I recall seeing a television interview some years ago, in which the Australian media personality Andrew
Denton was interviewing the renowned naturalist and documentary maker, Sir David Attenborough.
Denton asked Attenborough whether or not his experiences as a naturalist had caused him to have a
sense of “God’s pattern” in the world, to which Attenborough replied, in part:
…think of a parasitic worm that lives only in the eyeballs of human beings, boring its way through them,
in West Africa, for example, where it's common, turning people blind. So if you say, "I believe that God
designed and created and brought into existence every single species that exists," then you've also got
to say, "Well, he, at some stage, decided to bring into existence a worm that's going to turn people
blind." Now, I find that very difficult to reconcile with notions about a merciful God. And I certainly find it
difficult to believe that a God — superhuman, supreme power — would actually do that.1
The difficulty reconciling notions of a merciful God with the reality of suffering which Attenborough
articulates is a conundrum commonly called “The Problem of Suffering”. My usual response to this
argument – that the reality of suffering is irreconcilable to the existence of a good and loving God - is to
argue in turn that it proceeds from a logical fallacy: namely, that the absence of suffering must be a precondition for the existence of God; or, at least, for the existence of a good and loving God. But we know
1
Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Enough Rope, Episode 28, broadcast 22 September 2003. Official transcript located at
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s951650.htm, accessed 2.10.15. Attenborough has made a similar argument on a number of occasions,
from our own experience that this is a pre-condition which does not even apply to human life: the fact
that Person A is suffering does not automatically mean that Person B either cannot exist, or that they
cannot exist as a good and loving person. Of course, if Person B is the direct cause of Person A’s
suffering, this might mean they are not good and loving – but it also means they most definitely exist.
That which does not exist cannot be a cause of suffering.
So to argue that the fact of suffering means that a good and loving God cannot exist amounts to
imposing upon God a pre-condition for existence that does not even apply to human life. But does the
existence of this logical flaw eliminate the substance of this conundrum: if, afterall, God exists, is good
and loving, and is all-knowing and all-powerful, then why do innocent people suffer? What is more, this
conundrum raises another, even more disturbing possibility: that God does indeed exist, but is not good
and loving, and inflicts suffering upon humanity simply because it is within God’s power to do so.
What all this amounts to is that pointing out the logical flaw in this conundrum does not resolve the
questions it raises. The existence of suffering may be insufficient grounds for doubting the existence of
a good and loving God, but it still raises deep and uncomfortable questions. Why, afterall, should
suffering exist if, as the Book of Genesis asserts, God looked upon creation and saw that it was good2?
Of course, we could conceivably argue that creation, while good, is also imperfect; and that the
unfolding of creation over time is a movement toward its perfection in God, toward the fulfilment of the
usually in response to the Creationist argument that God designed and created all living creatures at the moment of creation, and that there has been no
subsequent evolution of new species.
2
Eg: Genesis 1:12, 19.
creative purpose for which existence was brought into being3. But that is an argument that is hardly
likely to satisfy those who raise the problem of suffering to argue against the existence of a good and
loving God; for, if nothing else, it suggests that God is some kind of monstrous experimenter, one who is
prepared to use humans (and other life forms) as cosmic lab rats in pursuit of some higher purpose we
can never understand. Surely no such perfect state could be worth any amount of suffering and
hardship, especially by a creation that is helpless to do anything about the suffering which it
experiences? As Dostoyevsky said in The Brothers Karamazov, if the suffering of even one child is the
cost of admission to heaven, I’d much rather return my entry ticket.
So where does that leave us? How do we respond to the question of suffering, and the relationship
between suffering and the notion of a good and loving God? How do we maintain a belief in the loving
goodness of God in light, not just of suffering, but of the fact that suffering often afflicts the innocent and
the good?
We might be tempted to write it all off as one big imponderable mystery and leave it at that. Why,
afterall, should we worry ourselves with such a big question when we have so much on our plates on a
day-to-day basis? But my view is that this is very much an issue we need to concern ourselves with, not
least because it is an example in which theology, far from being a remote, ivory tower affair, does in fact
hold deep implications for our everyday existence. Because the view we take of the relationship
between God and suffering carries the very real potential to dictate our response to human suffering –
3
An argument which, because it articulates the notion of an “unfolding” creation, contradicts the Creationist argument of a “one-off” creation event.
both our own suffering, and the suffering of others. This is not abstract or merely philosophical – it’s as
“practical” and as “down to earth” as you can get.
And we have in The Book of Job a text that raises the problem of suffering with all its disturbing
questions and potentials. Job is an ancient text, at least two and a half thousand years old; and the
scholarly consensus is that it derives from an oral folklore tradition that is even older4. The story it tells
is, in some respects, deceptively simple: Job, a good and righteous man, who enjoys good health, has a
large family, and who possess great wealth, suffers a series of disasters. Firstly, his children are wiped
out in what we might today call a freak accident. Secondly, his servants are slaughtered by rapacious
barbarian raiders. Thirdly, all his property and wealth are stolen. Finally, Job himself is afflicted with a
loathsome disease. In short, Job’s situation conforms to that old adage: it never rains, it pours. Job has
been violently wrested from a position of privilege, comfort, and security, into a situation of suffering,
loss, and tragedy.
