Through A Glass Darkly

When I arrived as a new pastor in a sleepy mountain town two decades ago, a pastor from another small church invited me to pray with him for God's revival in our high mountain valley. Soon, we gathered the new Episcopalian rector, two Pentecostals from neighboring villages, and a handful of assorted independent community church pastors. Most of the Baptist pastors would have nothing to do with us, nor would any of the other mainline churches. This ragtag band met together once a month for 10 years, praying for God to invade the valley in power, making it a haven of restoration for those bludgeoned by Gospel ministry in hard places, and sweeping through the hard ranks of unbelievers, bringing many to Christ. However, at the end of those 10 years, the founder of our group left for another call, and he was replaced in his church with a man who was ambitious and gifted, and who had no time to waste on praying with other pastors. In very little time, they reached what appeared to me to a modest circle of unchurched people. . . but mostly drew people away almost every other church in town. In the hypercharged climate of consumerism, people walked away from the communities of faith in which they had raised their children, cared for the sick, worshipped weekly for years, and broken bread together. They traded in the hard work of being a people of God to join the newest, latest, greatest thing. So, the town ended up with a megachurch, a broken unity among what had been like-minded churches, a competitive environment, and a strong surge of self and turf protection.

So, where's the worth in all of that? Where's the significance of years of investment that a number of caring people put into tearing down walls between Christians, building a unity that proclaims to the world that Jesus is risen (John 17:21,23), nurturing servanthood between congregations where it doesn't matter who gets the credit, and defeating the whole consumerism plague . . . undone overnight, in the name, supposedly, of Jesus?

On our two mens' climbing trips this summer, Dan Dermyer was our teaching pastor. And on Monday evening of both trips, he opened up the story of Job, which just so happens to be about this very subject. Job, as many of you may remember, was an innocent man who was visited by breathtaking calamity and loss. In fact, he pretty much lost everything: his wife, children, possessions, health, and his closest friendships. He was accused of being the reason for the losses, that it was God's punishment for being a sinner, and a hidden one at that. In spite of his protestations, no one believed him.

But as he gained traction in his rebuttals of these accusations, Job gathered strength of conviction, that perhaps God was the bad guy, that God was responsible for wronging him, that God was the author of these evils being visited upon him. Job throws his challenge at God, demanding an answer to the question, "So, why did all of this destruction happen? Where were You?"

Until at last God stopped him dead in his tracks with this question: "Will you condemn Me that you may be in the right?" (Job 40:8) To which Job crumbles and confesses that he is utterly wrong for blaming God, that God is never the author of evil.

And God, we notice, never answers Job's question.

God leaves it in the realm of what, for us, is mystery. Like looking into and through a mirror dimly (I Corinthians 13:12). As if the Psalmist had it right all along, saying, "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain." (Ps. 139:6) Perhaps there are bigger things afoot, things beyond our ability to take in and understand and carry within us without doing inestimable damage by knowing them.

But in a sense, although one must wait for it for centuries, God does answer Job's question. "Will you condemn Me that you may be in the right?" For God answers in the Person of His Son, Jesus, who took upon Himself the utter condemnation that belongs to Job and issues forth from Job, so that Job might be in the right. And you and me, too.

Which tells me, in the end, that whatever is happening in wretched, destructive, unfathomable, agonizing, seemingly stupid and outrageous and wasteful events in life, which make NO SENSE AT ALL, and which call into question significance and worth and what really matters, that we will find in the end something better than a suffocating view of God's sovereignty that "makes every instance of pain and loss an indispensable moment in a grand scheme whose ultimate synthesis will justify all things. . . [but at the high price of believing] in and lov[ing] a God whose good ends will be realized not only in spite of - but entirely by way of - every cruelty, every fortuitous misery, every catastrophe, every betrayal, evey sin the world has ever known." (David Hart, "Tsunami and Theodicy", Wall Street Journal)

So, when we live enveloped by mystery, especially when it involves suffering, it is our comfort that the God we know through Jesus Christ "has come to rescue creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. . .and that [until that glad Day of salvation is upon us] the world remains a place of struggle between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death. . . [and as a result] I can imagine no greater comfort than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy."