Sustaining a Reasonable Faith

There’s an old story about a congregation that was disturbed when a bar opened up right next door to the church. The preacher got up Sunday after Sunday and railed against the presence of this bar and all the sin that the church members imagined was going on in there – right next to the church. One week, the preacher said, “I want you to pray with me that God will burn that place to the ground.”

Well, wouldn’t you know, that very night a lightning bolt came and burned that bar right to the ground. The bar owner had heard about the prayers being offered by the church and he went to court – sued the church for damage to his property. The church members protested. They told the judge, “You can’t seriously blame us for a lightning strike! We had nothing to do with it.”

The judge finally settled the case in the church’s favor but her final remark was, “I think it’s very interesting that the bar owner believes in the power of prayer more than the church does.”

As Christians we used to live in a world where we believed that great powers are at work. We lived in a world where God was active and present and yet so were dark, shadowy forces that opposed God. We prayed, not just because it was good for our minds and our bodies and calmed our nerves, but because something was at stake. There was some great drama going on and we wanted to enlist God on our side or to enlist ourselves on God’s side.

But then we became reasonable people and we had to give all that up. Or so we thought. Lightning strikes are no longer acts of God, they’re lightning strikes caused by an imbalanced electrical differential between earth and sky. (I think…my scientific knowledge is pretty limited.) The causes of things have more reasonable explanations. When we try to talk about that God-filled world which is filled with drama and wonder and enchantment we find ourselves stumbling over our words, unsure of what our neighbors will think of us.

Last month in Britain there was another court case – this one a real case. A Christian counselor in Bristol with five years of experience was sacked, as they say in the UK, fired, because he was asked to do something in conflict with his Christian beliefs – in this case, to provide psycho-sexual therapy to same-sex couples. It was the policy of the agency he worked for to provide this therapy to everyone and when he asked to be exempt from the policy on religious grounds he was fired. He then sued to agency for unfair dismissal and discrimination.

This background to the case is interesting in its own way because of the questions it raises about what Christians believe and how they act in situations where their beliefs are challenged and whether the agency should have interpreted the counselor’s behavior as discriminatory against same-sex couples. But the case was raised to a whole new level by the judge’s ruling in the case which denied the counselor the right to appeal his firing. Lord Justice Laws said that “the promulgation of law for the protection of a position held purely on religious grounds cannot…be justified. It is irrational, as preferring the subjective over the objective. But it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary.”

Now, I’m not really qualified to comment on British legal opinions, but as I read his ruling I saw the groundwork being laid for denying a place for any kind of religious reasoning in the public square. He said that laws protecting positions held because of religious belief are irrational, but the judge also believes that religion itself is irrational. Earlier in the same statement he said that “in the eye of everyone save the believer religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence.”[i] He says that doesn’t make religious faith untrue – it’s just not something you can prove rationally.

Let me be clear about this. I understand the dangers of having a public space overrun by religious authorities. Jesus saw that in his own day. When you give Pharisees and Sadducees and Ayatollahs political power they generally mess things up. Britain, like the United States, is a pluralistic country with lots of different kinds of faiths, lots of different kinds of Christians and lots of people with no faith commitments at all. So, yes, the law needs to remain neutral with regard to religious belief.

Suggesting that religious belief is irrational or opposed to reason is something entirely different, though. It’s the same sort of thing that the so-called New Athiests have been saying in their writings in recent years. Writers like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens have been dismissing Christianity and faith in general as something like “believing impossible things.” Hitchens has been so dismissive as to say, “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”[ii] And by evidence he means a very narrow range of scientific evidence – a sort of “I’m from Missouri, show me” kind of evidence. The evidence of a heart strangely warmed or a life transformed or a conscience formed by a Christian community and by scripture is not evidence for Hitchens and it is not communicable in rational society according to Lord Justice Laws. It is just subjective experience and therefore useless to society.

What is it that we believe reason is? Is it only knowledge? Knowing what things are made of or how to put them together in interesting combinations – does that constitute real reason? Or is there something more? Don’t we value reason because it helps us evaluate what we know, helps us guide our actions, helps us live more fully human lives? Someone who knows how to split an atom may know a lot, but reason tells us that knowing how to make an atom bomb doesn’t qualify you to be a reasonable person. As the theologian David Bentley Hart says, “It is even easy for educated persons to believe…that knowing how genes work is the same thing as being authorized to say what a person is or should be.”

