Hope in Job’s Suffering: Biblical Worldview

Speaker A 00:00:01 - 00:00:25 When life falls apart, where is God? Does the oldest book in the Bible have any answers? The Book of Job can help us find hope in the midst of suffering, and why sometimes the best answer to our pain is not a reason, but a relationship. Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Joining me to discuss this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome to the program, Dr. John. Speaker B 00:00:25 - 00:00:26 Hello, Kaysie. Speaker A 00:00:27 - 00:00:49 Dr. John has written a book called The Big Argument: Does God Exist? And in today's program, we're drawing on some insights from this book, from chapter 12 called The Problem of Evil. Now, with the story of Job, what was the ultimate answer that Job gave, that God gave to Job for all of his suffering and losses? Speaker B 00:00:49 - 00:02:01 Yes, well, Job is a wonderful book really. And it explains a lot of things. For people that perhaps aren't familiar with the Book of Job, Job was a very wealthy man who was very generous and so forth. And, but he went through a terrible experience. Mm-hmm. And the background to this is that God and Satan had a discussion when the courts in heaven and the angels were all meeting. And Satan accused God of particularly pampering Job. And he said, well, the reason why Job loves you, God, is because you bless him so much, you give him so many good things. And so God said, well, no, that's not— God loves me. He has a relationship with me. So again, this is getting back to— God, yeah. Job rather. So this is getting back to this whole issue of freedom. Why do people do things? So we can bribe love. We can perhaps buy love, right? But is that really true love? Speaker A 00:02:01 - 00:02:03 Yeah, that's a good question. Speaker B 00:02:03 - 00:05:16 And so this is what God is looking for. This is what is the much deeper meaning of love in a relationship, which is perhaps the greatest of and the most deep of all relationships is true love. And so we talked earlier, this can be forced. It can also be bought. But is it really true, true love? And this is what the issue was over. Does God— does Job truly love God? Is it real genuine love? Or is it just because God has allowed all these flocks to grow and, you know, all this sort of— Prosperity. He's really prospered and blessed him. He's got beautiful children and, you know, a beautiful home. He's very wealthy. All this sort of thing. All these businesses have been very profitable. And so God said, okay, well, you can do with him, you know, whatever you like, except, you know, you can't take his life. So what happened was Job lost his children, he lost his flocks. Anyway, essentially he was devastated. Mm. And, but he still expressed his love for God. And Satan got back and Said, well, that's because he himself hasn't been hurt. And so God said, okay, you can do whatever you want to him, but you can't kill him. Hmm. And so Job was inflicted with terrible sores. Now remember, all his children have been killed, his flocks and everything's been devastated, but he still has his wife. And she's obviously very upset. And she encourages him to just curse God and die. You know, why keep clinging on to God? But Job does. And it's a very interesting thing in that when it comes to the judgment, right? This is a very, very deep thing that perhaps many people that challenge Christianity and say, oh, I don't believe in God, they don't understand. How deep the concepts are that are expressed in the Bible. Hmm. And essentially what one of the challenges is that we all come under judgment. So God makes this call, you know, so-and-so is going to die in the end when God has the judgment on who have been the really wicked people and done really bad things like, you know, caused the Holocaust and killed lots of people, all this sort of thing. How does God judge them? How does God really know? And so this was an example that God was used that demonstrates that God can really judge character. Yeah. Because God put Himself on the line there. God said, well, hang on, no. Job loves Me because he genuinely does love Me. He has chosen Me. His love is genuine. And so Satan put him through a test. Now, if Job had have failed, That would demonstrate that God wasn't able to judge Job's character. Speaker A 00:05:16 - 00:05:18 Yeah, the implications of that. Speaker B 00:05:18 - 00:05:22 And the implications of that in terms of all the other angels. Speaker A 00:05:22 - 00:05:22 Yeah. Speaker B 00:05:22 - 00:05:59 It's a very, very fascinating scenario. But it also shows how complete God's plan is. And it also shows how genuine love can be. Even human love can be that genuine. And that is why People have often given their own lives to save the life of another person, this sort of thing. I know I often holiday at Byron Bay, and there was a case many years ago of a young couple on their honeymoon were diving at the rocks that are just out, Julian Rocks. Speaker A 00:05:59 - 00:06:00 Okay. Speaker B 00:06:00 - 00:10:39 And a great white shark came up and was heading towards the wife, and the husband threw himself, paddled right in between, the shark and the wife, and he was taken. And they'd only been married a few days. Oh, wow. And so there we see an example of real love. But we know that bad things, you know, do happen to good people. As I mentioned in one of the other talks, when I was researching my book on alcohol, there were so many stories of people who were killed under the influence of alcohol that the people that were killed were really good people. that were doing great things in the community, welfare, you know, very philanthropic, this sort of thing. And I think of a classic example that really impressed a friend of mine who's a leading creationist. And he has both a PhD and a DSc. And he was— giving a— Dr. Andrew McIntosh is his name. He was giving a talk at the University of Virginia. And just while he was there, a young woman who had been the top of her medical class, she was a very strong Christian. She'd been over in Africa volunteering medical aid to communities that otherwise wouldn't see medical aid. And one night on the weekend, she