Robert
Lyon is a retired clergyman who divides his time between
Guelph, Ontario and Melaque, Mexico. He taught high
school English, Latin, Greek and science, and served
as an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces Reserve,
retiring in the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. His latest
book, Don’t Throw Out Your Bible, from
which the essay below is excerpted, is now in print.
There
is, I think, such a thing as honest disbelief. Which would
suggest that the God whom many people don’t believe
in probably shouldn’t be believed in anyway. That’s
because honest skeptics realize that whatever image they
have of God, it isn’t big enough to account for
the universe as we have come to know it. Of course, the
reason why some folks don’t believe is that they
think God might cramp their style. But those folks wouldn’t
be interested in any arguments I could make. As for the
honest skeptics, they may be surprised to discover that
the Bible agrees with them. Let’s look at two examples.
If
you’ve ever struggled through all 42 chapters of
the story of Job in the King James Version, you have my
sympathy. After the first two chapters it’s mostly
a tedious string of debates – ‘harangues’
may be the better word. But if you have a modern translation
that recovers the poetry of the Hebrew text, Job can become
a rewarding read, rich in timeless wisdom, both spiritually
and psychologically.
Job,
the main character, is a wealthy sheikh from pre-Hebrew
times who, after a hurricane, a lightning strike, and
two bands of marauders, loses his livestock, his buildings,
all ten adult children, and his health. Only Mrs Job remains,
and she’s no comfort at all. Job does, however,
have three buddies, who come and sit with him for a whole
week, and seeing the extent of his grief they remain wisely
silent. Until at last Job asks the obvious question: Why
me?
Now we know that Job is a good guy, because God says so.
Right there in the text he calls Job “blameless
and upright.” But Job’s three buddies didn’t
get the memo. What they did get from somewhere is a simplistic
theology, and their theology says that the righteous are
rewarded and sinners suffer. By that logic, since Job
is suffering greatly, he must have greatly sinned. So
they heap up accusations of ever-increasing guilt, while
poor Job bemoans the fact that he’s not able to
acquit himself before God face-to-face.
In
the end, God restores Job’s fortunes, and angrily
accuses his three friends: “You have not spoken
rightly of me, as my servant Job has.” So they have
to provide three bulls, which Job as priest – because
he’s “blameless and upright” –
will offer as a sacrifice for sin on their behalf. Because
their concept of God was too small (to borrow the title
of J. B. Phillips’ book) each one of them became
guilty of unjustly accusing a righteous man and, even
worse, of misrepresenting God. Which goes to show that
bad theology really can have bad consequences.
There’s
more to the story of Job than that, but we’ll come
back to it after we have a look at an event in the life
of Moses that may help us see where Job’s friends
went wrong.
When
Moses was keeping sheep out in the desert (Exodus 3),
he saw a bush that seemed to be on fire but was not consumed.
Whether it was a real fire, a visionary experience, or
a bush that sometimes just looks like that, doesn’t
really matter. For Moses, this was a God-moment. As he
approached the bush, he heard God call his name and tell
him to come no closer, and to take off his sandals because
he was on holy ground. ‘Holy ground’ meaning
that he was in the presence of God. The Voice sends him
back to Pharaoh to arrange for the Exodus of God’s
enslaved people from Egypt. Again, whether it was an audible
voice or a voice in Moses’ head also doesn’t
matter. What matters is Whose voice he heard – whatever
‘heard’ may mean in that case.
So
Moses, in that polytheistic world, asks the voice the
obvious question: Who are you? That is, Which of the many
gods am I dealing with here? Moses rephrases his question
in a way that seems strange to us but would have made
perfectly good sense to his contemporaries: What is your
name? Who shall I say sent me? Well, it sounded to Moses
like a reasonable question. But God answers cryptically:
“I am who I am.”
In one sense, that’s no answer at all, for it’s
a tautology and seems to lack any content. Yet in another
sense, it’s the only answer possible. Canadians
may recall a Royal Canadian Air Farce gag that parodied
the Hon Adrienne Clarkson, a former journalist who became
Canada’s 26th Governor General. Ms Clarkson used
to sign off her newscasts with the superior-sounding line,
“I’m Adrienne Clarkson.” Which the Air
Farce morphed into a snotty “I’m Adrienne
Clarkson – and you’re not.” So one of
the things that God is saying here is: “I am –
and the rest of those so-called gods are not!”
