God Explodes

Posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago at 7:55 pm. 1 comment

I recently blogged about Job and his suffering and how he chose to still love and honour God throughout. I was inspired by the book Where Is God When It Hurts to realise that Job didn’t deserve the suffering he endured and that God does not punish people with suffering.

Further on in the book, Philip Yancey explains his confusion at God’s response once he does eventually decide to speak to Job. Instead of comforting Job with “there, there, well done for enduring, you’ve matured and proved me right to Satan, thanks!” he launches into one of his longest speeches in the Bible all about what an awesome creator he is! He pretty much ignores the previous 35 chapters worth of questions about pain and suffering!

So does this mean that God has no answers? Or does it mean he has a huge self-centred ego? Yancey suggests that God’s message to Job is

“Stop whining, you have no idea what you’re talking about”. Or as Frederick Buechner puts it:

“God doesn’t explain. He explodes. He asks Job who he thinks he is anyway. He says that to try to explain the kind of things Job wants explaining would be like trying to explain Einstein to a little-neck clam… God doesn’t reveal his grand design. He reveals Himself.”

I swing from being intensely angry that I don’t know why Amy died and why this happened to me, to feeling OK about not knowing since it’s something I’ll never get an answer to.

But I do like the idea that God would rather simply reveal himself and his love to those who suffer than give pat answers which sum up the purpose for peoples pain. I like that idea because it points to God’s compassion.

Yet I feel distant from God.

My Mum gave us a copy of a Nooma video about grief a few months after Amy died. In it Rob Bell explains the Jewish tradition of Sitting Shivah where people coming to see those who are mourning, . They don’t crowd them with activity or conversation, they simply sit and wait for the mourner to make the first move. Rob Bell suggests that this tradition comes from the Jewish understanding about how God relates to those who mourn. He sits close by waiting for the mourner to come to Him. He doesn’t pressure them to keep praying or reading the bible everyday, He just waits near by.

When Mary-Lou and I watched the Nooma video, the Sitting Shivah idea really helped us relax about us and God. We both have got a struggle on our hands in terms of feeling secure and safe in Gods arms.

We’ve only just started facing Him again from time to time.Which is probably why I feel distant from Him. I do believe He wants to reveal Himself to me in new and unexpected ways, but for now, I’m still working things through in my heart