Self Defense Series

Some of you may have visited the famous Carlsbad Caverns of

New Mexico. I have not, but I have read about how the ranger

guides the group to a place where they are seated on stone benches.

Then all of the lights go out. Suddenly it is as black as black can be.

You can hear water dripping you never heard before. You know

there are a hundred people around you, yet there is a strong feeling

of being alone. Some who have been there say there is a feeling of

oppressive darkness. Another way to get this feeling of aloneness

and heaviness is to suffer great loss, like Job did. The difference is,

Job could not turn on the light and dissolve the load that lay so

heavy on his heart.

Friendship is supposed to lighten the load, but in Job's case, his

friends made it even heavier. If there was some way to weigh

burdens, it could very well be that Job would be in the Guinness

Book of Records as the man who, next to Jesus, bore the heaviest

load of grief in history. Jesus is the record holder, for He bore the

sins of the world. His load was heavy beyond our comprehension.

We can grasp the load of Job, somewhat, but the weight of our

Lord's grief is beyond calculation. We read in Matt. 26:37-38,

where Jesus took His three disciples into Gethsemane, and He began

to be sorrowful and very heavy. He was grieved, and in great

distress. In the New English Bible Jesus says, "My heart is ready to

break with grief." Weymoth has, "Is crushed with anguish."

Jesus complained for the same reason Job complained: Their

friends did not recognize the load they were bearing, and offer to

give them a hand. It would have taken so little for them to lighten the

load, and add some light to the heavy darkness, and establish what

Wordsworth describes:

That blessed mood,

In which the burden of the mystery,

In which the heavy and weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened.

The burden of Jesus was just ignored by His disciples. This is

what often happens when the great suffer. Everybody assumes they

can handle things, and do not need the aid and encouragement of

their inferiors. It is a tragic mistake, for even Jesus needed the

comfort and sympathy of His disciples. Job's friends were not just

indifferent. They felt compelled to argue, scold, and reject him for

his negative expressions of grief. Having no one else to defend him,

Job comes to his own defense, and as his own lawyer, argues his case

before the court of history.

Job's major argument is that there is some negative things in life

that are natural, and they ought to be accepted by believers. Job is

not saying that these negatives are good, he is just saying they are a

part of life that we must face up to, and not try to escape. They are

like pimples on the body. There is nothing good about them, but we

have to accept their presence if we are going to deal with them. One

of the criticisms of Christians is that they cannot accept the reality of

tragedy. They refuse to accept the fact that evil is real, and that

things do happen in this world that are victories for the forces of

evil. Christians escape tragedy by denial. They say it is all really

just mysterious good that we don't quite understand.

Philip Yancy in his book, Where Is God When It Hurts, tells of a

funeral he attended for a teen-age girl killed in a car accident. Her

mother wailed, "The Lord took her home. He must have had some

purpose....Thank you Lord." Here is a typical Christian escape.

She felt the tragedy, but she could not admit it was tragedy. She

could not accept her emotions as truth. She had to assume it was

really good, and give thanks to God for it. Paul did say that in

everything we should give thanks, but not for everything. Christians

who thank God for everything are not facing up to the reality of evil.

This is escapism. By so doing Christians exalt all the works of the

devil to the level of admiration. They call black white by denying

evil and calling it good. I can just hear David following this line of

thinking. "Thank you Lord for taking Bathsheba's husband home

in that battle today." God did not take him home. David murdered

him. To say thank you God is to thank God for murder, which He

hates.

Thank God Job did not say thank God. Such a denial of tragedy

would have ruined the value of this great book. Job defends our