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 Award winning author Mike Mason brings profound and arresting insights on the life of faith. We commence a new series that are edited excerpts from his book 'The Gospel according to Job' (Crossway Books, 1994) Mike, a regular contributor to canadianchristianity.com, is perhaps most well known for his book 'The Mystery of Marriage.' that won the ECPA Gold Medallion award.
[other pieces by Mike Mason]
Doubt, whether of oneself or of God, is not necessarily contrary to faith. In Job doubt emerges rather as the route to the deepest faith. If we really believe, we can doubt energetically; we can wonder, vacillate, challenge, dispute. Just to permit oneself to voice problems aloud is to imply a belief in solutions. Job is the answer to the kind of fearful faith that nails a lid on doubt, suppressing it.
Yet surely doubt is the hardest part of any suffering, as we try to discern whether this is an undeserved attack that the Lord has allowed for His glory, or whether it is something we have brought upon ourselves through sin and foolishness. If only we could know for certain which was which! But we do not always know, and this is exactly Job's predicament.
Since suffering can come alike to either the righteous or the sinful, the former must always face the haunting question: Is it right to be suffering like this? Is this the right kind of suffering? Is this really what the Bible means by carrying my cross? Is this the right cross? When we are troubled in heart, how do we know whether to call it lack of faith or satanic oppression? Or when we fall sick, is it just one of those things or have we ourselves done something to bring it on? Have we left ourselves open to attack? Who is to blame for all this misery ourselves or the Devil?
Blaming the Devil is a tricky business. Blame will not stick to him; his hide is so damnably slippery. Christians who adopt an aggressive stance against Satan always run the risk of ignoring one crucial little fact, which is that the very evil we fight against has a foothold in our own flesh. Are we fully assured that the enemy is entirely outside of ourselves?
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Job's problem is like the one Jesus wrestled with in the Garden of Gethsemane. Wasn't Jesus really asking His Father, Is this the right cross? Is this really the death You have planned for Me? Is this Your idea, or Mine? After all, there are so many ways to suffer and to die. Is this the right way?
A similar question faces every Christian every day. For daily we must pick up our cross and follow Jesus. But there are so many crosses! What if I pick up the wrong one?
What if I take a wrong turn somewhere and fool myself
into thinking that the Lord is still with me?
Having assurance of salvation is wonderful, but somehow it does not always keep me from laboring under a nagging suspicion that I may have missed some part of the will of God. One can have full assurance of going to Heaven, yet not rest at all assured about the quality of one's Christian life here on earth.
So these problems that I have today are they the right problems? Are they really the ones God has ordained for me? Am I sharing in the sufferings of Christ? Or is my anguish due largely to neurosis, which Carl Jung called a substitute for legitimate suffering?
A song entitled 'Hard Love' by Bob Franke expresses the problem this way:
"The Lord's cross redeems us, but our own just wastes our time, and to tell the two apart is always hard love."
Only the gospel can tell the two apart, the good news that begins by removing all condemnation. This is why Job (scandalously to his friends) never blames himself. For he knew the gospel. He knew that the ultimate faith in God is faith that trusts Him to look after our righteousness. This is true even (and especially) when the reality of our righteousness seems most in question, when all earthly appearances suggest that God Himself is against us.
The time when I feel most overwhelmed and defeated by the onslaughts of the Devil, by worldly pressures, by the weight of my own sin, by the threat of death itself this is the very time when I must cling most vigorously to the promised and inalienable truth of my righteousness, which is the hope of the gospel. This is the time when, as Job puts it in 13:15, I will surely defend my ways to God's face. For what is my way? My way is Jesus Christ.
July 31/2008
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I add that the author seems to have lost sight of the actual lesson of the Book of Job, as well as that of the Personal aspect of the Sacrifice of Messiah Jesus. He certainly stressed that it was His personal intention. It was His whole and primary purpose for being on the earth as a human.. He didn't come to heal a few; exorcise a few; and then leave...or die of old age. He came with the sole intent of teaching what he was about to do and to then do it. I also feel this message is never to be lost in the possible scenic views along the way. A close look at scripture reveals that it is seamless from even its most ancient writings,aka 'Job',in pointing forward to this event. It is good to see this thread being recognized by any author, even if his Christology is somewhat unfurled.
In the process of writing,it is easy to get enthusiastically sidelined by one's own new thoughts and ideas.
It's probably a good idea for writers newly delivered of what they feel are brave, radical, and earth-changing "insights", to set them aside for a period of unconscious incubation prior to sending them out to face an unknown,possibly critical,..at least less than fond,tribe of readers.
Sometimes a sober second look, then, without the adrenalin rush,will allow a considered appraisal to usher in brave and radical thoughts tempered by mature reason, that will stand under scrutiny and time.