"Why do good people suffer?" In 40 years of listening to sermons in Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and various other mainline and Pentecostal churches, I keep hearing that question asked, often from the springboard of the book of Job. For those who are not familiar with the story, it begins with God bragging on how good this man Job is. Satan then challenges Job's goodness and as a result, God puts Job to the test.

First he loses all of his material possessions and all of his family, except his wife. Job passes that test. Then Satan ups the ante and wants God to make it harder, so God makes Job physically ill...covered in boils from head to toe. Job is downright miserable, moans and groans for a fair number of chapters, some of which you heard in the reading this morning. He has friends who show up and tell him that he must have sinned for God to do such things to him and tell him to repent. Job demands that God show up and explain all this, and God does appear. The trouble is, God doesn't really explain Job's question. Job wants to know...as we often do..."Why me?" God's answer is basically that we are not capable of understanding. It is the divine version of that parental response that so annoys children..."Because I said so."

I can't stand here and say that I have the answer to Job's question either. But I am a pastor, and every week I face a congregation of world-weary, good-people-who-are-suffering folks who want very much to know why the book of Job should be a comfort rather than a reason to expect to wake in the morning covered in boils. So I do my best to study and pray and understand.

The more I do this, the more I seem to see the question of why good people suffer to be a question of secondary rather than primary importance for the book. In short, while the question is the one Job himself is asking, the author of the book seems to override his question with one of more urgency, even as the appearance and speech of Yahweh to Job makes the question fade into insignificance and even elicits Job's repentance for asking it. It seems to me that the question the author of Job would like us to probe is not "Why do good people suffer?" but "Why are good people good?"

That the question revolves in some way around Job's goodness is obvious from the beginning. The very first verse of the very first chapter points out Job's blameless and godly character. Then, a few verses later, the very first thing God wants Satan to notice on the earth is the goodness of Job. Job's upright character is a key part of the theme.

But notice what happens next, in 1:9. Satan's response to Job's goodness is to question his motive. "Does Job fear God for nothing?" Satan asks. I think this is the question of the book. "Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face."

Satan, which means "the Accuser", has just asked the question still asked by those who seek to accuse the church today. "See Sally Churchgoer," says God. "She lives right, just like a Christian ought to. And you'll find her in church every Sunday with a tithe in her offering envelope."

"Well of course she does," says the challenger. "She's had it easy all her life. She's never known poverty or illness or tragedy...not really. She's just a good Christian because she thinks nothing really bad can happen to her that way. She is into this faith thing for herself, not for you, God. She doesn't love you for who you are, she loves you only because you give her what she wants. Take away those comforts and you'll see what her faith is really made of. You might be God, but if she doesn't get what she wants from you, she'll never darken that church door again. Just you try it!"

The question of Job, it seems to me, is raising the issue of whether we are able to pick up a cross and follow Jesus or whether we are only in the crowd because we have eaten our fill of loaves and fishes. Do we worship God as a way of paying for blessings we expect to receive or do we worship God simply because God is worthy of worship? It is a timeless question and a crucial question...and one that the book of Job eloquently and sufficiently answers.

We see, as Job's suffering begins and the book progresses, the inner heart of a blameless man. The first thing we see is that Job never saw anything that God had given to him as anything other than a gift. None of it was truly "his." Job never appropriated God's belongings...not his wealth, not his house, not his family. When it is all taken from him in a single day, Job responds in verse 1:21, "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."

Most of us lose the battle right here, because most of us think we are owners rather than stewards of God's gifts. We think that the things God has placed under our control are ours to do with as we please and find ourselves angry if God should require their return or move them into the hands of another steward. Now, please notice that Job is not jumping in the streets for joy. These losses are real blows. They really hurt, and Job shows all the signs of mourning. He shaved his head and tore his robe in grief. I'm not suggesting that the faithful response to loss is a mere shrug of the shoulders. Job felt the losses and grieved deeply. But then he fell on the ground and worshiped. Until we have abandoned our notions of entitlement, this part of his response makes no sense, and we turn away from Job sad, like the rich young ruler in Luke 18 who just couldn't let go of absolutely everything.

The rich young ruler is, in fact, outwardly very much like Job. Before the law he is blameless...has kept all the commandments from his youth. Like Job, he is famous, wealthy, and a man of power. God here does not take anything from him. Here he is asked to give it up...not his health, not his family...just his money. He can't do it. He would like to...his refusal makes him sad...but he is too attached. We can almost hear Satan saying to God, "See, told you so." That is what Satan thought would happen with Job.

Like the rich young ruler, most of us prove Satan's point when it comes to our possessions, and the world has taken note. Those of us who weep at the Cross from a comfortable pew and fidget when our expressions of devotion to the Almighty might make our dinner a bit late stand before both God and the Accuser. When the Accuser points at us and says, "This one is only good because he's never really had to put his money where his mouth is," many of us have lost the challenge. And that is only chapter one.

