The Structure of Suffering

A thought on Job 1:13-19

There are at least two ways that we can understand the world that we live in. Scientifically by observation, or biblically by revelation. And one of the things that we learn about the world, through science and the Bible, is that there is structure in the world. When we did our Romans study, we learned that one of the things Paul teaches us is the structure of salvation. We know we are saved, but going through the book of Romans, we understand it. I believe a similar thing happens in the first two chapter of Job, and in particular verses 13-49 in chapter 1. But here, we learn about the structure of suffering.

We have all probably heard this argument before: If God is so loving and good, why is there so much suffering or evil in the world? On the surface, this seems like a legitimate question. Yet, there is much that goes undefined in the question. What is love? What is good? Is suffering always evil? Can love be love without suffering? And we have yet to try and answer these questions from a divine perspective. We can get philosophical about these things, or we can choose to hear to what scripture tells us. I think the latter is the best solution, and in Job 1:13-19 we can get answers that point us in the right direction. And that direction is to worship and glorify God. Knowing then, that scripture does give us answers, in this case, regarding the structure of suffering, it’s a shame that many Christians’ crumple in the face of it. That often Christians are among the first to curse God when suffering comes.

I have often been accused of being too pessimistic, that I want people to suffer. But you would be wrong. My natural disposition is to live life on easy street. But I am also aware of the pitfalls of easy street, so I take the scenic route. Though it has bumps and twists and turns. It has no pitfalls. You can trudge along, but you never really get stuck. The easy road is nothing but pitfalls appearing to be opportunities, the next big thing and the proverbial launching pad. I would rather not suffer, but I’d rather be prepared for it, because no matter what, suffering comes. And as Christians, it will come in the form of a Satanic attack as it did in the life of Job. And like Job we would do well to prepare and be prepared. Here what I mean is that as servants of God, he prepares us for the calamity that is to come. This is a detail we’ll see emerge throughout the book of Job.

The Suddenness of Loss and Death

Sudden loss and death reach deeply into the human soul, heart and mind, and scrambles our world. We can call this chaos, disorder, or whatever we would like, but suffering turns your life upside down, it changes your perspective on everything. Life becomes different because you have an experience now. How we respond to it or interact with it is different for everyone. But I would like to point out here that often the biggest difference in responding is found between the believer who understands the structure of suffering and the believer who does not.

The believer who has the revelation of the structure of suffering is a strong Christian. He or she often has dealt with suffering and can be of immense help to the weaker Christian who lacks this revelation. A sign of the weaker Christian here is impatience leading to a degraded relationship with God. For the stronger Christian, the sign is patience, or what we can call, longsuffering. This is no picnic either, but patient longsuffering is the best option, though not the most glamorous.

We see in the passage before us, that sudden loss and death was quick to come. You’ll notice that Job loses an immense amount of wealth and important and loving relationships to theft, horrific accidents and bloody murder all in one day. There is a saying that, “bad things happen in threes.” I don’t know where this idea comes from, but it seems to me to be another way of saying, when it rains it pours. The world seems to have a clue about this aspect of the structure of suffering. For Job as for many around the world, the pain is all too real. Not too long ago, I experienced a tragic death in the family, a loss of income and to top it all off, my car broke down. Rules of 3’s? I don’t know about that, but the structure of suffering does point to sudden, fast and multiple events converging to form one big attack.

Beyond that, we also learn that suffering comes about at a point in time when our defenses are relaxed. When we are lulled by the routine. We see this in verse 13. A serene day is described with Job’s sons and daughter frolicking in the blessings of their Lord. Having reaped handsomely from their father’s piety and the Lord’s blessings upon his life. They too were within the hedge of protection God had laid about them keeping them from any calamity. Until suddenly.

I couldn’t help but think of Tuesday morning on 9/11. A collective average day for America, saw a slew of calamitous events be described as one heinous attack upon our sovereignty and freedom. Job’s day of calamity was like this, perhaps worse. In either case, by the mercy of God, I have been shielded from experiencing that kind of deep pain. The point I hope is clear enough, within the structure of suffering is sudden loss and death.

False Hedge

In the previous study I talked about the hedge that is mentioned in Job 1:10. The Satan makes it a point to bring this up, which anchors his argument that Job’s piety exists only because God has prospered and protected him so much. The language used here in the Hebrew indicates a constricting of sorts. The hedge keeps Job from falling prey into calamity. It is, in this sense, a positive constricting. What I mean then by false hedge, is the negative constricting felt by the innocent sufferer at the receiving end of one of Satan’s attacks. The same way that God’s hedge encompasses around you, one of the structures of suffering is that it produces the same effect in the negative.

The way that the writer of Job communicates this to us is by deliberately making the attacks come from the four directions we all know about. In short, the Sabeans attack from the south, the lighting comes from the storms that generate in the west, the Chaldeans attacked from the north and the whirlwind comes from the storms that generate in the east. This constricting, almost suffocating effect is intentional and a part of the structure of suffering.

The Variableness of Suffering

Along with the suddenness of suffering and the constricting effect it produces, we have the multi-faceted aspects of suffering. Job lost animals and servants and children and property all at once, from every possible angle but also in a variety of ways.

This is another aspect of the structure of suffering that cannot be ignored. I compare this to the events of 9/11. They were varied and horrific, all in their own right, but they constituted one attack. Satan uses suffering in this way. He attacks once but with different things. Enemies, nature, accidents, loved ones (we see this later with Jobs wife) you name it, Satan will probably use it against you.

