The Gospel According to Job: An Honest Look at Pain and Doubt from the Life of One Who Lost Everything

by Mike Mason

Overview

Anyone who has suffered knows that there is no such thing as "getting a grip on oneself" or "pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. The only bootstrap in the Christian life is the Cross," says Mason. "Sometimes laying hold of the cross can be comforting, but other times it is like picking up a snake."

Job knew this firsthand. From him we learn that there are no easy answers to suffering. That the mark of true faith is not happiness, but rather, having one's deepest passions be engaged by the enormity of God. And through Job we learn the secret of the gospel: that "mercy is the permission to be human." The Lord never gave Job an explanation for all he had been through. His only answer was Himself. But as Job discovered, that was enough.

The Gospel According to Job sensitively brings the reader to this realization, using a devotional commentary format that reminds them that it's all right to doubt, to be confused, to wonder–in short, to be completely human. But what will heal us and help us endure is a direct, transforming encounter with the living God.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781433516320
Publisher:	Crossway
Publication date:	10/03/2002
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	448
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

MIKE MASON lives with his wife, Karen, in British Columbia, Canada. Mason received a BA with honors and an MA in English from the University of Manitoba. His other books include The Mystery of Marriage, The Mystery of the Word, and The Furniture of Heaven. He now writes full-time and divides his attention equally between fiction and devotional writing.

MIKE MASON lives with his wife, Karen, in British Columbia, Canada. Mason received a BA with honors and an MA in English from the University of Manitoba. His other books include The Mystery of Marriage, The Mystery of the Word, and The Furniture of Heaven. He now writes full-time and divides his attention equally between fiction and devotional writing.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

THE DIALOGUE: ROUND 1 (Job 3-11)

"Why is life given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in? For sighing comes to me instead of food; my groans pour out like water."

— JOB 3:23-24

We do not want you to be uniformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life.

— 2 COR. 1:8

Calling a Spade a Spade

After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. (3:1)

After seven days of saintly silence, seven days of commendatory restraint and of "not sinning by anything he said" (2:10), we may wonder why Job at the beginning of Chapter 3 suddenly cuts loose and "curses the day of his birth." Why does he have to ruin everything by opening his big mouth and sticking his foot in it? However much we may strive to sympathize with Job's suffering, his expression of it now becomes so dark and shocking that we cannot help but ask, What is really going on here? Must we hold the whole of this chapter at arm's length, chalking it up to the misguided ravings of a man who has essentially lost control of himself, a tortured mind gone haywire?

Yet surely one of the most distinctive impressions we have as we read through the speeches of Job is that here is a man who has not gone haywire at all, but who knows exactly what he is saying and means every word of it. True, at the end of the day he will recant his strong language and "repent in dust and ashes" (42:16). But this latter perspective is gained under entirely different circumstances, as the result of a direct encounter with the Lord, and it is difficult to imagine that Job would ever have repudiated the process by which he was drawn step-by-step into that transcendent experience. This process, admittedly, was one involving various moods and mental states that at times presented all the appearance not only of godless despair, but of an unbalanced mind veering towards total breakdown. And yet, one of the grimmest aspects of this story is that Job never does teeter over the brink into madness, but rather faces his entire ordeal with eyes wide-open. Even when utterly broken, he somehow retains not only his faith but his sanity, while at the same time managing, at the cost of incredible anguish, to give voice to the insanity and the denial of God that reside in us all.

In pondering, from this point on, the question of Job's lack of verbal restraint, one fact worth considering is that we have no way of telling exactly how long his trials may have lasted. The events narrated in the Prologue, we know, comprised at the very least ten days, and probably closer to two or three weeks (although the suggestion of "months" in 7:3 may point to an even longer duration). The poetic dialogue, on the other hand, while it occupies the vast majority of the physical space in the book, may easily have taken place over as short a period as a single afternoon. In that case we might more readily understand why Job, after a lengthy siege of silent agony, should finally have broken down and given vent to a one-day (or a one-hour) outburst. Even the Lord Jesus, after all, was known to give way to apparent bouts of frustration, as when He complained of His poor scruffy band of stupid and incompetent disciples, "O unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?" (Matt. 17:17).

The fact is, there is a point at which any man simply throws in the towel. He does not abandon his faith, necessarily; he just gets thoroughly sick and tired of trying to put a good face on things, when the things he is facing do not have anything good about them at all. This is not sin; it is just plain honesty. It is calling a spade a spade. Job is a forthright and plainspoken man, the sort of person who is not afraid to say what is on his heart, and at the outset of the Dialogue section we need grudgingly to acknowledge that such uncommon honesty may be one of the greatest virtues a saint can possess.

The third chapter of Job may well be the bleakest chapter in all of Scripture — more so even than Psalm 88, which after eighteen bleak verses ends abruptly with the line, "Darkness is my closest friend." Here it seems obvious that the psalmist reaches the end of his prayer without receiving any answer, without so much as a crumb of comfort. Yet for this very reason, there can be a strange comfort in the reading of this psalm in times of deep trouble. It is good to be reminded that such a black outpouring really is Scriptural, that prayer need not be upbeat and optimistic. The true believer does not always rise from his knees full of encouragement and fresh hope. There are times when one may remain down in the dumps and yet still have prayed well. For what God wants from us is not the observance of religious protocol, but just that we be real with Him. What He wants is our heart.