It seems like Job surely has passed the test, proving that there is such a thing as a human being who worships God simply because God is God. But the Accuser sees deeply into the human psyche and probes still further in chapter 2. "Yes," Satan says in essence, "He has been able to keep his priorities straight regarding those things outside of himself. But a man's body is his ultimate possession. Mess with that and you'll see that every person has a buyout price."

And Satan is right insofar as the affliction to Job's body is the straw that threatens to break the camel's back. It is hard to get more relevant to our own suffering. A loss here and there may be troublesome, but most of us manage. But if we live long enough, we all have those times when all the losses seem to save up and hit us all at once. We look around and see that not one area of life is going well.

When disaster piles upon disaster and loss upon loss, all of us are overwhelmed and we who profess faith want to know what a faithful response to such misery looks like. In the annals of Scripture, we have a few places we can turn. We can look to Jesus in His Passion, Paul singing in prison, Stephen being stoned, and others being persecuted in the early church. And we can look to Job, which is the longest and most detailed picture of what human suffering in the context of faith looks like.

In the speeches of Job and his friends, we see that suffering confounds even the most faithful. Even Jesus cries out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" echoing King David's feeling a millennium before in Psalm 22. Job comes to curse and despise the day he was born. What a comfort to know that the sense of darkness, unfairness, and the absence of God has been shared by God's most precious and faithful in their dark times.

This part of Job says to me that this is simply part and parcel of what suffering does. We know from the end of the book that Job passes the test. In 42:10 God says that Job has spoken what is right about God, and Job is rewarded for faithfulness. God has understood the nature of suffering and the darkness that it brings. Job's words were not sinful, even though Job called God's justice into question. When God shows up in response to Job's request for a hearing, the very presence of God brings the wisdom to know that God's ways are not our ways, but Job is not condemned for questioning that in the midst of his pain.

Job helps me to keep my prayer life honest. Hear Job's misery in the passage we read today. Job does not hide his anger and bitterness from God. He says God has denied him justice (27:2). He claims God has left him (29:1-6). Listen to his prayer in 30:20-23: "I cry out to you, O God, but you do not answer; I stand up, but you merely look at me. You turn on me ruthlessly; with the might of your hand you attack me. You snatch me up and drive me before the wind; you toss me about in the storm. I know you will bring me down to death, to the place appointed for all the living." That is honesty in prayer. You hear it also in the Psalms and in most of Lamentations.

How do the righteous pray when they suffer? Well, here in Job is one example...an example that God countered but did not condemn. It feels like pure freedom and grace to me to be allowed honest prayer and to have Scripture acknowledge that even the blameless, even the Son of God, feel at times like God has gone on vacation without them.

Why are we good? Why do we bother to try? For our own good? For fire insurance? Or for the love of God? That is the root question of the book of Job, as I see it, and our struggles with the possible answers are played out in our struggles over the relation of suffering to faith. In the book of Job we see a blameless man who hangs onto his faith in God through horrible circumstances. Job proves that he is not placing his trust in God just for what he can get out of it. This is love of God for God's sake alone. But although the challenge is finished for Job, there is the sense that it will surface again. The Accuser goes back to his corner, but there is one more level he has not tried. Job's health has suffered, but God refused to let Job die. Everything was taken, but not his life. Satan can't do any more with Job, but he is willing to wait for another blameless man to come along.

At a more opportune time, the challenge surfaces again as Satan confronts Jesus. The challenges of Job are presented first in the wilderness temptations. Want wealth and authority, Jesus? Give up on God and worship me. Want fame and friends? Be spectacular and throw yourself off of the Temple and let the angels catch you. Suffering in your body? Hungry? Make these stones into bread. Jesus defeats Job's temptations handily. But how about death? That is Satan's trump card. We can almost hear the "skin for skin" discussion of Job escalating with Jesus.

And as it is tried, we see the same darkness of suffering descend. Even the sky turns black as Jesus feels and expresses the absence of God. "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" But in the end, with his dying breath, Jesus says, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit." The Accuser is defeated once and for all.

Why do the righteous suffer? Any answer to that is beyond my human understanding, and I find that I question God about it on a fairly regular basis, just as Job did. I also expect that, when I meet God face to face, I will have the understanding that made Job repent of his question in dust and ashes. God's answer to Job seems to be bent on making him realize that the urgent question is whether our lives are centered on ourselves or on God. Just how far are you willing to go with God? Past your understanding? Past your comfort? To the Cross? All your heart? All your soul? All your mind? It's worth asking of ourselves, and I promise you that it is being asked by those who turn a critical and accusing eye toward the church. Is it really God that is important to us, or is it the benefits package?

Amen.

(c) 2000, Anne Robertson