We want to say that reason is more than manipulating information or reducing the universe to a formula. And the truth of the matter is that reason, in this larger sense, is something that Christian faith has given birth to. Again David Bentley Hart says, “Reason…is a whole way of life, not the simple mastery of certain techniques of material manipulation, and certainly not the childish certitude that such mastery proves that only material realities exist. A rational life is one that integrates knowledge into a larger choreography of virtue, imagination, patience, prudence, humility and restraint. Reason is not only knowledge, but knowledge perfected in wisdom.”[iii] This is why reason became such a value for Christians. It was not something we reject so that we can believe any old silly thing that we want. It is something that hones our faith so that we can love God better. Knowledge is always brought back to the love of God.

So universities owe their birth to the Christian love of reason. The study of astronomy was guided by Christian pursuit to understand the mysteries of the universe. The practical engagement with the stuff of the world is a legacy of Christians who did not see the material world as something evil that needed to be sloughed off, like some of their pagan contemporaries in the ancient world, but rather they saw the material world as a part of God’s revelation of glory.

One of the places where the Bible talks about this is in the book of Job. In the midst of all the bewailing of miseries, there is a song n chapter 28 about wisdom. After talking about its great value – “more precious than gold, silver and sapphires”! – the song asks, “Where does wisdom come from then? And where is the place of understanding?” The only hints of it come from Destruction and Death who say, “We have heard in our ears a report of it.” And we suspect the same thing, that in suffering and death, we might get a glimpse of some deeper meaning.

Ultimately, though, even these can’t reveal the mystery. “God understands the way to it and God knows its place.” After stretching out the heavens and giving thunder its voice, God looks to humanity and says, “The fear of the Lord – this is wisdom, and turning aside from evil is understanding.”

The great danger of a world that imagines that its religious roots are irrational and primitive and mere superstition – incommunicable to the larger world – is that it will start to see life as less than the miracle that it is. The horrors of the world wars were constructed by people considered reasonable by the standards of their day. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot – they built their terrors on the back of reason divorced from religion. But reason is more than that. Reason joined to the love of God and the fear of the Lord – that is wisdom, and what the world needs is wisdom.

At the same time that we are reminding ourselves of the rationality of faith, we can also reclaim science as our own. David Wilkinson of St. John’s College of the University of Durham says, “Christians need to stand against the tide of the current trend of science bashing. The birth of modern science came from the Christian conviction that science was a gift from God for exploring the world and in bringing healing to creation. Responsibility was given to use this gift wisely…We need to recapture that sense of gift and responsibility.”[iv]

So having travelled this far – four weeks now we have been talking about the intersection of science and faith – what can we say? That science is not necessarily an enemy of faith. Science, in its modern form, is a remarkable human achievement for describing the world and explaining how it works. But science is, like all human things, fallible and still developing. And it will always lack the instrument for determining why we are here and what the meaning of life is.

Science can lead us into wonder. At its best it doesn’t reduce life, but enriches it – giving us new words and ways to love God and this world which God has made so that we can yet be “lost in wonder, love and praise.”

Finally, science should spur us to be just as diligent in pursuing knowledge of our faith as scientists are in pursuing the objects of their research. We should not be afraid of hard questions or where they might lead. What we should fear is God. Not the fear that has us cowering in the corner or failing to be what we are. But the fear that overcomes us when we are in the presence of something awesome – like the bend in the road that puts us face to face with a mountain peak. The fear of the Lord, who is greater than all things, this is wisdom.

You remember that church that prayed for the bar to be burned down? This is how Annie Dillard writes about the kind of spirituality we find in that church and sometimes in ours. She writes:

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”[v]

The waking god may draw us out where we can never return. What will call us out there to truly live in this amazing world? What wisdom, what understanding will help us see the wonder and the danger? What role will you play in the drama? And when will you believe? Thanks be to God.

Job 28:12-28

Where will wisdom be found?

And where is the place of understanding?

Humanity does not know its value

And it is not found in the land of the living.

The deep says, “It is not in me.”

And the sea says, “It is not with me.”

Fine gold cannot be exchanged for it

And silver cannot be weighed out for its price.

