter away your friend?
Now look at me—would I lie to your face?
Turn! Don’t be faithless. Turn now! I am righteous.
Is there wrong on my tongue,
or can my mouth not recognize disaster?

Isn’t slavery everyone’s condition on earth,
our days like those of a hired worker?
Like a slave we pant for a shadow,
await our task like a hired worker.
So I have inherited months of emptiness;
nights of toil have been measured out for me.
If I lie down and think—When will I get up?—
night drags on, and restless thoughts fill me until dawn.
My flesh is covered with worms and crusted earth;
my skin hardens and oozes.
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle;
they reach their end without hope.
Remember that my life is wind;
my eyes won’t see pleasure again.
The eye that sees me now will no longer look on me;
your eyes will be on me, and I won’t exist.
A cloud breaks apart and moves on—
like the one who descends to the grave and won’t rise,
won’t return home again, won’t be recognized in town anymore.

But I won’t keep quiet;
I will speak in the adversity of my spirit,
groan in the bitterness of my life.
Am I Sea or the Sea Monster
that you place me under guard?
If I say, “My couch will comfort me,”
my bed will diminish my murmuring.
You scare me with dreams,
frighten me with visions.
I would choose strangling
and death instead of my bones.
I reject life; I don’t want to live long;
leave me alone, for my days are empty.

What are human beings, that you exalt them,
that you take note of them,
visit them each morning,
test them every moment?
Why not look away from me;
let me alone until I swallow my spit?
If I sinned, what did I do to you,
guardian of people?
Why have you made me your target
so that I’m a burden to myself?
Why not forgive my sin,
overlook my iniquity?
Then I would lie down in the dust;
you would search hard for me,
and I would not exist.

Prayer

God,

This is what prayer is, isn’t it? Talking to you. Being honest before you. Using words that are meaningful and maybe not so poetic. At least for me.

God help me to be honest with you, myself, and others. Not that I’m a liar. I just want to be real.

By your Spirit & in Christ,
Amen.