Job and Retribution Theology

One of the strongest impulses within most of us is the belief that good people are rewarded, and bad people are punished. There is an immediacy to it. When bad things begin to happen to us, we quickly ask, “What did I ever do to deserve this?” When someone else is suffering in life, there is a natural tendency to see them as getting what they deserve. We love stories of “good people” who win the lottery. We like to believe it is because they deserve it. As a pastor and leader in the church, people often come to me for counsel and many times they speak of a feeling that they are being punished for wrong they have done. Even Jesus’ own disciples assume this “retribution theology” when they ask Jesus about their encounter with a blind man. “Who sinned, this man or his parents that he has been born blind,” they ask (John 9:2).[1] Jesus immediately corrects them and says neither, and yet you and I still tend to think that this is the way the world works. Proponents of the Prosperity Gospel use our natural tendency and try to convince us that this is indeed the way the world works.[2]

The Book of Job in the Old Testament is designed to help us understand the true way God functions. The preface of the book of Job is where we must begin and be certain to understand that Job is considered by God himself to be “innocent and virtuous” (1:8; and 2:3) long before and even after the calamities come upon him. The Accuser believes that if Job lost all that he had, and if his health was taken away, he would no longer be innocent, virtuous, and faithful to God. But God allows the Accuser to take away all of the good in Job’s life and still Job remains faithful, virtuous, and innocent.

The rest of the book is an explanation of the common understanding of retribution theology which Job’s friends and even Job seem to endorse. There is this sense in which humans are forever believing that if someone is suffering, they must have sinned; and even when the evidence suggests otherwise, we will continue to believe in this retribution theology.

Now some reading this article will argue that, indeed, retribution theology is the way in which God functions. They would show proof-texts from the book of Proverbs, or Deuteronomy 27, 28 (which connects obedience to God’s law with rewards and disobedience with curses) and tell us that is precisely how God functions. However, Tremper Longman III explains it this way.

“…one of the important contributions of the book of Job…is to undermine the idea that retribution theology works absolutely and mechanically. Sometimes sin does lead to negative consequences, but not always. Similarly, sometimes proper behavior leads to positive outcomes, but not always. Job serves as an example to warn against judging others on the basis of their situation in life.” (p. 67).

God never fully answers why Job suffers. God simply appears before Job and it is clear to Job that God is the only wise one. Job “repents” at the sight of an all-powerful God. But his repentance is not from

“sin that led to his suffering in the first place. In the dialogues, Job has grown increasingly impatient… He concludes that God is unjust. At the end of the story, he changes his attitude and behavior (he repents, in other words) toward God, now that he has not only heard about him but also seen him (42:5).”[3]

Thus, the other key learning from the Book of Job is that, regarding suffering, “…the ultimate resolution is patient suffering before a wise and powerful God.”[4] We may not understand it ourselves, but we can trust the wisdom of our God as we go through the sufferings of this life. Job is an important book that teaches about wisdom and suffering. May we read it carefully and mine all of the truths it has to offer.

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[1] Here and throughout this article, I rely heavily upon Tremper Longman III’s excellent commentary on the book of Job and particularly the essay contained within it entitled “The Theological Message of the Book of Job.” Job (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms), Baker Academic, 2012 Commentary by Tremper Longman III.

[2] Longman p. 66, 67.

[3] Longman p. 65, 66.

[4] Longman p. 68.

Glory or Horror

“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory or one of unthinkable horror.” 

Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis, 1952.

“The internal struggle continued. Who was it that had killed him? Well, first he had to decide who he was himself. Was Ray the good guy or the bad guy in this TV series? Was he the victim or accused? Indeed, he was both, and eventually that is how he answered.”

The Great Beyond, Keith Allan Shields, 2017, pp. 84, 85.

“I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A sum can be put right: but only by going back til you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot 'develop' into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, 'with backward mutters of dissevering power' --or else not.”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 1945.

Faith and Resistibility

I often find myself in situations in which people ask me questions about faith. The questions come in many forms: “Why are you a pastor and not a scientist?” “Why do you still dabble in science when you are a pastor?” “How can you believe in a Creator in this scientific world?” “How can you believe in godless science in a created world?” “How can a man of scientific principles like you, have faith that is not backed up by empirical science and logic?” I usually answer these questions by pointing out that I do not find contradiction between Science and Faith, Creation and Evolution, and Logic and Belief. Before long, the conversation works its way to the more foundational questions. At this level, the questions are fewer but the answers are more difficult. The two I hear most often are these, “If God is good, why does he allow horrible suffering in my life (my friend’s life, the world)?” and “If God wants us to believe in him, why doesn’t he make it easier by simply proving his existence?”

The former question is likely the most difficult one and the one about which I will not attempt to write today. I have written about this elsewhere (http://bit.ly/2pZLvRu; http://bit.ly/2gJnifM; and http://bit.ly/2eIp5AX) and many more worthy writers have written upon this theme in large tomes and short articles.[1]

As a beginning to an answer to the second question, I rely upon several authors who have addressed this question. In this blog, I wish to consolidate some of the quotes and logical processes for you the reader, but more likely, for myself.

