Why Are the Righteous Righteous?

Job 38:1-7; Mark 10:35-45

I have a nephew named Jack who is an industrial engineer.  He has two degrees from Auburn University.  He’s very bright and has always been a deep thinker.  The guys in my family go on a fishing trip every year, and I like to get paired with Jack.  Several years ago we were fishing the White River in Arkansas.  Jack and I were fishing together, and I began the morning by saying, “Ok, Jack, we’re going to talk about religion today.  Any question you have.  Anywhere you want to go.  Just you and me.  So get it started.”  It was great! We spent the rest of the day talking about God, the Bible, world religions, heaven and hell, and anything else he wanted to talk about.

Several weeks later Jack called me and said, “Uncle David, I’ve got to talk to you…about religion.”

I said, “Great.  Tell me what’s on your mind.”

He said, “Well, I’m stuck on the suffering of humanity.  Why do some people suffer so much while others seem not to suffer?  It seems that some people suffer greatly most of their life and then die.  What’s the point of that kind of life?  And why does God allow it?”

We talked for about thirty or forty minutes, and I could tell that he was not satisfied with what I said.

Several weeks passed and these questions continued to gnaw at him.  He was getting moody, somewhat despondent.  His mom insisted that he visit a counselor, which he did.  He told the counselor the same things he told me.  Why do people suffer?  What’s the point of life?  Why does God allow suffering?

I love the counselor’s response.  She said, “Listen, Jack.  Nobody can answer those questions, and you’re not the first one to ever ask them.  So, get over it.”

Now, I suspect that was a bit of a jolt to my young nephew.  But it helped him get “unstuck.”

Those are perennial questions—archetypical questions, we could say—that generation after generation has asked.  Thoughtful people in churches, synagogues, mosques, colleges, and other settings have asked, debated, and wrestled with these questions. And there’s never been the definitive answer.  If the definitive answer had been given, the questions would go away.  Even the book of Job does not finally answer the question of human suffering.

The book of Job asks two important questions. First, it asks why the righteous suffer.  That’s Job’s question.  Why do bad things happen to good people? Rabbi Kushner asked that question back in the 1980s.  The book of Job asks questions like these:

Is there such a thing as arbitrary suffering?

Is there meaning and purpose behind all things, good and bad?

If suffering is arbitrary, what does that tell us about God?  And what is the meaning of life, especially the life that is visited with extraordinary suffering?

            The man named Job wants to know, “Why do the righteous suffer?”  That’s the first question in Job. 

            But there is another question in this book, God’s question. God wants to know, “Why are the righteous righteous?”

First, we need to understand a way of thinking about God that was common in Job’s day.  We call it just retribution today, a belief that is not yet dead. Just retribution claims that God is 100% just, fair, in dealing with us, and nothing is arbitrary.  God either rewards or punishes us based on our deeds.  So, back in the day of Job if you were righteous, they believed God blessed you with lots of children, camels, sheep, etc. If you were unrighteous, God punished you. God didn’t give evil doers a pass.  One way or another, you paid for your evil deeds.  Now, this is important to the book of Job.  You could also back into this belief.  If you saw someone who was suffering, that was a clear indication that that person had done something evil, and God was punishing him. Likewise, if you saw someone who was blessed—healthy, wealthy, and wise as the prosperity gospel says—that was a clear indication that that person was living a good life, and God was blessing her.

Job is described in chapter one as “blameless and upright, one who feared God, and turned away from evil.”  He rose early each morning and made burnt offerings to God.  So, we would expect Job to be blessed by God, right?  And he was.  He had seven sons and three daughters, 7000 sheep, 3000 camels, 500 oxen, 500 donkeys, and “very many servants.”  This was a vast fortune in their day.  Job is described as “the greatest of all the people of the east.”  This, they would have believed, was a clear indication of God’s blessing upon Job.

Enter Satan, the adversary of God.  At this point in the Bible, Satan is not the agent of all things evil.  He or she belongs to a heavenly council in the book of Job, along with the angels.  In a dramatic scene, this heavenly council comes to visit God, and God and Satan engage in conversation. God asks Satan if he has noticed his faithful, righteous servant Job.  Satan replies, “Well, yes, but he isn’t righteous for nothing, you know.  He is righteous,” Satan charges, “only because you bless him. Take it all away, and he will curse you to your face.”

“Take it away then,” God tells Satan.

Job lost everything.  His ten children died when a storm hit the house where they were having a party.  His camels and oxen were stolen. The sheep were destroyed by fire.  The greatest man in all the east lost everything.  His wealth.  His health.  His servants.  His children.  His wife even taunted him. “Curse God,” she sneered, “and die.”  In other words, just curse God, and God will take you out of your misery because that is what God does to those who curse him—just retribution.

But Job did not curse God.  He declared instead, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Job had three friends.  Well, maybe they were friends.  You decide for yourself.  Their names were Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.  They represented the traditional thinking of their day—just retribution.  The righteous prosper at the hand of God.  The unrighteous suffer at the hand of God.  They saw the great suffering that had visited Job—the death of his children, loss of his fortune and health.  Their natural assumption was that Job must have sinned greatly. The only question for them was, “What did he do to deserve this?  What could he have possibly done that was so vile, so reprehensible, that God would punish him so greatly?”

His friends sat with him for seven days in complete silence.  Then, eager to know the gossip, they said, “Tell us, Job.  What did you do to deserve this?”

Throughout the book of Job, Job never admits to a great sin, or any sin at all.  He claims that he lived his life before God with integrity and did nothing to deserve punishment from the hand of God.  He demands a meeting with God, face to face, with a referee who would ensure fairness.  Job knew in his heart of hearts that if he could get a fair hearing with God, his claim of innocence would be validated. 

Job gets his wish.  It comes in chapter thirty-eight and is one of the most dramatic scenes in the Hebrew Scriptures.  God answers Job from a whirlwind.  God asks him three questions.  Who are you to challenge me?  Where were you at creation?  And are you able to do better?  And, of course, the answers to these questions are evident.  I am nothing compared to you.  No, I was not present at creation.  And, no, I am not able to do better.

Question number one: why do the righteous suffer? I don’t know why the righteous suffer, and the book of Job book doesn’t tell us.  What this book does tell us is that the old notion of just retribution is wrong.  God is not up in the clouds keeping count of our good and evil deeds and then punishing or rewarding us based on those deeds.  Sometimes the righteous suffer.  That’s the way it is.  Sometimes the unrighteous prosper.  That’s the way it is.

Question number two, the more important question: why are the righteous righteous?  That’s the God question in Job.  Why are we people of faith?  Is it because we hope God will bless us with health, wealth, and wisdom? That’s rather selfish, isn’t it?  That is a superficial, selfish motive. A satisfying life of faith must be built upon motives deeper than that.  The book of Job invites us to love and serve God for God’s sake alone.  It invites us to choose the life of faith because it resonates with our understanding of truth, because it gives us an avenue for building a better, healthier world.  And here’s what will happen.  Along the way, we will be blessed, and we will suffer.  And through it all, we are challenged, like the man named Job, to live our lives before God with integrity.

Closing Prayer

 Lord, we see the example of this man named Job.  Help us to so conduct our lives that we can stand confidently in our integrity.  Amen.