But it’s at this point that things start getting complicated. For the text makes perfectly clear two
things. The first is that Job has done nothing to deserve or warrant such suffering. The narrative
emphasizes that Job is a good and righteous man – indeed, it declares him to be “blameless”5. So there
are no possible grounds for stating that Job has in any way brought this calamity upon himself or
contributed to his own suffering. He is the archetype of the suffering innocent.
4
Wallace, Howard, “Year B: Pentecost 18 – Job 1:1; 2:1-10”, located at
http://hwallace.unitingchurch.org.au/WebOTcomments/OrdinaryB/Pentecost18.html, accessed 2.10.15
5
Job 1:1
But secondly – and much more confronting – is the fact that the text makes perfectly clear who is
responsible for Job’s suffering: God. God, in debating with the Satan6 about the nature of human
righteousness, points to Job and says, in effect: See – there is a good and righteous person! There is
someone who is faithful to my covenant with humanity! And the Satan challenges God and says: Do you
really think Job is good and righteous because he reverences you? He’s only “righteous” because he
knows keeping in your good books is the best way to keep the cushy life you’ve bestowed upon him.
In other words, the Satan’s argument is that Job’s alleged righteousness is pure selfish selfinterest; he’s only in it for what he can get out of it. The minute God turns God’s back on Job, his faith
will evaporate like fog on a sunny morning. And God’s response is to allow the Satan to inflict on Job
every suffering imaginable short of actual death.
And that’s horrible. Whichever way you cut it, God has, in effect, condemned Job to the most
cataclysmic suffering in order to win an argument with the Satan. It seems we’re back to God the
experimenter, God who might be all-powerful and all-knowing, but who isn’t necessarily good and loving.
What are we to do?
It seems to me that if we are to properly begin our exploration of Job, we must start by not
committing the offence of thinking the ancients were simplistic, credulous literalists who had a onedimensional view of life and who necessarily understood God as an angry deity in the sky hurling
thunderbolts at humanity. We need not imagine that the ancients who wrote and read this passage from
6
Hebrew: ha Satan, “the Accuser”. The Satan of Job is not the same “Satan” or “devil” of the New Testament who tempts Jesus and turns Judas into a
Job did so in literalist terms. The notion that they did is, in fact, a modern conceit, a post-Enlightenment
attempt to condemn everything before a certain period in Western history to the dustbin of superstition
and credulity. But the ancients were subtle, and sophisticated, and poetic, and they were perfectly
capable of image and analogy and metaphor.
And so what we have before us today is a kind of parable, a setting of the scene that provides the
context for everything that follows. Because Job, like Ecclesiastes, represents a dissenting tradition
within the Hebrew Scriptures that reacts against, and critiques, the conventional wisdom of received
tradition, a wisdom represented by texts such as The Book of Proverbs7. In that tradition, the
relationship between God and humanity is a kind of contract: if humans obey God’s law, God will bless
them with success and happiness; if they disobey, they can expect calamity and strife. But Job is
arguing that this is not at all what the covenant with God is like; and part of its dissenting genius is that it
puts the words of conventional wisdom into the mouth of the Satan. Afterall, the Satan says that Job’s
“righteousness” is a simple profit-and-loss calculation: obey the rules and profit, or disobey and lose.
But God takes the opposing stance: Job’s righteousness is not mere obedience to rules, but participation
in relationship.
Viewed in this light, we can see, right from the outset, what a subtle and sophisticated text Job is,
precisely because it begins with a concise encapsulation of the conventional wisdom from which it
betrayer. Rather, this Satan serves as a kind of Chief Prosecutor, one who argues the case against humanity. See also Wallace, Howard, op. cit.
7
Wallace, Howard, op. cit.
dissents. What is more, by setting up the question of Job’s righteousness, it cuts to the heart of
conventional wisdom: a wisdom that says we should be good in order to avoid being punished. Once
we understand this, we can see that God’s decision to let the Satan afflict Job is not the callous
indifference of a cosmic tinkerer but an expression in itself of the central position taken up by the author
of Job: that the possibility of God in human life is not a guarantee of safety, but an invitation into
relationship that involves an element of risk. And that is a risk that runs both ways, a risk in which God
has as much to lose as we do: for if the Satan is right, and Job’s righteousness is merely a matter of
cynical, self-serving calculation, then God’s faith in humanity is misplaced and creation itself is a hollow
joke. Rather than being the revelation of a God who is a law-maker and a punisher, this is a revelation
of a God who is vulnerable and at risk.
And so here we pause in our exploration of Job. We have learned that Job is a dissenting text,
one in which the received wisdom of conventional thinking is challenged and criticized. And we have
learned that one of the first things it challenges is retribution theology’s assertions about God and the
nature of God’s relationship with humanity. Covenant with God is not about rules and obedience in
return for guarantees; it’s about relationship and mutual engagement. And God isn’t a vicious trickster
who punishes us even though we don’t deserve it; rather, God is prepared to make God’s-self vulnerable
to us, to riskily invest faith in us, in order to facilitate relationship. We have learned that God is as much
at risk as we are. And as we pursue our exploration, we may learn more things which disturb and
confront; but which also enrich and nourish.