Settling Up

Passage: Job 42:7-17

You could draw two possible conclusions when you get to the end of Job. On one hand you could say, “God gave Job a raw deal, but at least he makes up for it by giving Job back more than he lost.” On the other you could say, “So what if God gives Job more property and kids? It doesn’t undo the injustice and pain of Job’s experience!” Either conclusion is valid. But neither is complete. To say God compensates Job at the end of the story is to reduce the magnitude of Job’s suffering. One cannot be compensated for the loss of a child, let alone all one’s children. Certain lost things can’t be replaced. To say, on the other hand, that God can’t make up for the terrible things Job suffered is to reduce God to a purveyor of property and experience. God is justified not on the basis of human experience but on the basis of being God.

Human beings can’t cry foul every time God deals them a bad hand. God’s justice takes into account an immeasurable number of factors; God’s dealings with any one person must be weighed against God’s dealings with everyone. The value of any of God’s dealings must also be assessed not according to any human objective but according to God’s objectives.

When God settles up at the end of Job, God doesn’t apologize. God confronts Job’s “friends” for their gross misjudgment of the cosmic order of things and related abuse of Job. God demands that they make amends. God chastises Job for demanding an explanation that God does not owe him. And then God gives good things to Job. God does so not as an act of penance – God has not done wrong. God does so not to compensate Job for what Job lost – there can be no adequate compensation. God gives Job good things because God is a good God. This is what Job maintains throughout his ordeal; this is what distinguishes Job as a man of great faith. And this is the paradoxical message of the Book of Job as a whole: God is a good God. God is, by nature, worthy of a worship that is not contingent upon the conditions of the worshiper.

God is also interested in settling up with people not on the basis of their merits, but on the basis of God’s merits. Here’s how God goes about settling up with us:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (John 3:16-17)