God Explodes Our Ideas In Job's Story

Class participant, Wendy Palmer, writes:

It would be great if we had at least three sessions on Job wouldn't it? I love that book every time. It intrigues me.

My thought this time around was stimulated from the text book, last one or two paragraphs of the chapter on Job. The text presented the idea of there being three topics that had to be reconciled in the minds of the participants in the book of Job. They were; God Himself (upholding His perfect justice, holiness and love), Job (approving or disproving the possibility that he was "perfect") and the theology of retribution (that seemed to be a given in all their minds). The text says one of these ideas had to be abandoned because they can't all be maintained [at once]. The friends canceled out Job and maintained retribution theology and God. Job "all but gives up on God, while he vigorously maintains retribution theo. and his innocence." In the end God eliminates their understanding and application of retribution theology. Job's experience puts someone or something in jeopardy.

I really thought this defined the struggle so well that they were having then and that we often struggle with now. We have some dearly cherished ideas, theologies about God and how He works or is supposed to. Some go way deep into our church history and most, many of them are great and helpful to us (human beings) who feel such a deep need to have a structure to hold us together. We seem to have to have ways of explaining the unexplainable; I believe God made us to be that way for a purpose. But when we hold to those structures or boxes that we create for our own stability, certainly not for God, then we are baffled when something happens to us or around us as it did to Job.

Though retribution theology in general seems to be a "regular" way that I see God working, does that mean He has to stick to it or He totally blows it? The theology becomes the idol and God is dethroned. But He is not threatened by our little rules. He blows up our ideas now and then through suffering, disaster, loss, or undeserved blessings, or through violent grace and we are reminded that He can act and do whatever He so chooses and is not necessarily concerned that He fits into our explanation or that we can even explain it. And we are left with nothing left to say. I love who He is.

Silenced, Wendy Palmer.

Thanks, Wendy. I love who He is, too, and that He will never be put in a box of our making!
RG