Hearing God in Old Testament Suffering

(Here is a recent paper I submitted for Old Testament Genre. I found it really enjoyable and am pleased with the final result)

Introduction

We begin our Christian narrative in Genesis with the idea that God speaks. The world is nothingness and then God’s mystical creation begins via the spoken word. Ever since then humanity has been listening for that Voice. The ways we have heard Him are manifold. Throughout history, and specifically through Scripture, we have heard God speak through audible voices, angels, animals, signs, pillars of fire, bushes of fire, inaudible feelings, dreams, visions, plagues, humans, et cetera. The list could be nearly infinite. Books have been compiled, organizations founded, entire lives have been consumed (and rightfully so) with the intention of finding and hearing the voice of God. Thus, this paper will focus on hearing God in an experience that the Old Testament doesn’t skimp on. It is a common thread throughout all human experience and in this sense it is inescapable. It is the one thing that no one fears a scarcity of, for it is abundant: suffering. Suffering is thematic in the Scriptures and we find it startlingly emphasized in wisdom literature. This paper will take two figures in Old Testament wisdom literature, Job and the Psalter, and search their experiences for examples of how God speaks through their suffering. It will not, however, address God’s ordination, inability to change, or implication in the event of suffering nor with it grapple with the issue of theodicy.

Suffering is not an event that belongs expressly to the theologian or philosopher. It may belong more to the poet than anyone else. Only poetry has the evocative nature that honors the experience of suffering. Walter Brueggemann said about the book of Job: “This is dealing with bad stuff and you cannot be dealing with bad stuff in prose.” Contrastingly, Theodore Adorno wrote: "To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric.” There is truth in both statements. It seems unthinkable that in a world with such startling trauma we could put words to our experiences in anything other than stunned and stoic prose. But the Old Testament insists on this alternate script: “bad stuff” is for the poets. Annie Dillard captures this so well in her book Holy the Firm. She wraps poetry around experiences of nature’s violence, from a moth consumed by the flame of a candle to a little girl’s face tragically burnt beyond recognition in a plane crash. We know that these moments are sacred and meaningful, so we cannot be stoic. We must be impassioned and consumed by our grief. But why do we know these moments to be sacred? And if Sacred, does that mean God is present in all suffering? If so, then how might He be speaking? These questions bring us to our two examples: the poetry of Job and the Psalter.


Job

In the movie A Serious Man, the Coen Brother’s modern day retelling of Job, Larry Gopnik (the Job figure) asks: “Why does he make us feel the questions if he's not gonna give us any answers?” Unfortunately (or fortunately) for Larry, God never pounded down upon him from the heavens warning him to put on some pants and listen but in Job’s remarkable case God did. The Job narrative is a book that rightfully evokes both awe and fear simultaneously. It may very well be the dark well spring from where we get our vindictive images of God. Bets with Satan, seemingly meaningless suffering, and a God who asserts His dominance over a few men can make the book of Job into a depressing, saddening, and intimidating read. In this vein Folk singer David Bazan despairingly observed of God’s challenge, “When Job asked you the question you responded ‘who are you to challenge your creator?’ Well if that one part is true, it makes you sound defensive like you had not thought it through enough to have an answer or you might have bit off more than you could chew.” The weight of the book and God’s response to Job is almost enough to make a person wish God had never spoke (a wish shared by Jeremiah ).

In light of the book of Proverbs, Job confuses the reader further. Everything advocated before the Lord’s answer in chapter 38 seems to fall directly in line with Proverbs as a “how to” book in right living. “The LORD’s curse is on the house of the wicked, but he blesses the dwelling of the righteous” is a statement from Proverbs that flies in the face of the Job; Job is that righteous man. God even says so himself. In that vein, some even view the book of Job as one that flies in the face of any sort of Biblical morality other than that of distinguishing the difference between God and man. In Old Testament Theology, morality is not the answer to suffering. Proverbs 31 is well aware of this fact holding up one standard of morality for the King to not desire beer or wine then telling him to “Give beer to those are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish.” Looking back to Job, it is here that we see God speaking amidst suffering seemingly without empathy for Job’s condition. “Why do you talk without knowing what you’re talking about?” asks God. There is no suggestion or even consideration for how Job can alleviate his suffering. Is this the confusion and despair meant to be taken away from this book in hearing God?

