My friend Ahmed, a devout agnostic, recently asked me, “Ryan, If you remove the fear of hell and the promise of heaven… who’s gonna care about God anymore?” I said, “Ahmed, have you ever heard of a guy named Job?” Because Ahmed’s question is the book of Job’s question.  It’s a question that strips us bare.  It’s a question of utmost importance, and it’s the question that the Spirit of God asks all of us:

In the face of meaningless suffering, will you serve God?  Or will you curse God and die?

The hidden motivations behind our religiosity can no longer hide when our sense of justice is removed, when our sense that in this life goodness is rewarded and badness is punished can no longer serve to explain our reality.

William Blake's illustration of Job's Complaint

This could be your reality tomorrow: Imagine that tomorrow your work tells you that in order to weather the economic storm your going to have to cut back on your hours, only for a little while and in the process you have to dip into your savings a little bit just to pay some bills.  But when a couple weeks turns into 9 months your savings account is now empty.  You’ve submitted your resume to fifteen other companies, but no one’s called.  Your employer calls you in.  “Finally” you think, “Here’s my break, I’m going to get my hours and benefits back.” But no.  This is not your break.  You are let go. You come home, feeling like “too little butter spread over way too much bread”, and that’s when it happens, the phone call that no one ever wants to get:  “There’s been a horrible accident.” And through the incoherent sobs you learn that the one that you love most in life was hit head on.  No one survived the crash.  This is now the bottom.  How could things possibly get worse? And in the morning as you try to piece your fragmented life together just enough to get out of bed and take a shower you notice in the mirror an oddly shaped mole on your chest…  who comes to visit you in the hospital? The ones who love to philosophize and speculate about your screwed up life.

Now, now we’ve come to Job’s real question.  It’s the deepest question of Job’s heart and your heart:  In the face of meaningless suffering – will you serve God?

When karma is crushed.  When your sense of what is just and right is outraged and when all that rage can only lead back to one Source… will you serve God, or will you curse God and die?  Job says what any of us would and do say, “God, life is not fair.  How does that work if you are fair and you’re in charge of life?  All the evidence points to just one thing:  God, you are not fair.” I want so badly to edit this out, but this was God’s answer in chapter 38: (gird yourself)  “Who the hell are you to call me unfair?  Look at everything I’ve made.” (*Okay, note to self:  This is not good pastoral care.  When someone has just lost their business and family and has life threatening disease… do not counsel them this way.)  But here it is.  God says, “Who the hell are you to call me unfair?”

But here’s another way to hear this chapter of Job.  God says:

“Job, let me put your situation into a larger perspective.

You know Atlantic Ocean.”  “Yeah.”

“It’s about 41 million square miles.”  “Uh huh.”

“And it’s about 28,000 feet deep.”  “Okay.”

“I made that.”  “Well, alright.”

“You know the Sombrero Galaxy?”  “No.”

“That’s because it’s 28 million light years from Earth.”  “Oh.”

“It has 800 billion suns.”  “Wow.”

“Yeah, and it’s 50,000 light years across.” “Oh. That’s big.”

I made that too.  And it’s mine to take care of.”

“See where I’m going with this?”  “Yeah.”

“So what makes you think that I can’t handle the problem of your suffering?

I’m your God and I made you.  Now, you’re not going to get an answer that you like here.  Will you trust me anyways?  Will you serve me anyways?  Or will you curse me and die?”

Job didn’t get the answer that he wanted, instead he got an encounter with the God who made him.  And you might not get the answer that you want to the problem of innocent suffering, of meaningless suffering, but the God who made you is present right now to encounter you and here is the answer that God gives:

There is only who is innocent – Jesus, who is the image of that same invisible God who spoke to Job from out of the whirlwind.  And the only Innocent One steps out of the mighty whirlwind and joins you in the soup of this meaningless suffering.  And to the outrage of the powers of this world, this Innocent One stands alongside the weaker thans, the left out, the hopeless, the family-less, the houseless, the jobless… stands with Job, stands with you and says,

“You are blessed.  God is your God.  God made you.  And I love you.  I see that you are suffering.  I hear your questions.  It doesn’t seem like much of an answer, but look at the cross.” Because in the face of meaningless suffering this Innocent One doesn’t curse God and die.  No, this Innocent One is cursed and dies, at the hands of the ones he made, the ones he made 28 million light years away from the Sombrero Galaxy, the ones he made surrounded by 41 million square miles of Ocean, And he says: “It’s for you.  I am for you.”

In the cross Jesus takes all the meaningless suffering of the world, takes all of your suffering and binds it to the very heart heart of God… and says “This is not the end of the story because the only innocent one is alive again!” And it’s not the end of the story for you for your story is now inseparably linked to Christ’s and united with Christ, because you are raised with Christ.

When my friend Ahmed, asked me “So what is there? If you remove the fear of hell and the hope of heaven, what is left?” I said, “I don’t know, Ahmed.  The only thing I know is past the promise of reward for my goodness, past the fear of punishment for my badness, and in the face of all the unexplainable suffering – there is only the undeserved gift of Jesus.”