Let me tell you something that is going to shock you. For a book that’s supposed to have all the answers, the Bible does not tell us what evil is nor where it comes from. Any Bible scholar or theologian who claims to have the definitive answer for either of those questions is trying to sell you something, probably their latest big, thick, laborious read of a book. Evil and those horrible things like suffering, violence, predation, disease, untruth, etc. are a given in God’s very good Creation and for some reason wherever humans are it’s lurking around every corner ready to lunge and hurt and wreak havoc to whomever, whatever and however it pleases.
Now, are you ready to have your day ruined? If we take the Bible at face value, we can’t say God has nothing to do with evil. God’s hands aren’t necessarily clean when it comes to evil. God lets and even causes evil happen both when it serves God’s purposes and when it does not. An honest read of the Old Testament reveals a God who does evil to the wicked because they deserve it and for the sake of the God’s people. But God also lets/causes evil to happen to those he calls his own both when we deserve it and when we do not. The rule of karma, what goes around comes around, we would hope to be the case but it is too often the case that the wicked go unpunished and seem to be rewarded while the good pay for it and suffer.
I suspect this is a bitter pill for us. We like to think that God is all good, especially that God is Love and that God doesn’t do evil or let it happen. But, you know, in order to have a full definition of love, that definition has got to somehow involve hate and not simply for the sake of being love’s opposite. One cannot say “I truly love you” unless it allows for the possibility that the time will come when I have to love you even when you hate me, even when you do evil to me – and that’s assuming a generic definition of evil is what we do to people when we hate them. There’s also having to choose to love a person even when they deserve your hate and hate is exactly what you feel for them. Love is more than a feeling. It is possible to love and hate somebody at the same time.
There’s something else about evil that we need to note and this is likely going to sound weird to you. Evil is personal and it gets personal. In the last verse of the Lord’s Prayer Jesus teaches us to pray “But deliver us from evil.” There’s a bit of a debate as to whether that should be read, “But deliver us from the Evil One” meaning Satan. It can be translated either way. Personally, I believe Jesus meant more than just evil in a generic form. A significant portion of Jesus’ ministry involved casting out demons. These things have an aversion to Jesus and what God has done in, through, and as him to save and heal us from the disease of sin.
This topic is something we educated Westerners like to dismiss as antiquated and unscientific. Regardless, the structure of reality that the Bible presents us with is that in the part of reality that we can’t see, the behind the scenes, there are malevolent spiritual beings and powers that serve to work against the will of God and who like to hurt us because God made us in his image and especially because of our relationship to Jesus. Just as there are angels, so also, there are demons. If it adds credibility, even Carl Jung, one of the foremost fathers of psychology said they exist. Both the Roman Catholics and the Anglicans have priests that are specially trained in the ministry of exorcism. If you’re brave enough, strike up the topic with some of those folks in the non-denominational world doing street ministries and you will soon be convinced.
Then there’s Satan. Jesus was tried by him in the wilderness and it was he who entered Judas and led him to betray Jesus. In several letters of the New Testament he is spoken of as the behind the scenes enemy of Jesus who is out to destroy the Church and us believers. He was the serpent in the Garden of Eden who deceived Adam and Eve.
Chapters 12 and 13 of The Book of Revelation 12 in elaborate imagery portrays Satan as the one who is really behind the persecution of both Jews and Christians. Chapter 12 describes a Dragon who tries to murder a young woman giving birth to a child but they are swept away and protected. This symbolized the birth of the Church amidst the Jewish people who for centuries had been oppressed by Greek and Roman invaders. Chapter 13 gets quite political. The Dragon causes a beast to come up out of the Sea who is all powerful; i.e., the Roman emperor. Then he brings forth another beast from the land that is priestlike and it gets the people to worship the beast. The purpose of this vision was to explain that the reason persecution was happening to first century Christian is that Satan was using the state religion of Rome – Emperor worship – as the vehicle for destroying the followers of Jesus. When Christians were martyred, refusing to worship Caesar was the predominant reason. That message continues today. Whenever religious authorities throw their support and all but make idols out of political authorities, beware and look out for Satan is at play. This mix of religion and politics is evil and no good comes from it.
For us 21st Century Christians in North America it is this Evil One who orchestrates the trials that we go through that threaten our loyalty to Jesus. I ask you to remember from last week’s sermon in which we looked at the part of the Lord’s Prayer that is associated with what we’re looking at today where we ask God “And bring us not into the time of trial”. The time of trial is when something takes place in our lives that is so terrible it has the potential of destroying our faith, our loyalty to Jesus.
Looking at our text from Job, it is this Evil One who smites Job in an effort to crush his faith. The name Satan comes from the Hebrew Ha Satan – which means “the Accuser” or “Adversary”. He is one of the heavenly beings whose purpose simply seems to go around searching for faithful humans to accuse of unrighteous behaviour so that he can make them suffer for it. Oddly, it is God who asks Satan if he has considered Job. Satan has and he offers that Job is only faithful because God has blessed him with so much. Satan then wagers that if the blessing was removed, Job would certainly curse God. God took the bet telling Satan that all Job has is under Satan’s power but he wasn’t allowed to touch Job himself. So, Satan leaves God’s presence and goes and kills all of Job’s children and servants and destroys his property and livestock. That didn’t do it. Job did not charge God with wrongdoing. The good Lord giveth and the good Lord taketh away.