Fortunately, this confusion is not the last word on Job and there is hope to be taken from his encounter, though the hope he is given is much different than what we typically want. This is an important theme to be taken from hearing God in suffering. God is entirely other and His voice may just be the thing that is the most unsettling. Job experiences disorientation; he has not slandered God by the end of the book, but he is explicitly complaining. He simply cries out “WHY?!” Job asks: why was I even born if this was the pain I was destined for? God doesn’t engage these questions except to ask questions in return. God’s questions are ones that Job has no way, no context to even begin to know. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion?” All these answers are not answers to us. Few of us proceed past these verses feeling comforted. God is a poor therapist. It doesn’t seem like He seeks to heal Job’s soul; God wants something else. Job offers silence but God responds by telling Job they are going to wrestle. The Liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez picks up the passage here and writes, “Yahweh refuses to let Job withdraw from the debate; Yahweh has more to say. Moreover, Job must get to the bottom of this matter; he must drink the full cup of protest.” Job goes two rounds with God and is done. His response is: “I had heard of you…but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself and repent.” This final remark from Job holds his epiphany and the key to this passage. He hears God. Gutierrez appreciates this ending and interprets Job’s response as one of understanding. Repentance is where God finishes his wrestling and Job finishes his complaint. This final note is a mysterious thing; Scripture doesn’t give a lesson summary for what Job had learned, what interacting with God felt like, or how he was going to live life differently. Hearing from God may very well have left him undone or perhaps full to overflowing. Much of Job’s final response is a reiteration of what God had told him and a summary of how they related. The bivy of words that came earlier are no longer; he is nearly speechless. What seems the most fitting explanation of Job’s interaction with God is that Job was stunned by the relationship and the knowledge that he had been given so suddenly. He is not unlike the prophet in this way, who hears God. He is very much like a priest who knows God and he mediates for his friends. He is kingly for now he has a restored kingdom. The answer that Job receives is a vision of God. It is not a direct answer, but it is the answer that fills all questions. As Robert Fyall wrote on Job, “For a proper understanding of the book it is vital that we discern the very heart of its message: we need to know and hear God.” This is the message of Job, that we can know and hear God amidst suffering. But, that knowing, may be more mysterious and undoing than the unknowing we knew before.


The Psalter

We don’t always hear God though, especially in times of suffering. At least, we don’t hear God in the way Job did. In fact, suffering is most often the time when God feels the furthest away. It is in the moments that we have lost the most and have the most to lose. There are few moments when we are as aware of our own souls than in the searing pain of suffering. In these moments, some of the most honest, beautiful, wide-eyed and broken art is made. Hence in modern American history we have beautiful music like Jazz and African American Spirituals. In Scripture, there is poetic lament. There is even a whole book of scripture called Lamentations dedicated to dealing with sadness over exile. Delving into lament as a whole is undoubtedly outside the scope of this paper but we may catch a quick glimpse of how the Psalmists dealt with their grief through poetry.

Poet Ann Weems wrote, “There is no salvation in self help books; the help we need is far beyond self. Our only hope is to march ourselves to the throne of God and in loud lament cry out the pain that lives in our souls.” This is precisely what the Psalmist does. It is a position of vulnerable emoting, digging down into the truth of one’s soul and laying it bare. Not once, in the book of Psalms, does God respond. Yet, over and over, for well over half of the book, are poems filled with “How Long O Lord?” “Make haste, O God, to deliver me!” “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” Expression is a necessary function of sorrow. In this place God invites whomever, the impoverished and the rich to voice their oppression.

It seems important to note that the church today has consistently denied this invitation. It is a curious thing that when Scripture as a whole speaks of such dramatic disruption that it would settle in unholy obsession on Proverbs, the prayer of Jabez, and the rapture. It is not surprising, as NT Wright has recently noted, that we have a very narrow view of heaven. It is almost like our imagination of the human experience has rejected everything contra “happy.” The “abundant life” and the “joy of the lord” is a lie if it leads us only to a 401(k) and “a smile Jesus loves you” bumper sticker. It is no wonder that Liberation Theology has emerged without much involvement from Evangelicalism. We have lacked the imagination or honesty to take part.

