The Greatest Chapter Ever Written

I know I said that I'm going to critique the book "The Church On The Other Side" over the next couple of weeks, but I've also been reading the book "The Bible Jesus Read" by Philip Yancey. I have read this book several times but wanted to read it again. Let me just preface this by saying that Yancey is perhaps my favorite writer. I love all of his books, with What's So Amazing About Grace being my favorite of his. I posted about Yancey a long time ago, so I will refrain from talking about him further, but I do believe that the first chapter in The Bible Jesus Read may be perhaps the greatest chapter ever written in a book not called the Bible.

I have always held Job up as a favorite character in the Bible; although he has suffered much more than I have or ever will, I have felt a certain kinship with Job because I have had a somewhat rocky life.

Yancey's first chapter is about Job. Yancey makes the point that the book of Job is not about suffering, but about faith. After reading it, I agree with him. If the book of Job was about suffering, you would certainly expect a strong answer concerning why we suffer and what is the meaning behind suffering. Job does not answer those questions. In fact, throughout the book of Job, Job asks and asks, and when God answers, it doesn't come in the form of an answer, but in the form of more questions:

"Where were you Job when I laid the foundations of the earth?"

God doesn't give Job an answer, but simply provides Himself as the answer to everything. In God, Job didn't find comfort in knowing the answers, he found comfort in knowing that his God stood with him in these times of despair.

At the end of the chapter, Yancey gives ten conclusions after studying Job:

1. Chapters 1 and 2 of Job make the subtle but important distinction that God did not directly cause Job's problems. He permitted them, but Satan actually caused the suffering.

2. Nowhere does the book of Job suggest that God lacks power or goodness. The book of Job does not call into question God's power - only His fairness.

3. Job decisively refutes one theory, that suffering always comes as a result of sin.

4. Having no clearly formed belief in an afterlife, Job's friends wrongly assumed that God's fairness - his approval or disapproval of people - had to be shown in this life only.

5. God did not condemn Job's doubt and despair, only his ignorance. Job did not take his pain meekly; he cried out in protest to God. His strong remarks scandalized his friends but not God. Need we worry about somehow insulting God with an outburst triggered by stress or pain? Not according to this book.

6. No one has all the facts about suffering. Job concluded he was righteous and God was being unfair. His friends insisted on the opposite: God was righteous and Job was being rightfully punished. Ultimately, all of them learned they had been viewing the situation from a limited perspective, blind to the real struggle being waged in heaven.

7. God is never totally silent. Some sign of him can still be found. "Remember in the darkness what you have learned in the light."

8. Well-intentioned advice may sometimes do more harm than good. As it turned out, the most compassionate thing the friends did for Job took place at the very beginning, when they sat in silence with him for seven days.

9. God re-focused the central issue from the cause of Job's suffering to his response. Mysteriously, God never gave his own explanation of the problem of suffering. The real issue at stake was Job's faith: whether he would continue to trust God even when everything went wrong.

10. Suffering, in God's plan, can be redeemed or serve a higher good. In Job's case, a period of great travail was used by God to win an important, even cosmic, victory.

What a great chapter. Helped my limited understanding of Job quite a bit. Now to go from understanding to living it...