The Dark Side

"May the day of my birth perish, and the night it was said, 'A boy is born!' That day — may it turn to darkness; may God above not care about it." (3:3-4)

However we may try to sympathize with and rationalize Job's black moods, from the moment he opens his mouth in Chapter 3 the reaction of the normal Christian reader is to squirm with distaste and to turn away from him in contempt. The thing we find particularly abhorrent is all this gloom-and-doom death-talk of his, this expressed longing not just for death but for total annihilation, this ache not merely to cease existing but never to have existed at all. Good Christians do not want to listen to this. We just feel that Job is wrong — terribly wrong — to "curse the day of his birth," and we do not want to acknowledge that such ghastly and despairing words could ever actually be uttered by a believer in God, let alone by someone with a reputation for exemplary sanctity.

So it is not just Job's wife and friends who pass judgment on him; we too, as readers, are inclined at this point to dismiss and reject him, or else to block our ears and pretend that he does not know what he is saying. Perhaps he is not such a great and holy saint after all, we think. For as soon as things get bad enough he takes to whining and cursing and crying in his cup, just like any old drunk in a bar. Apparently the Devil was right about him, and when the pressure gets too great he caves in and loses his faith.

In all honesty, however, as black and turbulent as Job's thoughts are, is it really the case that they are essentially any different from the innermost thoughts of other believers? Or might the real difference simply be that Job speaks his thoughts aloud? Certainly he gives utterance to things which, we feel, ought not to be uttered — things which many people would not even admit to having inside them. But are they not there nonetheless, nightmarishly gnawing away in the subliminal murmurings of each and every mind? In Job such thoughts come out into the open and appear, shockingly, on the lips of a decent and upright man.

Being a believer in God necessarily implies grappling with the dark side of one's nature. Many of us, however, seem to be so afraid of our dark side that far from dealing with it realistically, we repress and deny it. If we do so chronically, we need to ask ourselves whether we really believe in the healing power of Christ's forgiveness and in His victory over our evil natures. Perhaps we have never frankly come to grips with the fact that we ourselves are evil. If we have not, then we are ill prepared for those times when believing in God is like being awake during open heart surgery. For our Creator is not yet finished with us; He is still creating us, still making us, just as He has been all along from the beginning of the universe. But for the short span of our life here on earth we have the strange privilege of actually being wide awake as He continues to fashion us, to watch wide-eyed as His very own fingers work within our hearts. Of course this can be a painful process, and there is no anesthetic for it. At least, the only anesthetic is trust — trust in the Surgeon. But trust is not a passive, soporific thing. When there is stabbing pain, trust cries out. It is only mistrust, fear, and suspicion that keep silent.

We must not blame Job, therefore, for giving verbal expression to feelings that in most civilized people emerge in other ways. He says out loud that he rues the day of his birth, and while most of us might never consciously think such a thought, let alone voice it, do we not often live as though it were true? Whenever we grumble, whenever we do anything unwillingly, whenever we say a bad word against someone else — are we not, in effect, rueing the day of our birth? Are we not being openly and rebelliously critical of God's gracious gift of life? Even in the face of the tiniest frustrations, our reactions may betray the presence of a lingering resentment over the fact that we were ever created and brought into such a hard world in the first place.

Only the person who maintains an attitude of pure and unwavering thankfulness for every precious moment that the Lord has given, has any right to say a word of censure against Job in Chapter 3.

Depression

"Why is light given to those in misery, and life to the bitter of soul?" (3:20)

Many commentators on Job have felt that the sweeping change that comes over the man in Chapter 3, from radiant saindiness to unseemly despair, is not quite believable. Yet by this stage it should be clear that an entirely new trial has now overtaken Job: the trial of depression, of deep mental and spiritual trauma. The terrible disasters of the Prologue Job managed to weather admirably, with piety intact. But now the battle front has shifted, subtly but calamitously, from outside to inside. Now it is Job's inner psychic life, his very soul, that is under direct satanic attack. In the words of Proverbs 18:14, "A man's spirit sustains him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?"

Is it really true that God would allow Satan direct access to the very soul of a believer for the purpose of untrammeled oppression? Listen to what John of the Cross says about this: "In proportion as God is guiding the soul and communicating with it, He gives the Devil leave to act with it after the same manner." Elsewhere John states that God certainly does "permit the Devil to deal with the soul in the same measure and mode in which He conducts and deals with it Himself. ... Thus the Devil cannot protest his rights, claiming that he is not given the opportunity to conquer the soul, as was his complaint in the story of Job."

It is important to realize that nowhere in this book are we given reason to believe that Job's depression, in and of itself, is ever viewed by the Lord as being his own "fault." On the contrary, in view of the clear mandate for unlimited harassment (short of death) given to Satan in the Prologue, we are constrained to see Job's psychic trauma as part and parcel with his other trials, just one more of the Devil's assaults upon his faith. In fact the message that begins to unfold in Chapter 3 is that depression in a believer, far from being unforgivable, is one of the things that the Lord is most ready and eager to forgive. It may even be something that does not call for forgiveness at all, and far from being a sign of loss of faith it may actually demonstrate the presence of the sort of genuine and deeply searching faith that God always honors.