It cannot be measured against the gold of Ophir

Against precious gems or sapphires

Gold and glass cannot equal it

Nor can it be exchanged for articles of refined gold

No thought shall be made of coral and crystal

The drawing up of wisdom is better than corals.

The topaz of Cush cannot compare with it

And it cannot be weighed in pure gold

From where does wisdom come then?

And where is this place of understanding?

It is concealed from the eyes of all living things

And hidden from the birds of the air.

Destruction and Death say,

“We have heard in our ears a report of it.”

God understands the way to it

And God knows its place.

For God looks to the ends of the earth

And sees all that is under the sky.

When he made for the wind its weight

And apportioned the waters by measure

When he made for the rain a decree

And for the thunderbolt’s voice a way

Then he saw it and recounted it,

He established it and sought it out

And he said to humanity,

“Look, the fear of the Lord – this is wisdom

And turning aside from evil is understanding.”

---

[i] Quoted in “Lord Justice Nero” on the blog Practical Ethics, University of Oxford, May 7, 2010, http://www.practicalethicsnews.com/practicalethics/2010/05/lord-justice-nero.html.

[ii] From GoodReads, http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3956.Christopher_Hitchens.

[iii] David Bentley Hart, Athiest Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, [Yale University Press: New Haven, 2009], p. 236.

[iv] David Wilkinson, quoted in Paul E. Stroble, What About Science and Religion?: A Study of Reason and Faith, [Abingdon Press: Nashville, 2007], p. 48.

[v] Annie Dillard, from Teaching a Stone to Talk, quoted in “An Annie Dillard Sunday,” on the blog Through the Glass, Darkly, “ 10/17/2004, http://throughaglass.net/archives/2004/10/17/an-annie-dillard-sunday/.

After the Storm

Psalm 131 has always been one of my favorite psalms. It’s very short. It goes like this:

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me. O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time on and forevermore.

“I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.” I’ve been occupying myself that way for my whole life. Do you do this? I know that there are things I am never going to figure out. Try as I might I am never going to figure out my IRS Form 1040, why God made mosquitoes, the rules to cricket, the Pythagorean theorem, why cats can never decide whether they want to be in or out, or women. But it doesn’t mean that I’m not going to try. I didn’t get a degree in philosophical theology for nothing! I would never have gotten that if I hadn’t occupied myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.

I don’t think I’m being unbiblical when I do this, either. I admire the psalmist when she says this. I think that it is important that we calm ourselves…that we quiet our souls…that we retain a childlike trust in God. Every journey into the realm of thinking about things too great and too marvelous for us ought to end here – resting in God. But biblical characters do take on the big questions, too.

Think of Abraham who got wind of God’s plan to wipe out the people of Sodom because of the wickedness of the city. Abraham decides he must confront God – to intervene on behalf of the people. Would God really bring destruction on a whole city when there were innocent people inside? Abraham wants to ask God to relent to save the city, even if there are only ten righteous people in it. Genesis 18:27 shows us Abraham in midstream saying, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.”

Or think of Job, whose story we are returning to today. If there is a book that invites us to think about something too great and marvelous for us, it is Job, the Bible’s longest exploration of a problem that still plagues us all these centuries later: If God is good and just and powerful, then how do we explain the persistence of suffering and pain in this world? How do we make sense of the pain that we go through – that we see others go through? How should we respond when hard times come our way?

There is no straight line to an answer to these questions in Job. In fact, it seems to be a pretty conflicted book. Many people read it and come away with the idea that the book fails to answer any of these questions. Even Job himself is a conflicted character.

The book begins with a little deal being made in the courts of heaven. God and Satan are bargaining over the fate of Job who is described as a perfectly upright man – the kind of guy you could count on to do just the right thing in every situation. If you needed someone to be a witness in a case down at the city gate Job was your man. If you needed a trustee at church Job was the guy. If you needed a solid citizen for the Board of Supervisors you just might look to Job to do that. He was a man who feared God and turned away from evil. A pillar of the community, you might say.

Did I mention that he was also rich? He was as wealthy as a man could be in his day and this was taken as a sign of blessing. Seven sons and three daughters. 7,000 sheep. 3,000 camels. 500 yoke of oxen. 500 donkeys. 500 donkeys might not sound like a blessing to you, but believe me, that was big stuff in Job’s time. Bling looked a little different back in the day.