To begin to imagine how we can hear from God in a Lament it is helpful to look at a specific Psalm. Psalms 69 is a worthwhile example, in which David laments the prevalence of his enemies. David writes: “Save me, O God! Mighty are those who would destroy me. O God you know my folly. My prayer is to you, O Lord. Deliver me from sinking in the mire. Let not the flood sweep over me. Let the heaven and earth praise him. For God will save Zion.” He lets God know in no uncertain terms his heart’s state. It is important to know there is no method to the Psalms except to speak the truth of one’s present situation and of who God is. David does this by pointing to his enemies and telling God, “They’re after me!” He desperately needs help. There is no mincing of words and no lack of hope. He knows God has the ability to save him from the situation. The Psalm doesn’t only have a complaint but it contains David’s confession of sin, plea for destruction on his enemies, and praise for God. It is a holistic approach to lamenting expression.

Walter Brueggemann has much to say about the necessity of lament. Through their many exiles and specifically their experience in Egypt the Israelites had developed a necessary system of lamenting being trapped in oppressive systems. “The community of ancient Israel understood that silence kills…As a consequence, Israel devised an astonishing culture of lament, complaint, and protest, a culture that functions as a life-giving alternative to every hegemonic attempt to enforce silence.” In fact, this may be the key to our own culture of silence within the Western church. In our attempt to be the “church triumphant” living the “abundant life” we have been scared by both these Job and the Psalms of lament and the experiences they evoke inside of us. It has been an understandable fear; it is a dangerous and dark part of the faith. But this culture of silence and lack of lament may very well be our rejection of God in our suffering.


With or Without You

Suffering is abundant in the Old Testament. The difficulty is learning to reconcile these two experiences. The first is Job. He goes through incredible suffering and is confronted by God in the end. Job’s questions (as well as our own) are never answered except with: “I’m God, you wouldn’t understand.” The Psalter’s lament, on the other hand, is not answered (at least not within the text). So Scripture gives us these two examples, one of the unbearable voice of God and the other of His deafening silence. So maybe this in itself is saying something about God’s communication through suffering. The mystics contribute an answer with their concepts of via positiva and via negativa (put simply: seeing God where He is present, positiva, and where He is not, negativa). In light of these two concepts Job is via positiva. God is present, He is there and speaking. Traditionally this doctrine sees God as present in nature. Applied to Scripture, it sees God present speaking directly into and amidst suffering. This may sound like a wonderful solution to the loneliness of suffering but to hear from God directly can be unbearable, leaving us wide eyed and stuttering like Job. The Quaker Thomas Kelly described this experience: “It is an overwhelming experience to fall into the hands of the living God, to be invaded to the depths of one’s being by His presence, to be, without warning wholly uprooted from earth bound securities and assurances, and to be blown by a tempest of unbelievable power which leaves one’s proud self defenseless.” He notes he now knows why Pascal, in the midst of his greatest moment, wrote the single word “Fire.” God’s revealed presence is consuming.

Via Negativa on the other hand sees God where he is not. God is in silence. “Via Negativa plunges the seeker into the abyss of the Godhead ‘where absolute stillness, utter silence, and unity reign,’” says Capps and Wright. It is here that God is much more difficult to find because He is not speaking. The church has labeled this place “the desert.” It is where we find God where we don’t see Him. We learn about God and our need for Him by experiencing His felt absence. Whole spiritual traditions have been founded on this principle. There is an inward turn that teaches us more about ourselves and of God than we could learn without suffering. He is there, even when He is not. Though this is no therapeutic tool and is not much of a comfort, it adds richness to our suffering that wouldn’t be there if we only saw His absence as absence. This is the most common of our present experiences, the silence of prayer. It is to be expected. While most of us prefer a Job-like experience (perhaps because we have never been confronted like Job), these are moments of rich transformation. The Psalmist minces no words when it comes to his suffering, but holds an abundant hope. Even ending Psalm 22, where the author begins “Why have you forsaken me?” he ends “For he has not ignored the suffering of the needy…The whole earth will acknowledge the Lord and return to him.” He knows how God has saved in the past and looks forward to a place of abundance.

God speaks through a myriad of means in the Old Testament. But amidst the prevalent suffering of Israel we hear Him speak to them often verbally and quite forcefully. Though sometimes, instead, the response is silence and the silence itself can be a means of God’s communication. In it we learn something very meaningful about the person of God and ourselves. I end with a quote from C.S. Lewis, “But pain insists on being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscious, but shouts to us in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”