Kate Bradford
Sometimes you come across a book that is just
right. Not too technical on one hand, but on the other does not simply skim
across a topic.
Christopher Ash’s reading guide – Out of the Storm: Grappling with God in the
book of Job – is such a book. This is a book for anyone who wishes to
minister pastorally in the lives of others. It is not a commentary or a
devotional book but simply a book about God, his people, the world and time.
The chapters of this profound little book
were originally a series of talks. This book has retained the accessibility of
talks, perfectly crossing the synapse between the ancient text and real people.
The book works both as an introduction and as summary of the book of Job.
Deep calls to deep. The book addresses
people – those who suffer and those who seek to comfort those who suffer. We
see ourselves in it both as sufferers and as comforters having to grapple with
evil, wisdom, and the ultimate innocent suffering of Christ on the cross.
Ash explains that Job is a book that raises
hard questions. ”There are two ways to ask these questions. We may ask them as
‘armchair questions’ or we may ask them as ‘wheelchair questions.’”[1]
‘Armchair questions’ are asked from the safety of the armchair as if we ourselves
are remote from suffering but ‘wheelchair questions’ grapple with God from the
wheelchair… these questions do not hold this terror of suffering cheap either
for ourselves or for those we love. Job asks the ‘wheelchair questions.’
Ash takes us deep into the book of Job. He
describes Job as a staggeringly honest book. A book that knows what people
actually say and think. It knows what people say behind closed doors and in
whispers; it knows what we say in our tears. If we listen with any care, it
will touch trouble and unsettle us at a deep level.[2]
Job is also a book of poetry. It is a
deeply personal take on events communicating heart-to-heart, pulling at our
feelings, addressing our minds. Poetry does not work like bullet points or neat
propositions it goes to work on us and in doing so, God goes to work on us.[3]
Job suffers a tsunami of losses. He is
bereft of children, livestock, property, status and comfort – he is terribly
alone, can only look back and even in his darkness cannot avoid God – he must
deal with him.
Ash makes the astute observation that the
privilege of speaking with sufferers is one that is easily abused. Job’s
comforters work from their own incomplete theological system: God is always sovereign, always just and fair,
therefore, he always punishes
wickedness and blesses righteousness, and furthermore
suffering is always the result of punishment for sin.[4]
The comforters are operating from a dogmatic
system that allows for no puzzle or enigma,[5]
which ultimately affects their attitude. Ash observes that they are not honest;
they are not prepared to look at the world as it is but rather try to squeeze
reality into their theology. In reality God’s truth fits with God’s world,[6]
we need to begin with the ‘real’ not the ‘ideal’.
Secondly, Job’s friends have no sympathy. They
do not understand Job’s pain and they are irritated by his misery. They are
more attached to their theories than to Job.[7]
Sometimes in pastoral work in order to listen attentively, we do need to
suspend our own disbelief.
Thirdly, they have no love, and because
they have no love for him, they cannot understand him.[8]
In addition to their attitude, the friends
have some gaps in their beliefs. Firstly, they do not allow for Satan or
spiritual forces of evil. Secondly, they have no understanding of waiting; they
live only in the present with a belief of immediate retributive justice. Yet without
waiting, there is no hope in the promises of God, no prayer, no love for a
hidden God, no yearning or longings, just ‘slot machine’ justice of a
mechanistic universe. Thirdly, they have no place for innocent suffering
negating the possibility for Christ’s suffering work on the cross, the sinless
one for the guilty.
Another thread through the book is that of wisdom.
Chaplains are bombarded with so much material that claims to be wise about the
human condition, psychology, family systems, social theory, anthropology which
we need to evaluate and asses in the light of Biblical truths, yet so often, we
are not even comparing apples with apples but things from completely different
domains. Ash offers a very helpful paragraph on making assessments when
scripture does not offer a clear indication of how something is to be viewed.
Ash’s remarks are worth quoting at length.
The answer goes
to the heart of wisdom: godly wisdom is not so much a word spoken to the human
heart from the outside, [but] as a character formed in the believer by the
Spirit of God working by the Word of God at the deepest level of the human
heart. In setting before us in Job these speeches in which truth and error are
mixed, God invites us to think for ourselves, to puzzle, to engage with the
process of wisdom fashioning our minds and our hearts.
There is an
aspect of God, which comes authoritatively to us from above, from the
mountaintop of Sinai; this is the Law of God. But there is also an aspect of
the Word of God that gets under our skin and into our soul and beavers away
within us as we meditate, puzzle and think about the world and our place in it.
This latter facet of the Word of God does not respond to the immature request,
‘Tell me the answer’: rather it draws the seeking and searching believer into a
lifelong process of wondering and prayerful meditations on God’s Word.
Ash has since published a more
comprehensive preaching commentary, Job:
The Wisdom of the Cross, but I suspect that Out of the Storm: Grappling with God in the book of Job, is a
perfect introduction to the thought world of Job, as it broadly applies to
Chaplaincy.