He was a faithful man, too. Job prayed for his children every day and offered burnt sacrifices on their behalf on the off chance that they might have cursed God, even inadvertently. It’s pretty clear that Job was a good guy.

So God and Satan decide to put this to the test. Satan’s job is to wander the earth seeing if people are living up to their potential and to accuse them if they aren’t. One day he shows up in the heavenly courts and God said, “Did you happen to check out my servant, Job, while you were out there? I know there are some pretty poor specimens upon the land, but there is nobody like Job. A perfectly upright man. Fears me. Turns away from evil. You’d have a hard time making a case against him.”

Satan takes up that challenge, though. He says, “Are you telling me that Job doesn’t have any weaknesses? Looks to me like he doesn’t have much reason to curse you. I bet if you took away some of that stuff he enjoys he’d be singing a different tune.”

So God agrees to this, disturbing though it is. The Satan was given a free hand and within a matter of hours Job’s blessed life was ruined. Fire fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and attending servants. Chaldean raiders took the camels and slaughtered the servants who were with them. A tornado hit a tent where all of his children were feasting and every one of them was killed. Even the donkeys were wiped out by a band of marauding Sabeans. Not even the donkeys were spared.

Job’s response was to tear his clothes, shave his head and fall down to worship God. He said, “I didn’t have anything when I came into this world and I won’t have anything when I leave it. God gives. God takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” That’s it! No wailing and gnashing of teeth. No lawsuits demanding compensatory damages. No tearful tirades against the injustice of the universe and God in particular broadcast internationally on CNN. Just “I was naked at birth, and I’ll be naked at death. Blessed be the Lord.”

A few days later the Satan showed up in the heavenly courts again. God asked, “Did you happen to check out my servant, Job, while you were out there? There is nobody like Job. A perfectly upright man. Fears me. Turns away from evil. And even now, after all that he’s lost, he still maintains his integrity. Not bad, huh?”

This irked the Satan. “Well, of course! You wouldn’t let me touch him. People can let go of a lot of stuff as long as it doesn’t get to their own skin. You let me afflict him personally and we’ll see how much longer he ‘maintains his integrity.’” Once again, God agreed to the terms with the restriction that the Satan could not kill Job.

Within minutes Job was suffering with evil sores over his entire body. So, he took a piece of an old broken pot, probably one broken in the disasters that had befallen him, and he went to sit on a heap of ashes, probably one left over from the feast tent that had burned, and he scraped his skin with the broken pottery.

Job’s wife came over to him. She looked at Job in his misery and said, “When will you give it up? How long will you maintain your integrity?” (Where have we heard those words before?) “Why don’t you just curse God and die?”

Job, however, is made of different stuff than most folks. He told his wife that she was talking like a fool and then he said, “God sends us good things and we receive them gladly. When God sends us evil how should we react?”

That’s the Job we get at the beginning of the book of Job. It’s the Job we think of when the book of James talks about “the patience of Job” [James 5:11]. This Job is faithful no matter what. He takes a licking and keeps on ticking. He stares down disaster and holds on to his faith. He praises God, even when he has every reason to curse God.

But that’s the Job of the early chapters of this book. In the middle of the book we get the angry, impatient Job. When his friends come to sit with him after the disasters that have befallen him they weep and then they sit in silence for seven days and then Job snaps. Job chapter 3, verse 1 says, “Job opened his mouth and cursed the day he was born.” He cries out to God, “Why didn’t I die at birth? Why should I suffer like this without understanding?” “Truly the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest; but trouble comes” [Job 3:25-26].

Now this is more like it. This is a Job we can relate to. He’s not cursing God exactly, but he certainly has a lot of questions. And he wants answers.

His friends are not very sympathetic. They try to get him to accept their pat answers for why this suffering has come on him. It must have been something he did. He must have done something wrong. Somebody must have done something wrong. Surely his calamities are the sign that God was displeased with him. They started out right. They sat in silence for seven days. But when they opened their mouths they stopped being friends and started to add to Job’s woes.

Job turns on them, too. In chapter 19 of the book he lets it rip:

Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! Why do you, like God, pursue me, never satisfied with my flesh? "O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book! O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever! For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. [Job 19:21-27]

You hear this verse, “I know that my Redeemer lives” and maybe you hear that old hymn by the same name. But what Job wants is an avenger – somebody who will stand in for him as an equal to God. The word in Hebrew is ‘goel’ and it means a blood-avenger – someone who will stand up for you when you are wronged and go after the offender. Job is saying that if there is any justice in this world then the last word to be said about his situation will not be his death, but his vindication before God. “At the end my goel will stand up for me and God will be on my side!”