Satan then comes back into God’s presence. One can sense God’s pride for his servant Job as if God is gloating. Satan comes back with another wager that if Job himself were attacked with disease he would curse God to his face. God answers: “Very well then. He’s yours, just don’t kill him.” Satan smites him with painful boils. The only thing resembling comfort for him is sitting in his ash heap, scraping his boils with a broken piece of pottery and packing the wounds with ashes. He’s lost everything. His wife tells him to curse God so that God will kill him and this will be over with. But Job maintains his integrity. He does not deserve this. Then his four friends come to see him. He is all but unrecognizable to them. They sit on the ground in silence with him for seven days and nights until Job begins to speak. Job is dysphoric. “Why was I born? Why was I even given a taste of joy only to come to this for no reason? My worst fear has come upon me!” His friends try to comfort him by accusing him of a secret sin for which God was getting him because in their belief system God smites the wicked and blesses the righteous; no exceptions. They offer him the false hope that if he would just own up God would restore him. But Job maintains his innocence and his integrity. He’s bold enough to say he would like to see God to state his case or at least find out why.
Chapter after chapter of this back and forth goes on. And then…a deadly desert whirlwind arises and I can imagine Job mustering the strength to stand and shaking his fist and shouting with what little strength he had left, “Death, my only friend! Bring it on. Kill me.” But he doesn’t, although I could so understand if he wanted to die. Sometimes living is worse than dying. The Presence of God is somehow in this whirlwind like it was during the Exodus. A voice addresses Job, “Who’s this wise ass who thinks he knows everything. Pull up your pullup diapers, boy, and I’ll ask you a thing or two.” (That’s my paraphrase.) Animals are fleeing past Job in fear of the whirlwind. “Did you make all this, all these animals, the sunrise, the stars, the sea. Can you make the eagles soar? I’m God and you are not. Can somebody who sees only fault contend with me? If you’re going to argue with God, with me, well you just go ahead and make your case, if you can!” Job, realizing whose presence he is in, covers his mouth and says what seems like “Uh oh. I’ve stated my case twice already. I’m thinking I’d better just shut up about this.”
And God continues on, “Come on, now. Have some dignity. Pull up those Depends and answer me. Are you going to accuse me, you know me, God, the one who in wonder created all this wonder and beauty and even the sea monsters? Can you fight a dragon? Are you going to accuse me of wrongdoing just to justify yourself?”
Job answered, “You are God and I now realize that I am not. I didn’t know what I was talking about.” Even though God was letting Job have it, being in the Presence of God was so overwhelmingly good that Job sees he has nothing to complain about. He says, “Before I had only heard of you, but now I literally see you. I am unworthy to be in your Presence, but here I am. I am so sorry.” God then told Job’s friends that they were so wrong. Job was right to uphold his integrity. He did not deserve this. God would forgive them once Job prayed for them and he did. Then God restored Job. The moral of the story: God lets evil happen to his faithful to prove them. In the midst of that suffering, the faithful encounter God himself. Whatever the suffering may be however bad it may be, it pales in comparison to the goodness of God’s presence.
And so, Jesus teaches us to pray, “And bring us not into the time of trial, but deliver us/protect us from the evil one.” To his disciples that was a prayer asking their heavenly Father to keep them from times of trial meaning social and political persecution because of their loyalty to Jesus. Today, in Canadian Christianity, North American Christianity we are not likely to suffer social or political persecution on account of loyalty to Jesus. We are no longer a threat to the social or political orders in a culture that owes a lot to Christian faithfulness and that is slowly forgetting the God to whom it owes such a debt. With the decline of the Church such things like Volunteerism and public service are becoming rare. Anxiety and depression and addictions are on the rise, particularly addiction to our little devices. With so much information floating around out there it is hard to determine what Truth is and the unscrupulous take advantage of that. Lying is epidemic.
As Christians who are white and relatively well off, the trial that tests our loyalty to Jesus more than anything is our comfort. Comfort allows us to let the God-stuff slide so that we are ill-prepared when bad things happen to us good people. It becomes easy to blame God for unjustly taking our comfort away and so justify ourselves for letting our faith get so weak. Then we walk away from God instead of discovering a more profound relationship with God in the midst of our suffering and grief. God suffers with us. Our relationship with the Christ who suffered and died on the cross will and does deepen when the feathers hit the fan. Our comfort causes us to neglect our daily need for God so that we are quick to turn away when our faith is tried. Maybe a more contemporary version of the Lord’s Prayer should ask, “and bring us not into the time of comfort, but deliver us from the Evil One” for it just might be that our comfort is the Devil’s greatest tool. Amen.