But
there’s more to it than that. God also means that
he is the totally self-determined one – the utterly
self-sufficient Ground of Being (Paul Tillich’s
term), not a contingent being. So we really can’t
define God, despite the fact that the Westminster Confession
makes a noble attempt at doing so in 311 words. And even
though we can call him God or Father or any other term,
all such words are necessarily metaphors or analogies
– important because they make him accessible, which
is why Jesus taught us to say “Our Father”
– but totally inadequate to comprehend his (Is there
any adequate word?) “majesty.” So this God
is both unimaginably intimate, in that he knows Moses
(and you and me, too) by name, and cares about the plight
of a bunch of Hebrew slaves; yet he is also so “wholly
other” that Moses cannot comprehend that divine
holiness before whom he must remove his sandals and keep
a respectful distance.
Later in the passage God accommodates Moses’ request
for a name by turning the Hebrew Ehyeh asher ehyeh
(I am who I am) into the name Yahweh. Even so, God says
to Moses: Tell them that “I Am” has sent you.
Many English translations follow the Jewish convention
of respectfully substituting the word LORD for the sacred
Name. French versions helpfully translate the Name as
L’Eternel. You can see the logic of that
translation if you think about the idea of infinity: You
have an idea what infinity means, but you could count
forever and never define it by a particular number. If
you could, it would no longer be infinite. Similarly,
we use various names and pronouns for God, but if we could
define him, he would no longer be God. We would. That’s
where Job’s friends went wrong. They were convinced
that they had correctly defined god’s justice and
how it works itself out in this world. But they hadn’t.
So the inferences they drew from their beliefs led them
to slander Job unjustly and to misrepresent God. And that
takes us back to Job’s story at the point where
God confronts Job the complainer (38:1 - 42:6).
(It’s
worth noting that, unlike the story of Moses, Job is not
a history but an extended parable, and that this section
(ch 38-42, like the Elihu section, 32-37) was likely added
by a later writer. So you will see in the story some discontinuities
of thought).
This
section begins with the LORD addressing Job out of a whirlwind:
“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without
knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man. I will question
you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid
the foundation of the earth? Who determined its measurements?
Surely you know! On what were its bases sunk, or who laid
its cornerstone – when the morning stars sang together,
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”
For
two full chapters God taunts Job with his human ignorance
about the boundaries of the seas and the courses of the
stars, about the origins of light and dark, the sources
of snow and rain and hail, about the capabilities of various
animals, their instinct to hunt and the mysteries of their
birth. To which the daunted Job replies: “Behold,
I am of small account; what shall I answer thee? I lay
my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, but I will not
answer; twice, but I will proceed no further.”
But God isn’t finished with Job yet. He spends two
more chapters querying Job about a mythical land monster
called Behemoth and a mythical sea monster called Leviathan.
Overwhelmed, Job exclaims: “I know that thou canst
do all things, and that no purpose of thine can be thwarted.
I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful
for me, which I did not know. I had heard of thee by the
hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee; therefore
I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
I
have some trouble with Job’s despising himself in
dust and ashes, because it seems to contradict God’s
earlier verdict about Job being “blameless and upright,”
and God’s final verdict that Job has spoken rightly
of him. That’s a notable discontinuity. But if it
shows that Job has grasped something of the magnitude
of the difference between himself and God, so that he
no longer feels a need to “justify the ways of God
to men,” then Job has achieved a humility of faith
that can survive any disaster or any of life’s seeming
incongruities. As we could also. As long as in our pursuit
of correct doctrine, and in our ideas about righteousness,
and in our presumptions about what God can or cannot do,
our ideas are informed by a humility at what we don’t
know.
Of
course, if you or I were writing the story of Job, we
would have given God a different set of questions to ask.
But the author was limited by the science and worldview
of his own day, just as we are, just as some other writer
2500 years in the future would be, who would pose questions
quite different again from ours. But God is the same,
yesterday, today and forever. And so in every age must
Job’s wonderment be. As also ours.
