Kicking Job Out Of The Box

One Christmas morning long ago I walked into my living room to find my wife smiling at me and sitting next to a box about the size of a lawn tractor.  She urged me to open the box and I have to admit to some excitement as I began, wondering what it could be.  I opened the box to find another box of nearly the same size as the first.  I extracted that box and opened it to find another and….  Well, you know the rest of the story.  I opened several boxes until I came to a small flat box that contained a present I had coveted for a year.

It occurs to me that life is like this process, only in reverse.  We start out in a very small box and as our life experience increases so does the size of our box.  Most of these expansions come in the form of gentle nudges.  There may be a new friend in our life, or even a new enemy.  We may have a small revelation or read a novel full of new ideas and have one or two of them stick in our thinking and so change our worldview ever so slightly.  These gentle nudges through the walls of our box may not even be registered by our conscious mind but nevertheless become part of our larger thought processes. 

There are major paradigm shifts as well though.  These usually happen during upheavals in our lives.  Marriage and the birth of a child are two that are common to the human experience, and the expansion of these paradigms are helped along by others who have already been there and done that.  Divorce and the death of a loved one will also expand the size of your box and is greatly aided by the presence of others that are in the know.  There are a couple of ways, however, that we may get shoved outside the box and have little or no resources to draw upon. 

One of these two ways is through unique experience.  Very few of us have been to space, for example.  The pool of experience to draw upon for astronauts is very small indeed.  Few have lived through a plane crash or seen the tunnel of light in a near death experience.  How do you explain a vision of heaven or angels to someone?  How about alien abduction?  These experiences are life altering and very real to the people who have had them.  There are very few words in language that allow them to get across these events to others.  This sometimes places them in a completely new country where the terrain of their lives has to be re-learned and re-assimilated to form a wholly new way of looking at the universe. 

Another way we get shoved far outside our box is to have a series of major events happen back to back or even simultaneously.  Job is one who had this experience.  He lost his family, his home, his business and his health in very short order, not to mention his dignity and self respect.  This sudden series of events left him sitting alone in ashes, scraping boils on his skin and listening to his wife and friends tell him what a train wreck he had become.  Through many chapters of this book of the Bible, we see his friends attempt to explore the meaning of these catastrophic events in Job’s life.  They come to the conclusion that Job must have sinned against God in order to draw such a disaster upon himself.  For the same number of chapters we see Job stubbornly hang on to his faith in God and his sense of self righteousness. 

Every person has their breaking point however, and finally Job raises his eyes to heaven and complains to God, wanting to know what right He had putting all this misery on him when his life was blameless.  God’s response is great instruction for those of us who are currently traversing new country that is so far outside our box we feel utterly lost.  God’s timeless answer comes in the form of a series of questions for Job.

“Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?  Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.”

This first question from God foreshadows the utter helplessness of Job in the coming game of twenty questions.  Job is, in fact, unable to answer a single question God poses to him.  God’s questions point up Job’s experience, wisdom, skills and power next to God’s.   There, of course, is no contest here.  God has lived forever, Job but a few years.  God created Leviathan, Job can’t even tame him, and on and on go the questions until Job replies:

“I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted.  You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’  Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.

You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’  My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.  Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”

Job’s paradigm had been shifted in a major way.  The Bible says Job did not sin in any of his responses to the ruinious events that befell him so rapidly.  Job’s friends, however, talked a great deal about God and justice and Job’s condition, which led Job to finally complain to God.  It is interesting to note that making this leap in understanding is hard for many, even the learned.  Some preachers still preach that Job had the sin of self righteousness in him and so God allowed the disasters to assail his life because of this.  But God himself seems to agree with Job when he says to Satan:

“And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.”

And Job indeed seems to maintain his integrity when, after all the disasters are complete, he says:

“The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”

And when Job’s wife is questioning why he is still maintaining his integrity he responds:

“You are talking like a foolish woman.  Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”

The Bible says next that in all he said, Job did not sin.  The point in all this is that Job had no life experience on which to base his current condition.  In other words, sometimes bad things happen to good people.  It is also interesting to note that in all God said to Job He never answered Job’s initial question, and that was why me?  What God did was address the real issue and that was that Job felt he could question God’s will.  Once Job recognized his real place in the greater scheme of things he acquiesced to God’s argument. 

Job had grasped a great truth for those of us that are suddenly shoved outside of our box in a forceful manner that appears to be unjust.  He may never have known the reason for this series of disasters that God allowed in his life.  But you and I benefit from his and God’s response to these events, and God receives much glory even today through the story of Job.  I for one am glad to have Job’s story to lean on and not my own understanding of a situation.  You may never understand why something bad has fallen on you.  You may be tempted to tell anyone who will listen how unjust all this bad stuff suddenly in your life is.  You must resist this.  As Jesus did before his accusers, so your best course is to remain silent before the gossip and backstabbing words of those who celebrate your downfall.  God made sure to tell Job’s friends that what they had said about Him was wrong.  And He instructed them to make sacrifices and have Job pray for them so that they might be forgiven.

In the same way you too should have faith that God will remonstrate with those that said wrong in your case.  Defense of yourself is a waste of time and energy – especially if you really are in the wrong.  Just spend that time and energy seeking God’s will and let the rest of it flow around you.  God has his reasons and we are not always privy to them. 

The upshot is this; If you are far outside of your box and nothing is making sense, if the storms of life have swept away all you hold dear and even your religion seems useless, then that is the time to hold on to the foundation of your faith which is Jesus.  Everything else is subject to change or destruction.  Don’t let fear or unfamiliarity with your new circumstances sway you to look right or left at the waves of destruction but keep your eyes fixed on the cross and remember God will never give you more than you can bear.

So, get outside that box and laugh.  Stumble and fall and call yourself clumsy.  Sin under pressure and repent.  But don’t blame God – He knows exactly what He is doing.