This variableness of suffering heightens the attack. It makes you place fault in various places while deceiving you to ignore the real threat, Satan himself, he is the one responsible, it is to him that in the Job story God says, everything he has is in your hands. Satan is never straight forward about how he attacks, he wants you so frazzled and confused that you’ll blame even God, this was this whole plan, to get Job to curse God to his face.

Suffering Comes from Above

The word “attacked” in v.15, “fell” in v.16 and “fell” again in v.19 are the same Hebrew word “nāp̄al” which means in its simplest form to fall or to bring down or to fall upon. I cannot help but see in this language a directional flow of suffering that makes up its structure. What I mean is that we know from the previous verses that unless God allows the Satan to go out and carry out his sinister plan, the Satan cannot. And this means that suffering in its origin comes to us from above. For us, who see God as a friend more than as a God, this is hard for us to grasp. God is my buddy, my daddy, my best friend even, he would never allow suffering on me. And yet, we have the book of Job telling us exactly that. To the ancient man though, when suffering came, all he did was look up. There was a deep-seated belief that the hosts of heaven were in charge. That out there, above us somewhere were the powers that controlled our destiny.

In Jobs time, sun and moon worshippers was the norm. The gods would show their favor or anger. For the Israelite, God needed to be paid attention to, and divine retribution was the idea that ruled the day. But this is truer than we can readily accept today. God is utterly in charge, but the great difference between Yahweh worshippers of old and their counterparts was that the former believed in a God of mercy, while the other believed only appeasement would work.

Much of this is seen throughout the book of Job. This is in a big way Jobs struggle. His way of thinking has to change. He has to see the world for how it is. In part that God’s wisdom necessitates suffering in a way that perfectly brings about his will, while leaving us in almost an incomprehensible state, unless like Job, we are intent on contending with God for a deeper revelation.

You’ll notice that the Satan could not otherwise attack Job, unless God allowed him to. And to add insult to injury, the Satan not only uses enemies, like the Sabeans and Chaldeans, but he uses what we call today, acts of God. Satan uses nature. “The fire of God” and the whirlwind. And who commands the winds but God? This is hard to grasp, but is ignored at the expense of understanding the structure of suffering.

Because upon accepting this truth, we can come to the realization that suffering is part of God’s plan for his servant Job, and to us who by God’s grace and mercy are also called servants of the most-high God. Suffering then in this sense brings about correction in the servant. Suffering serves to repair something broken, to fix a flaw, to restore. The suffering does not come until God has prepared his servant for what is to come. In the New Testament, this is the bearing of your cross. Nothing of this sort is nice. But nice is not the point. Seeing is the point. Seeing God’s revelation to us through suffering.

Keep in mind that we are not blaming God for suffering. That blame and responsibility along with the accountability is upon Satan and the instruments he uses, for example, the Sabeans and Chaldeans. But to God goes the glory for the suffering, because only he knows why it has come, only his plans for it are good and just and even merciful. The best place in scripture that we can find this is at the end of the Joseph story in Genesis, when Joseph tells his brother, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.

The Blame Game

The last aspect of the structure of suffering that we can cover here is the blame game aspect. The part of the structure is also a result of suffering when the Christian is not pious in his living. All of Satan’s attack is designed to get you to curse God to his face. And we can get there in a roundabout way. What I mean is that Job could have blamed the Sabeans, the Chaldean’s, the servants for not being more prepared, the children for feasting the construction company of the house, the weather but all this blaming would have brought him to blame God. This was something Job was just not willing to do, even if he may have had the inclination to do so.

The Antidote is Piety

The way to prepare for suffering then is piety. One of the biggest issues with much of the advice floating around today is that it directs you to go find suffering. To do something hard. But that is not suffering. That is perhaps discipline or self-restraint. And it does not lead to piety, it actually leads to pride. And pride is useless when real suffering comes your way. Don’t go looking for suffering. Don’t go making things harder on yourself. Sure, you may want to kick a bad habit or start a better one, fair enough. But as a Christian, focus on your piety before God.

What do we mean here by piety? We mean simply that as an elect of God, you have an instinct to believe God, which brings with it a deep reverence for God that is sincere. This sincere reverence is coupled with love towards God which comes from the knowledge of who God is, as revealed to you by God. With deeper understanding of God, comes a deeper love and a deeper reverence, this kind of reverence applied in real living is what I call piety. This is an idea that Calvin for example put forth like this, “I call 'piety' that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of his benefits induces." His wording is simpler and more concise than mine, but I’m no John Calvin.

The point is that the Christian has to live a life that is informed by his theology, in order to increase his piety in regards to God. Piety then is not a matter of doing something, but a response to knowing something. The structure of suffering alludes us, not because we don’t suffer enough, but because we don’t know God’s word enough. Being prepared for suffering eludes us for the same reason. We don’t know God’s word enough to bring us to pious living.

This pious living is both how you prepare for what is to come, and how God prepares you for what is to come. This is why for Job, losing his wealth and health did not break him. Because his piety was not built on his prosperity as the Satan had believed. But it was built on the knowledge of God Job had and how that understanding fueled his reverence and love for God. May we follow in the steps of Job, not to suffer like him, but to see, like him, the glory of our God.