Why?

By: Duane Kelderman

Scripture Reading: Job 38:1-21

September 20th, 2009

The hour is late. Visiting hours are over. The Intensive Care waiting room is quiet now. Only a few people remain—sleeping, keeping vigil, waiting for the latest report on their loved ones. All day long, families have huddled in the corners, exchanging stories on how their loved ones are doing, expressing hope or grief. But it’s late now. The busy—ness is over. You know the doctor will not be peeking her head around the corner any time soon now. And so you settle back, and your mind begins to wander: Why God? Why this pain for my loved one? and for me? Why does he have to die this way? And what about that little girl in the room next to him? Such a nice family. Why does she have to suffer so? God, if you could only tell me why, I could live with all of this! There are thousands of those kinds of waiting rooms. And they are only one situation in thousands of other situations in which people ask the question, "Why?" "If only I could personally see God and ask him! Then maybe I could accept this situation and go on. Give me a reason, God, and I’ll be content!" Those were the sentiments of Job as he tried to understand his suffering. The sufferer of all sufferers, Job lost all his property and servants and children; he lost the support of his wife and friends; and finally, he lost even his own health. His question was simple: "Why God?" And God came to him, and comes to all of us, with his reply! If you think about it, God could have said many things to Job. He could have laid his hand on Job’s shoulder and told him how much he would grow through all of this. He could have told him of his deal with Satan and reminded Job how important it was that he remain faithful in his devotion to God. Or he could have given some disturbing consolation, like telling him how lucky he was that he didn’t have leukemia. But God took a different approach, quite difficult to understand at first. He simply fires questions at Job, questions from the natural world:
"Were you there when I made the world? Who decided how large the world would be? Who stretched the measuring line over it? Do you know all the answers? (vs. 4—5) "Have you been to the springs in the depths of the sea? Have you walked on the floor of the ocean?" (v. 16) "Have you ever visited the storerooms above, where I keep the snow and the hail?" (v. 22) "Can you guide the stars season by season? Can you keep the Big Dipper in place?" (v. 32) TEV
The question that’s implied in all these other questions is, "Job, are you powerful enough to duplicate these feats of nature? Are you smart enough to run the world?" He even uses some sarcasm in v. 21, "I am sure that you can, because you’re so old and were there when the world was made!" In chapter 40:7, God finally makes his point: He says, Stand up like a man and answer me: Are you going to question my wisdom and my power, my judgment, and my design? Are YOU, the creature, in a position to ask ME, the creator of this world, ’WHY?’" Do you really expect to be able to understand the mysterious and deep ways of God? Don’t you think that’s a little bit presumptuous?" We would all admit that it’s presumptuous to think that, with no training at all in the intricacies of the human brain, we could perform brain surgery. Yet we expect to understand the plan and the wisdom of God and the depth of the human situation, as viewed from the vantage point of God? To that, God says, Remind yourself who you are. You are the creature. I am the creator. Don’t misunderstand——God knows why we ask the question. God realizes that we want to know, usually for very understandable reasons, why things happen to us. After all, God created us. He knows our desire to rationally explain things, to connect things together that belong together, to see cause and effect relationships where they exist. But he says to Job and to us, "You expect too much of yourself if you expect to get complete, satisfactory answers to those questions. You forget who you are and who I am. You forget that you are the creature and I am the creator when you assume that you can understand all the rhyme and reason and mystery of life!" Now, we can react in different ways to this non—answer by God to the question WHY. 1. We can react with resentment and despair:
"I’ll never know! And if I can’t know, then this world doesn’t make any sense and I give up!"
That is a common attitude of people today, and the by—product of that is profound skepticism about life——its meaning, its value, its purpose. God’s reply to Job strikes at the pride of the modern person who thinks that because we can build an iPhone that puts the world’s information at my fingertips, we ought to be able to understand all things. This is often our first reaction when we are caste into a situation of suffering. We want to know why. We demand to know why. And if we can’t figure it out, then nothing makes sense. We despair. 2. Another way to react is to come up with an answer of our own making——some answer, any answer. In two other sermons in this series, I will be looking at two different ways people try to rationally piece things together so that suffering makes some kind of sense. Even though we’ll see that these are very attractive and tempting explanations, and we often buy into them and subtly live by them (which is why we have to expose them), we’ll see that neither is ultimately satisfying. 3. But there is another reaction. When we face squarely the fact that we don’t have answers to our why’s, we may finally be in a position to appreciate anew what FAITH is, namely believing certain things about life even when we cannot understand all the why’s of life, believing, beyond what we can understand, in the one in whom all things do hold together. Hebrews says,
"Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."
Another translation says,
"Faith is the conviction of things not seen."
Faith says, "God, I don’t understand this, but I believe you are sovereign, that you rule, and that you are good, and I put my trust in you. And therein is my peace, not in my ability to understand." What makes people like Corrie Ten Boom such a modern example of faith is not that she UNDERSTOOD what God was doing with her and her loved ones in the concentration camps of World War II, but that she BELIEVED; not that she "saw" (to use the imagery of Hebrews 11:1), but that she held convictions about God and life even when she could not see:
"Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."
I recently had a visit with a student at the seminary where I teach who has come to study with us from the Congo. You may know that the Congo is one of the most war—torn countries in the world today It’s estimated that 45,000 people a month, most of them children, have been slaughtered in this decade—long civil war. Over five million people have died of disease and famine in the same decade. When I talk to Mitogo about his country, his heart is obviously very heavy, and he pleads with me and others in the west to tell the story of the Congo, so people know what is happening. Mitogo does not minimize his country’s tragic story, or try to explain away what’s happening. None of that seems terribly important to him. And Mitogo certainly doesn’t claim to know what God is up to, why God is letting this go on. He doesn’t have an answer to the question "Why" when it comes to the Congo. Not even close. But Mitogo believes. He believes with a quiet, resolute faith, that God rules—even in the Congo. He believes that God’s rule will prevail, that evil will not prevail, and that God’s kingdom will come and his will, will be done in the Congo and everywhere. He believes. He lives by faith, by his convictions of things unseen. No, he doesn’t believe this because he sees it; all he sees is bloodshed and death. But he believes these things about God because he believes God’s Word is true, Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, the Spirit is working to make all things new—even in the Congo. It’s interesting to me that Mitogo’s comfort is not his knowledge that we are so small ("we just can’t understand these things"), No, his comfort is his conviction that God is so big and infinitely wise and all—knowing and trust—worthy. That’s the crux of Job’s final response to God in chapter 42. Job says,
"(Now) I know, Lord, that you are all—powerful, that you can do everything you want. . . I talked about things I did not understand, about marvels too great for me to know. So I am ashamed of all I have said and repent in dust and ashes."
Job’s peace does not come when he gets an answer to his question "Why?" It comes from not needing an answer because he has put his trust in the sovereign God. The world calls that foolishness. But Paul calls that our wisdom. Our wisdom, says Paul, is our willingness to believe things that look foolish to the world, our willingness to replace human wisdom and human understanding with faith, faith in (what Paul calls) "the secret and hidden wisdom of God." The wisest person, Paul says, is the person who realizes he’s not very wise, the person who has the humility to lay all of her questions on the bridge of faith in the sovereign God of heaven and earth. The person who is willing to walk on that bridge, trusting in its strength, its ability to hold him up. And the wonder of healing grace is that in time that "WHY" question loses its awful grip on us. I still remember the lunch I had with Sally many years ago. Back in Toledo, Ohio, in the first church I served, I was the chaplain of a support group for young to middle aged widows. Sally’s husband had died of a heart attack at the age of 45. Of the dozens of widows I knew in that group, no one asked the "WHY" question more than Sally. It haunted her. She could not go on, she was sure, without an answer to that question. And God—— well, as staunch a Lutheran as she was—— God was no friend of hers just now. When I left Toledo, Sally was still held in grief’s awful grip. Six years later I was back in Toledo and had lunch with Sally. It had been seven years since her husband had died. She was doing well. She had a job she loved. Her daughters were all grown up now and doing well. Yes, life was good again. Not the same. Not ever the same, but good. I said, Sally, I have a question. Six years ago, when I left here, you were obsessed with the question, "WHY?" What answer did you get? She looked at me with almost a dazed look and said, "Oh yeah, that’s right, I guess I did ask that question a lot, didn’t I?" She thought about it and said, "I never got an answer. But the question is no longer important." She went on to talk about how God wasn’t on trial with her any more. God was not some sadistic giant. God was God again, even without an answer to her question.I was moved. For if Sally could be healed, anyone could. The prophet says that Christ comes with healing in his wings. Notice he doesn’t come with answers to all of our questions. He comes with healing in his wings. By the healing grace of God, we may not get answers to our question WHY? But we can be freed from the pain of the question. And we can live with hope and freedom when we get it straight who we are and who God is. As Job says (42:5)
"My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you."
If Job could say, "My eyes have seen you," because he had such an overwhelming conviction of God’s presence and power and goodness, how much more can we, who have seen Jesus Christ, God come down to us, suffering with us and for us, rising to give us hope ——— how much more can we say today, "Oh God, when I look everywhere but toward you, I am filled with doubt and wondering and even anger and despair. But when I look at you, I am healed, I am held, I am secure." May God fill you with faith and hope and peace, this day and forever more.

About the Author

Duane Kelderman

Rev. Duane Kelderman is the Vice President for Administration and an Associate Professor of Preaching at Calvin Seminary in Grand Rapids. Before his current position he served as pastor in Christian Reformed congregations in Toledo, Ohio; Denver, Colorado; and Grand Rapids, Michigan. Rev. Kelderman is married to Jeannette and has three children and two grandchildren. He was born and raised in Oskaloosa, Iowa and attended Calvin College and Calvin Seminary. He enjoys reading and carpentry.

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