Until Christ comes again, the question of why God lets us suffer will never stop rattling us. So often I’ve tried to look to Scripture for logical solutions and theological answers, but sometimes, just being able to solve the problem isn’t the comfort we need. But the book of Job meets us in our suffering in a different way than the rest of Scripture. It poetically expresses the deepest, most desperate wrestling of the soul as we agonize over how a perfect God could intersect an imperfect world. Through Job, God shows that he understands our hearts.
The story is that God allows Satan to inflict a righteous man with every worldly misery imaginable and see how he reacts. Then, for the majority of the book, Job wrestles. He despairs of life itself and demands that God listen to his complaints. He holds onto faith in God, but sometimes it seems to only hang by a thread. Why would God allow bad things to happen to good people? Obviously, this question is harder to answer during bad things. Again, all of this wrestling is meant to be relatable to us.
Job’s friend Eliphaz offers one answer: God disciplines sin. God allows us to face the consequences of our sin so that we may repent. But he also loves to give redemptive blessings to those who repent and turn from sin, because he is a good God. Ultimately, even discipline is a good thing, because through it God is restoring us to himself and to righteousness. So welcome discipline gladly.
Is this an adequate answer? It’s definitely an important part of it. But interestingly, by the end of the book, God will accuse Eliphaz and the rest of Job’s friends of being too short-sighted in their understanding of God’s goodness. Discipline is key, but there’s much more! Job, it turns out, is not the main character in his own story, nor are we in our own. All things are from, for, and about God. In all things, God will be glorified—and somehow, miraculously, mysteriously, God will work out even our worst suffering for his glory and our greatest joy.
When our wrestling is hardest, the best thing we can do is think rightly about God. Eliphaz is right about one thing: we can trust God, because God loves to redeem. He is a redeeming God. And he will surely make all things new and all wrong things right. We may not yet have the full answer to why bad things happen to good people, but we do have hope. We can faithfully trust that our God redeems, and our God is always good.