Finally, God does appear in this book. Right after one of Job’s friends has made another speech saying that mortals cannot find God, there is God speaking from a whirlwind, and God is angry…mocking. “Who is this who obscures my intentions with his ignorant words,” God asks. “Stand up and answer like a man” [Job 38:1-2].

Then for four chapters God goes on to ask Job questions. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Can you send rain on the earth? Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you set the wild donkeys free? Can you comprehend the wonder of my creatures?” On and on God goes, finally appearing to Job and demanding a response from him.

When Job finally speaks, he is humbled. It’s the first part from our reading today. He has his audience with God. He has seen God in the flesh. But all of his anger and self-righteousness seems pointless now. “I have spoken about what I didn’t understand,” he says. “Things too wonderful for me, which I didn’t know…I am cast down like trash and repent in dust and ashes.” That’s it.

Why is Job content with this? Why does Job let God get away without an explanation? Maybe it’s because there is no answer that can satisfy the person for whom the whole world comes down to ‘what happens to me.’ There will always be some injustice to the world from my perspective. If God made it so I would never suffer cancer, then my hangnail would rise to the level of an existential question. If I never suffered grief, then the guy cutting me off on the road would make me question God’s goodness. There will always be something.

And maybe I never know this unless I enter into the mystery of pain and suffering and loss. Not that God wants us to suffer these things. I don’t believe that. But maybe we understand more about who we are and who God is when we endure the darkness of this world.

Scott Cairns wrote a book recently called The End of Suffering: Finding Purpose in Pain. In it he quotes the seventh-century Saint Isaac of Syria who said, “Blessed is the person who knows his own weakness, because awareness of this becomes for him the foundation and the beginning of all that is good and beautiful.” Cairns goes on to say, “Affliction seems to be our only reliable access to this kind of knowledge, this necessary confrontation with our own weaknesses…the only way we come to glimpse and thereafter to know our condition, to appreciate our vulnerability, and to live according to this new and chastening light.”[i]

There is a wisdom that can come through suffering. There is a knowledge that helps us to see the world, through all of its darkness, as a place of shattered light – a place where God’s goodness and beauty is breaking in on the world. I’m struck by the image of God asking Job whether he could comprehend what it means that God knows when the mountain goats and the deer give birth. “Do you know the time when they give birth, when they crouch to give birth to their offspring, and are delivered of their young? Their young ones become strong, they grow up in the open; they go forth, and do not return to them” [Job 39:2-4]. A God who cares even about the birth of a goat or a deer…who can delight in the details of their growth and development, surely cares about our pain. There is still beauty and wonder in this heaving world. The challenge for us is to see it.

Which brings us to the very surprising conclusion of Job. After the devastation. After the loss. After the cries to heaven and the fruitless rationalization of the friends. After the storm in which God appears to him and the final repentance of Job in dust and ashes. What happens then?

Job is restored. At least as much as is possible. God gives Job twice as much as he had before. He had 7,000 sheep, now he has 14,000. 3,000 camels before, 6,000 camels after. 500 yoke of oxen, now 1,000. 500 donkeys, now 1,000. His brothers and sisters and all who had known him before come over to break bread with him. He has seven more sons and three more daughters – these more beautiful than any other women in the land. And Job lived for 140 more years and saw his children and his children’s children and their children, too.

Of all the disturbing things that happen in the book of Job, I think this is the most disturbing. Because it seems to say that if we just endure, God will bless us with every material blessing. If we just hold on and stay faithful, no matter what Satan can throw at us, we will have 1,000 donkeys! But you and I know that this is not so. We have seen faithful people, saints even!, endure unimaginable things and they never received their long life and riches. If we assume that Job’s fate is the fate of all the faithful who endure suffering, we will be disappointed.

When I was growing up, there was a little girl in our congregation, Susan, who was a few years younger than me. She was born with some chronic health conditions that meant she was always in pain and always unable to do what other children in the congregation could do. Her family ran up huge medical bills caring for her. Finally, when she was just a teenager, she died.

