The Will of God

In most editions of the Bible, the Book of Job is suspended between Torah and the Gospels. Its position is apt. It is a lengthy (over long?) meditation on the Problem of Evil – a ‘problem’ introduced in Genesis but resolved in Revelation. 

If this sounds surprisingly simplistic, it’s because it is. Nevertheless, the Problem of Evil is cited by non-believers as the number one reason for their rejection of Judeo-Christian theology. It was also the rationale Bertrand Russell relied on in his best-seller, Why I am not a Christian. 

Why the disconnect? It begins, unfortunately, with our (mis) understanding of the story of creation itself. The popular image of God shouting commands into an abyss is anti-Biblical…and a bit ridiculous. No wonder folks don’t believe.

It is important to remember that YHWH said, “Let there be light.” (Genesis, 1: 3) He did not say, “Be there, Light!” as most people seem to think. God is not auditioning for the role of ‘frustrated parent’ barking orders at a naughty child; nor is he a raging motorist, yelling, “Start, you sucker!” as his stalled automobile struggles to turnover. Rather, he is a compassionate curator!

Nor did he imagine that light would obliterate primal darkness (“…the earth was without form with darkness over the abyss…” – v. 2). Instead, we learn that God “separated the light from the darkness” (v. 3). Later, in the Gospel of John, we celebrate the fact that “the darkness has not overcome it.” (1: 5)

Phase #1 of the creation process was not complete, however, until “God saw that it (the light) was good” (v. 4) and “Evening (darkness) came and morning (light) followed, the first day.” (v. 5)

All of which raises an obvious question: Why would an ‘omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent’ God need to ‘wait and see’ before determining that created light was a good thing? Could God have created something that was not good? Would God need to pause and assess developments before rendering judgement? 

In a sense the whole so-called Problem of Evil is addressed and resolved in these first 5 verses of the Bible. All the stuff about God’s ‘omniscience, omnipotence and benevolence’ comes later and, for our purposes right now, is beside the point. The testimony of Genesis is clear: God’s hands are clean!

Not so, the Book of Job. Here God is put on trial, charged with ‘perverting the course of justice’. Job has quite literally staked his life, his health, his family, his fortune, and his reputation on the verdict.

But our prototypical existential hero has a tough ‘row to hoe’. God is represented, albeit incompetently, by a ‘dream team’ consisting of three ‘wise men’ and a ‘fool’. Speaking of ‘fools’, Job appears pro se; he has himself for a lawyer! Worse, God is not only the defendant but also judge and jury. God would happily recuse himself…but who is qualified to take over? Can anyone say, “Conflict of interest?”

The trial raises every imaginable legal issue. Does Job have ‘standing’ to sue God? Can God even be sued? Can God be compelled (by subpoena) to come to court? If the court were to rule against God, how could it enforce its verdict? How could it impose a sentence on the Creator of Heaven and Earth?

Now the matter of God’s ‘omniscience, omnipotence and benevolence’ takes center stage. Unlike Genesis, Job presents the Problem of Evil in its more familiar trappings. A full account of trial proceedings are available elsewhere on this site.  

The transcript is instructive. Job’s understanding of evil is one most of us will recognize: “(Human beings) are quashed more easily than a moth, from daybreak to evening they are crushed; when it is not even nightfall, they disappear, forever unnoticed. The pegs of their tent are pulled up. They die without knowledge.” (4: 19b – 21) 

‘I have lived a righteous and just life; yet I am being punished most severely. Others, not nearly as upright as me, often in fact deliberate doers of evil, are not punished at all. They live lavish lives in good health and pass that wealth intact on to future generations (this was before Estate Taxes). I, on the other hand, no longer have assets…or children to leave them to if I did. I live on a dunghill, my body covered with scabs.’

God, however, approaches the problem from a very different perspective: “Behold now Behemoth which like you I created (40: 15)...Of all that’s under heaven, he is mine. I cannot keep silent about him, the fact of his incomparable valor…He has no match on earth, who is made as fearless as he? …Over beasts of all kinds he is king.” (41: 3b - 26)

Job views Behemoth from a human perspective. He is fearsome, dangerous and destructive. He is the embodiment of evil. But that’s not God’s perspective. God sees things from Behemoth’s perspective as well as Job’s and God values Behemoth’s qualities, the very qualities that Job dreads. 

Even more importantly, God sees things from a cosmic, ecological perspective: “Who cleaves a downpour's channel and a path for the thunderstorm to rain down on land without people, on wilderness with no human in it, drenching utter wasteland and sprouting grassy growth." (38:25-27)

But Job is unphased; he will not budge. He meets God’s bluster with his trademarked ‘patience’. He has faith that justice will out: in the end the court will have no choice but to find in his favor.

Clearly, God has a broader cosmological mandate than Job. He values Behemoth’s qualities per se, oblivious to the intermediate ends for which they’re used. That is the price we pay for our ontological freedom. 

God can afford to overlook the transient. He knows the Universe, as he created it, will ‘come round’ in the end. The coming of the Kingdom is inevitable. It is built into the teleological structure of Being. ‘When’ and how that Kingdom comes to be is undetermined; that’s up to us! But that it comes to be and what it comes to be (divine values) are hardwired.

We might sympathize with God’s predicament, but Job never takes his eye off the ball. He ignores God’s pleas for understanding; he stands his ground.

Suffice to say, the procedural issues are ultimately resolved to the satisfaction of both parties and, in a stunning reversal of fortunes, God finds against himself and restores all of Job’s assets plus damages.

But Job remains underwhelmed. He expected this outcome all along. His hurdles were merely procedural. Once the trial commenced, Job trusted that he would prevail. Even the obvious conflict of interest didn’t concern him. 

Job did not believe that God’s nature would allow him to act unjustly…and he was right! Right trumps wrong after all.

But the court’s decision applies just to this one case; millions of Job’s fellow sufferers, while buoyed by the trial’s outcome, remain mired in pain. The final resolution, the cosmic solution, comes in the New Testament’s Resurrection narratives and in the Book of Revelation. 

Here we learn (after the prophet Isaiah) that God is our fellow traveler, that he suffers ‘the whips and snares of time’ alongside us, via compassion and ultimately, via Incarnation. He is born, tiny and defenseless, into our world at our level. He endures in full the pain of mortality, the dark night of despair, and a slow and painful death on a cross.

Clearly, our God is no wimp! But had the story ended at Cavalry, we’d still be in rough shape; fortunately, it didn’t! Jesus overcame mortality, pain and death via his Resurrection and eventual Ascension into Heaven (where he sits at the right hand of his Father).

Finally, the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, describes in minute detail, albeit coded in symbolism, the process by which evil will be eradicated, root and branch, from the World, and our primal Paradise restored, fulfilling Paul’s assurance that God will be ‘all in all’ (1 Cor. 15: 28), pan in panti (Anaxagoras).

Once Scripture is understood in this way, i.e. on its own terms and not those imposed on it by non-believers, one can only ask, “What problem of evil?”