I had a conversation with someone after the gathering yesterday (gathering=Hopesprings Sunday morning times of celebration, music, and diving into the Scriptures together.) That was a fresh reminder of the nature of faith.
I grew up learning the Bible, hearing the story, and even memorizing large portions of it (There were even awards involved...trophies, vests with plastic crowns...true story). I grew up being taught "truth". I also got a healthy dose of certainty thrown in. Awesome people went to great lengths to prove the Bible was reliable and true beyond a shadow of a doubt. Gold-star answers abounded and difficult questions were generally skirted.
Now the Bible is true. It is reliable. It is meaningful, beautiful and alive. But I still have my doubts.
I do. Because I am still breathing. And so do you, if your mind and heart are awake and alive to the very real world we live in and all of the pain and heartache faced on a daily basis.
We spent quite a bit of time in the book of Job yesterday morning, which is always interesting, difficult, and somewhat dangerous (handle these Scriptures with care...). His story is a tough one. Not tough as in a walk uphill, tough as in an ultra-marathon through the Mojave Desert. He loses everything because Satan "incited [God] against him to ruin him without any reason." (Job 2.3, emphasis clearly mine).
I don't think I will EVER understand that passage.
I was talking to a friend after the message, who is great at asking the hard, important, right questions. He was wondering why God would do this, and what was the point, and is God really good? Was it worth it? Worth all of the pain and the suffering, just to prove a point? And what was the point? Great questions.
We spoke for just a few minutes, and it was evident (to me anyway) that the question behind all the questions was ultimately something like: is God really good, and is he worth putting faith in?
One of the reasons the book of Job is so good, so important, and so difficult, is that it poses questions without ultimately revealing the concrete answers.
God does something to Job without cause. Job spends a couple dozen chapters arguing his case with God and his community of friends...
Pleading for justice.
Stating his fidelity in the face of suffering.
Yearning for hope and for God to show up and prove himself.
God shows up at the end, launching into a beautiful description of how powerful and wonderful and awesome He is. YET HE DOESN'T REALLY GIVE AN ANSWER FOR WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO JOB.
Somehow, this is enough for Job. God chastises Job's friends because Job was right to rail and plead and demand answers for questions that God himself really doesn't answer. Job's stuff is restored.
Case closed.
For Job.
Not for me. I wrestle. (I am guessing more wrestling happened for Job too.)
Our doubts can be addressed in this book. Our fears come to the surface. Our questions are real. My friend and I wrestled with this for a bit, and then just ended up clinging to the reality that for Job, the one going through all of this pain, the one who lost everything, His faith was left strengthened by the questions. Not destroyed. His view was that all was grace, and that He was owed nothing except the existence of a good Creator and an opportunity to have a relationship with Him. Here's what he has to say:
After losing his kids, his wealth, his stuff, his success:
"Naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I will return. The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away, may the name of the Lord be praised."
After losing his health:
"Shall we accept good from God, and not adversity?"
In the midst of railing against the certainty of his friends and as he pleads his case:
"Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him"
And then this, which through the millennia may have made the whole thing worth it...maybe:
"I know my redeemer lives, and in the end he will stand on the earth."
Note: Job knows there must be a redeemer, someone to rescue us from suffering and sin and death, without a Bible.
All the suffering, all the doubts, pushed Job into a place of faith where he was trusting that God had to be good. That would have to step in. That there were answers, and that the answer would have to be a redeemer, or God is not God. And he put His life in a desperate, hungry, sometimes agonizing place of trust that God was good, and that everything in His life was grace.
The Scripture is always kicking up these questions, leaving us to answer with our lives. Is God good? Is the journey of faith worth hazarding my life? We jump into an answer with how we live and love, or with how we set about constructing our own sad little world apart from God.
We seek to be a place where people can wrestle with hard questions, and discover a faith beyond easy answers, in a dynamic relationship with a God who is good and who loves us.
What are the questions that have driven you into a deeper faith?
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