Struggling with God
Wisdom Literature and Excellent Ministry
Job and his friends are locked in the age-old theological struggle to make sense of human suffering. The issue is what theologians call “theodicy.” How does one explain or live with the reality of suffering and hold onto faith in a benevolent God?
Theodicy calls forth multiple images of ministry in the Book of Job. Who more fully exhibits marks of excellence in ministry, Job or his friends?
Eliphaz pushes the suffering Job to look more meticulously into his life and acknowledge that his claim of innocence is unwarranted. “Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? … those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same”(4:7-8).
Bibdad, on the other hand, admonishes Job: “If you will seek God and make supplication to the Almighty, if you are pure and upright, surely he will … restore to you your rightful place” (8:6). In other words, do what is right and you will escape suffering.
Zophar, meanwhile, has little sympathy for Job’s protests of innocence and suggests that he give up trying to justify himself before the mystery of God. After all, “Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the Almighty?”(11:7) Confess your guilt and be content with mystery. That’s Zophar’s advice.
Finally, Elihu rebukes both Job and his friends in an eloquent proclamation of God’s justice, goodness, and mystery. He attempts to silence Job’s questioning with intimidating piety: “The Almighty—we cannot find him; he is great in power and justice, and abundant righteousness he will not violate. Therefore mortals fear him; he does not regard any who are wise in their own conceit” (37:24).
Job’s friends seem to have unquestioned confidence in their answers, in themselves, and in God. Quick to assign guilt and blame, they have difficulty admitting their own vulnerability, failure, and inadequacy. They defend the correctness of their theological abstractions while negating the probing questions of the one who is suffering.
Job, on the other hand, has more questions than answers, more anguished laments than confident resolutions. He vigorously questions the assumptions of his friends; and, his skepticism extends beyond the arguments of his companions to assumptions about God.
While his friends viewed God as the solution to Job’s suffering, Job considered God part of the problem. His dispute is really with God. He will not let God off the hook nor will he escape into a piety that allows no doubts.
Job decries God’s absence, “Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his dwelling! …. If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him” (23:3, 8-9). He accuses God as the one who “has made my heart faint,” adding, “the Almighty has terrified me … Why are times not kept by the Almighty, and why do those who know him never see his days?”(23:15-16; 24:1)
Who is most likely to make our lists of those who exhibit excellence in ministry? Eliphaz? Bibdad? Zophar? Elihu? Surely, they have the theological confidence and certainty that many tend to associate with “excellent” pastors. But Job? His health is a mess. He is isolated. Even his wife suggests that he “curse God and die.” And, he has the audacity to challenge God to a debate.
Yet, we can learn much about excellence from Job and from the Wisdom literature of which the Book of Job is perhaps the most widely known example. Dr. James Crenshaw1, the Robert L. Flowers Professor of Old Testament at Duke Divinity School, is an authority on wisdom literature. Recently, he shared with participants in a sustained learning seminar several insights from the wisdom tradition that can inform pastoral ministry:
- Suffering is not to be blamed on the victims.
- In times of profound suffering, pastors can only embrace and love rather than provide solutions.
- Suffering is always in isolation and turning in on self is natural and expected.
- Suffering has the potential to unite people.
- Our suffering enables us to participate in the suffering of God.
- Suffering teaches us to not take ourselves too seriously and forces us to recognize our own finiteness and limitations.
Dr. Crenshaw further commented that wisdom literature connects us with what is happening in the world, forces us to wrestle with fundamental human problems, and keeps religious people honest by introducing a sobering note of skepticism. Engagement with the world! Wrestling with fundamental human problems! Honesty and humility in the presence of God! These are marks of excellence we see in Job and long for in ourselves and others.
But many pastors today feel pressured to shun such marks and adopt the approaches of Job’s friends. Answers market better than questions. Certainty is often preferred over ambiguity. Blaming victims is less costly than confronting injustice. Providing solutions seems more efficacious than silent presence. And, avoidance of struggle and suffering is more comfortable than inquisitiveness and engagement with God’s involvement in human suffering.
Pastors, therefore, have difficulty facing their own vulnerability. It is hard to admit the ambiguity present in our own life and faith. Coming clean about our moral, intellectual, and spiritual failures takes uncommon courage. Hiding behind masks of invincibility, certainty, confidence, and unquestioning piety are occupational hazards of the ministry. The cost of such hiding, however, is great—loneliness, isolation, pretentiousness, fear.
We all need safe space in which to struggle with ourselves and with God. Although Job’s friends were not the ideal “peer group,” they did engage with him in the midst of his struggle and suffering. In hundreds of SPE peer groups, pastors and laity are engaging one another in a mutual struggle to understand and live with suffering, their own, and God’s. Creating hospitable space for facing vulnerability and ambiguity, confessing failure, removing our masks, even arguing with God is a major resource for calling forth and sustaining excellence in ministry.
Wisdom literature might be the needed resource for many SPE peer groups.
Kenneth L. Carder is director of Pulpit & Pew: The Duke Center for Excellence in Ministry and professor of the practice of pastoral formation at Duke Divinity School. He was bishop of the Mississippi Area of the United Methodist Church from 2000 to 2004 and the Nashville Area of the UMC from 1992 to 2000.
1Dr. Crenshaw’s recent book, Defending God: Biblical Responses to the Problem of Evil, is an excellent resource for understanding theodicy in the Old Testament.