Job teaches us that there are times (as paradoxical as this may sound) when spiritual hope can take the form of despair. As someone has said, "Only the desperate are truly hopeful." To be sure, there are varieties of despair and depression that are without hope at all, that are full of godless self-pity and destructiveness. But there is also a kind of despair that is the only authentic response that a truly godly temperament can make when confronted by certain situations. There is a kind of despair that is realistic, courageous, and persevering in the highest degree. This is the despair that a person will have when he knows that things are wrong — that they are all wrong — and that they absolutely must get better or else he will die. The reason he despairs, then, is that he knows in his heart that there is a better way, and he has made up his mind that he will not rest until he finds it. He will not settle for anything less. Such a person reaches a point of staggering abandonment, being prepared to live with an inconceivable weight of sensual and psychological deprivation for the sake of holding out for deep spiritual truth.

This is not despair; this is hope. It is like a spiritual hunger strike, an all-consuming protest staged against the world's complacency. A lazy and self-satisfied person will never despair in this manner. Only a person who believes ardently in God will have the courage to endure such despair. Only a person who hopes with all his heart, and whose soul therefore cries out day and night to the living God for help, can live with spiritual famine. Wrote the great Catholic painter Georges Rouault, "I believe in suffering; it is not feigned in me. This is my only merit. I was not made to be so terrible."

What sort of hope do most churchgoers have today? Is it anything more than a grim stoicism, the ability to keep a stiff upper lip in the midst of life's fray? Is it the sort of hope that hides from reality? If the average Christian fell into despair, would he even know it?

Hedge of Thorns

"Why is life given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?" (3:23)

At the beginning of the story Satan had accused the Lord of overprotecting Job by putting "a hedge around him and his household and everything he has" (1:10). Now Job uses this same metaphor of being "hedged" or "fenced in" to describe his feeling of separation from God, of being shielded not from evil but from good. So there is a good deal of irony in the repetition of this image, in that where Satan sees unfair protection, Job sees unfair obstruction.

The moral here should be evident: God's surest protection can sometimes take the form of apparent obstruction, of darkness and difficulty and pain. Indeed there are times when the very safest place for a believer to be is in the midst of obscurity and suffering, to all appearances cut off from God. If what is happening is by permission of the Lord (and when is it not?), then no matter what the situation may be, it is the very safest situation in the world.

In the book of Acts, for example, the entire penultimate chapter is taken up with the story of a violent storm at sea that raged for over two weeks and ended in shipwreck. Things grew so desperate that at one point the narrator, Luke, admits that "we finally gave up all hope of being saved" (Acts 27:20). Presumably the "we" here includes not just the unbelievers on board, but the believers as well. (Yes, even for the great Apostle Paul there came a point in his life where he "gave up all hope of being saved"!) Nevertheless, could anyone doubt that Luke and Paul were just as secure in God's hands at the very height of the storm as they were when they finally set foot safe and sound on the island of Malta?

The fact is, a storm can be the safest place of all. For when you are feeling strong and good and happy and are accomplishing great things for God, then Satan can still get at you, and this may even be the time when you are most vulnerable to temptation. But when you are hedged in, when your arms and legs are pinned and you are bearing your cross with Christ, then Satan cannot touch you, and the reason he cannot touch you there is that by this point you have penetrated so far into his own kingdom that he does not worry about you anymore. On the contrary, he now does something that the Lord never does: he forgets all about you. Why? Because he thinks he has already defeated you and won you over to his side! He thinks he has destroyed you and assumed you into his own realm, and he thinks this because he is such a miserable and agonized creature himself that he cannot stand to see anyone else happy, and so as long as you are happy he will look for ways to attack you, but when you are suffering he will do what every other loveless being does, and he will cease to take you seriously. He will dismiss you and reject you. For Satan cannot tolerate joy; it tortures him. But suffering he tolerates very well. He tolerates it so well, in fact, that he does not even notice it. He does not have an ounce or a crumb of awareness of the evil of pain or death, let alone of compassion for it, and so the Christian who is in the grip of great suffering is entirely hidden from his eyes. On the other hand, the Christian who is brimming over with happiness and fulfillment will almost certainly be infuriatingly visible to him. At such a time people often feel as though they understand everything; and yet, this may be precisely the time when they understand nothing. That is why in the last analysis the only way to escape Satan is to die — to die to oneself by being crucified with Christ, and so to be "hidden with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3). Hidden from what? Why, from the world, from our own sinful flesh, and from the Devil.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Gospel According to Job"
by .
Copyright © 1994 Mike Mason.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction,
Prologue (Job 1-2),
The Dialogue, Round 1 (Job 3-11),
The Dialogue, Round 2 (Job 12-20),
The Dialogue, Round 3 (Job 21-31),
Elihu (Job 32-37),
The Theophany (Job 38-42:6),
Epilogue (Job 42:7-17),