went down to the little local shopping center to get some money out of a teller and buy some things. And as she hopped back in the car, a man jumped out and stabbed her to take her money and credit card. Oh. And it's interesting, they caught the fellow because he was captured on the the camera associated with the telemachine. And it was interesting, as she was laying dying there, she pleaded with him. He testified that she was telling him to accept Jesus as his Savior, that she forgave him. Oh my. Now, how can a person like that, and why was she chosen? A young up-and-coming doctor, top of her class, who had already volunteered to work in really needing areas. Why was she killed? And to me, I see that just as Satan could motivate that evil against and those bad things to happen to Job, the same thing, I believe, the evil spirits and people's minds under the influences of drugs and that, in my view, become more open to these evil spirit influences. Mm-hmm. allowed that to happen. Just here where we live, I went to a community dinner one night and they were encouraging people to just tell a little bit about their life story. And one man stood up and told how 2 of his children had been killed by violent crime. His daughter had been stabbed to death. Hmm. And the perpetrator had fled the country. when she was just a young woman, and his 14-year-old son had been a passenger in a car and was killed by a drunk driver. And neither of those perpetrators were ever caught or punished in any way. And that was hard for him to deal with. So we have this situation of why are innocent people killed like that? And we've just had a case recently here in Australia of a young Indigenous girl Hmm. Killed that way. So I think that there is evil, evil spirits that are motivating the destruction of humans. As the Bible explains that, you know, Satan is now like a roaring lion seeking whom he can devour. Because since the cross, since God has demonstrated that he is prepared to die in our place, Satan is now doing whatever he can to distract us from the knowledge of God, keep people away from reading the Bible, and do as much harm as he can to people who do already believe and who are loving others. Speaker A 00:10:39 - 00:11:26 Yeah. So I guess, thank you for sharing all those stories and examples. And I guess if we go back to the story of Job, we can see that the controversy between the evil entities and God working together to influence destruction and bad things happening in human life. At the end of the day, though, Job didn't know the behind the scenes that's recorded there, right? Yeah. And that's the same with us, you know, bad things happen. We don't always know the reasons why. And yet, God did try to console Job at the end. But what did he say? Like, how did he actually give Job something to hold on to? When he didn't have all the answers. Speaker B 00:11:26 - 00:12:11 Yes. Yes, it's interesting because the problem of evil, there is no simple answer other than Jesus on the cross. But that hadn't happened yet. But what God did explain was He said, look, were you there when I created snow? Were you there when I created all the amazing birds and, you know, the great creatures of the deep and this sort of thing? And so what God did to Job was He painted a picture of how powerful He was and how He had made Job. And He said to Job, you know, do you have the wisdom? Can you create these things? You know, why are you questioning Me? In other words, what God is saying to Job is, trust Me, Job. Speaker A 00:12:11 - 00:12:12 Yeah. Speaker B 00:12:12 - 00:13:39 Trust Me, trust Me, because I've been able to do all these amazing things. And it's interesting to date, that scientists still don't know how to explain the origin of life. Hmm. You know, we still can't explain how the chemistry, well, we can't explain the chemistry responsible for the first living organism. It doesn't fit known chemical reactions. They can't occur outside living systems. We can't explain the origin of the universe. The laws of physics just don't fit. don't allow us to explain the origin of the formation of stars. And as we gain more and more knowledge in the area of astronomy, in the area of physics, in the area of space-time and so forth, in the area of biochemistry, DNA, all these things, we are just confounded with, we've got bigger problems, we've got massive more problems we can't explain. And all this really points to exactly what God was saying. No, you can't explain it. Hmm. Because I'm God. I'm the only one that can be responsible for this. It's totally supernatural. It's totally outside our ability to explain. And so what God is saying to us, because I've been able to do this, trust me. Because one of my names is True or Truth, and one of my names is Love. Speaker A 00:13:39 - 00:14:36 And I guess when we have that awareness of God's power and knowledge of even the most grand to the most tiny, minute things in nature. We don't have that. And so, but we can reason. If he knows all of that, he knows the reasons why what has happened in my life has happened. And, you know, tragedies, calamities, losses, death, whatever might have happened, we might suffer all of this. God knows, that's what he's saying, isn't it? He knows all of that and he has given us evidence in the Bible that he will bring justice in time. He knows what it's like to suffer injustice because he was on the cross. He saw it. He went through that, so he understands what we're going through. He knows, he's got it under control, and as you said, he's inviting us to trust him and have that relationship with him and hold on to that. And that can give us encouragement. Speaker B 00:14:36 - 00:14:43 And after Satan had dealt with Job, God restored him and restored everything back to him. Speaker A 00:14:43 - 00:14:45 Yes. And that gives us hope. Speaker B 00:14:45 - 00:14:45 So wonderful. Speaker A 00:14:45 - 00:15:03 'Cause he wants to do that for all of us in the future. Thank you for sharing those insights. Have you ever struggled with doubts about God's existence or known someone who has? What helped you through it? Share your thoughts and stories in the comments. We'd love to hear about your journey.