C.S. Lewis has been a “go-to person” for myself and many others and I still find him incredibly helpful on this topic. In The Screwtape Letters, he asks us to imagine a conversation between a senior and a junior demon in which the senior instructs the junior on the most effective methods for tempting and controlling a young man. Screwtape, the senior demon, explains why God does not show himself more plainly to humans.

You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo.^[2]

Lewis wrote these words in 1942 and they still have weight today. They describe a God who has chosen to make himself resistible. He will woo humans, but will not force them to submit to his will.

Wendell Berry does something similar in his book, Jayber Crow, and perhaps better explains how even the “faintest and mitigated” presence of God would over-ride human will. Berry says,

“Christ did not descend from the cross except into the grave. And why not otherwise? Wouldn’t it have put fine comical expressions on the faces of the scribes and chief priests and the soldiers if at that moment He had come down in power and glory? Why didn’t He do it? Why hasn’t He done it at any one of a thousand good times between then and now? … He didn’t, He hasn’t, because from the moment He did, He would be the absolute tyrant of the world and we would be His slaves. Even those who hated Him and hated one another and hated their own souls would have to believe in Him then. From that moment the possibility that we might be bound to Him and He to us and us to one another by love forever would be ended. … Those who wish to see Him must see Him in the poor, the hungry, the hurt, the wordless creatures, the groaning and travailing beautiful world.”[3]

I appreciate both forms of this answer because they rely upon story, metaphor, and logic, all at the same time. As others have eloquently noted, sometimes poetry is the only means available to us to express our thoughts about God. Poetry allows us to make clear things that would otherwise remain opaque. As the nineteenth-century Anglican theologian Charles Gore rightly insisted:

Human language never can express adequately divine realities. A constant tendency to apologize for human speech … is always present to the mind of theologians who know what they are about, in conceiving or expressing God.” “We see,” says St. Paul, “in a mirror, in terms of a riddle;” “we know in part.” “We are compelled,” complains St. Hilary, “to attempt what is unattainable, to climb where we cannot reach, to speak what we cannot utter; instead of the mere adoration of faith, we are compelled to entrust the deep things of religion to the perils of human expression.”^[4]

Lesslie Newbigin, takes us deeper into the mind of the scientist, the theologian, and the Creator when he points out that we must indeed have a “humble apologetic” about such questions. In his book, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship, Newbigin reminds us of the proper place of such conversations,

Cause is something that can be discovered by observation and reason. Purpose is not available for inspection because, until the purpose has been realized, it is hidden in the mind of the one whose purpose it is. Suppose that going along a street, we observe men at work with piles of bricks and bags of cement, and we guess that a building is being erected. What is it to be? An office? A house? A chapel? There are only two ways to discover the answer: we can wait around until the work is complete and inspection enables us to discover what it is. If we cannot wait until then, we must ask the architect, and we will have to take his word for it. If the work in question is not the building of a house but the creation and consummation of the cosmos, the first alternative is not available to us. We shall not be present to examine the end product of cosmic history. If the whole thing has any purpose (and of course we may decide, as postmoderns do, that it has no purpose), the only way we can know that purpose is by a disclosure from the one whose purpose it is, a disclosure which we would have to take on trust. There is no escape from this necessity. The modern antithesis of observation and reason on the one hand versus revelation and faith on the other is only tenable on the basis of a prior decision that the whole cosmic and human history has no purpose and therefore no meaning. It is possible to make this assumption, but it is not necessary. The question whether the cosmos and human life within it have any purpose other than the individual purposes we seek to impose on things is one that cannot be decided by observation. If we live with a prior assumption that human life has no purpose; then we shall act accordingly, and there will be no possibility whatsoever of discovering its purpose.^[5]

It is these and other authors such as Flannery O’Conner[6] and Francis Collins[7] who, for me, help to make sense of the thoughts already in my head. They permit me to ask the difficult questions; they allow me to formulate my own answers; and they point me to truth.

What are some of the questions you are having about faith? Is one of your questions listed above? Do you have a different, more compelling question? Might I direct you toward someone who has answers to your questions? Let us together engage in “humble apologetics” and see where it might lead us.

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[1] I suggest one start with The Problem of Pain written by C.S. Lewis available here http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/cosmos/philo/PDFs/ProblemofPain_CSL.pdf and progress to a more academic work such as The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil, Meister and Moser, Cambridge University Press, 2017 or Evolutionary Theodicy: Towards an Evangelical Perspective,  Bethany Sollereder, Regent College, 2010.

[2] Lewis, C.S. The Screwtape Letters. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc, 1980, p. 38, 39.

[3] Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow, Counterpoint, 2001, p. 173-174.

[4] Alister McGrath, Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 1998), 157.

[5] Newbigin, L. (1995). Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., p. 57, 58.

[6] What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe. If you feel you can't believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

[7] Francis Collins in The Language of God. "the tools of science are not the right ones to learn about Him. (...) The evidence of God's existence would have to come from other directions, and the ultimate decision would be based on faith, not proof." (p. 30).