But Susan was a witness to our church. She always smiled and her family never complained. She had the sweetest spirit and she loved God. She loved God more than anybody I ever knew. She never “got over” her condition, but she certainly knew blessings. And she was a blessing to us.

We may not always get long-life and riches, but with the right eyes we can see hope even in the midst of suffering. With the right eyes we can see that God is right here among us, walking beside us, and the world is not a cruel trick being played on us – it is the theater of God’s glory.

I’ll close with another story. Mary Karr is one of my favorite writers. She is a poet who has written a series of autobiographical works about her life growing up in East Texas. Her third book, Lit, about her conversion to Christianity and her struggle with substance abuse, is coming out this month.

Mary Karr lived a rough life. Dysfunctional is not the word to use to describe her family. Her experiences are hard to read about and her writing is often profane, suiting her rough upbringing. But something vibrant and vital sustained her into adulthood and into her writing. In her book, Cherry, she describes a time as a teenager when she was so bored and distraught that she thought to commit suicide.

She put on a black dress that she had outgrown and took a number of pills she had found in the house. Her despair and hopelessness was so great that she thought this might get the attention of her parents, who had many problems of their own. The pills only made her sick and when her mother checked on her she just rocked her on her lap in a rocker, never knowing why she was sick.

She writes about the experience:

When Daddy comes in, he carries you to bed. Is there anything you feel like you could eat, Pokey? [That’s what he calls her.] Anything at all?

All you can imagine putting in your mouth is a cold plum, one with really tight skin on the outside but gum-shocking sweetness inside. And he and Mother discuss where he might find some this late in the season. Mother says…I don’t know. Further north, I guess.

The next morning, you wake up in your bed and sit up. Mother says, Pete, I think she’s up.

He hollers in, You ready for breakfast, Pokey? Then he comes in grinning, still in his work clothes from the night before. He’s holding a farm bushel. The plums he empties onto the bed river toward you through folds in the quilt. If you stacked them up they’d fill the deepest bin at the Piggly Wiggly.

[Heck] if I didn’t get the urge to drive up to Arkansas last night, he says.

Your mother stands behind him saying he’s pure USDA crazy.

Fort Smith, Arkansas. Found a roadside stand there with a feller selling plums. And I says, Buddy, I got a little girl sick back in Texas. She’s got a hanker for plums and ain’t nothing else gonna do.

...it’s when you sink your teeth into the plum that you make a promise. The skin is still warm from riding in the sun in Daddy’s truck, and the nectar runs down your chin.

And you snap out of it. Or are snapped out of it. Never again will you lay a hand against yourself, no so long as there are plums to eat and somebody—anybody—who [cares] enough to haul them to you. So long as you bear the least nibblet of love for any other creature in this dark world, though in love portions are never stingy. There are no smidgens or pinches, only rolling abundance. That’s how you acquire the resolution for survival that the coming years are about to demand. You don’t earn it. It’s given.[ii]

There are no smidgens or pinches in love, only rolling abundance. How do we know this? Because God doles it out that way. When it seems like suffering and death and a cross are the only things real in this world…God’s love changes the equation. And you don’t earn it. It’s given. Like a juice from a plum given by a half-crazy father, that love flows downs and over us to remind us that whatever else this world may be – it is not God-forsaken. It is full of rolling abundance. Thanks be to God.

Job 42:1-6, 10-17

Then Job answered YHWH:

“I know that you can do all things and nothing you intend can be frustrated. You asked, ‘Who is this that conceals counsel without knowledge?’ Well, I have spoken about what I didn't understand, things too wonderful for me, which I didn't know.

“‘Listen now and I will ask things of you and you will teach me.’ I had heard of you by the hearing of my ears, now I see with my eyes. So I am cast down like refuse and repent in dust and ashes.”

After YHWH had said these things to Job, YHWH spoke to Eliphaz the Temanite, "My nostrils burn in anger against you and your two companions for you have not spoken truthfully about me as my servant Job has."...

And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then there came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they ate bread with him in his house; they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money and a gold ring.

The LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters. He named the first Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch. In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job's daughters; and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers. After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children, and his children's children, four generations. And Job died, old and full of days.

---

[i] Scott Cairns, The End of Suffering, [Paraclete Press, Brewster, MA, 2009], pp. 18-19.

[ii] Mary Karr, Cherry, [Penguin Books: New York, 2000], pp. 116-17.