I am utterly spent and crushed; I groan because of the tumult of my heart. (Ps 38:8). This does not sound like the sort of spiritual blessing that anyone would put their hand up for. When we think of the spiritual life there an innate desire for comfort and ease, the sort of heavenly places where everything is just tickety-boo, and inner peace abounds, all the time.
For people who opt for this model, and many do, because it’s peddled relentlessly by some religious groups.1 When life throws up some serious curve balls as it inevitably does, our relationship with God either goes down the drain or has to be utterly reconfigured.
I know an old recovering booze hound who likes to say “don’t leave before the miracle happens.” He is a fella who knows plenty about curve balls, not just the deprivation of alcoholism and all that comes with that. But after being sober for several years, his only son was murdered. To say that his sage advice, about hanging in there till the miracles happen, was being seriously tested, is obviously an understatement. This awful tragedy occurred some years ago and the suffering that accompanied it was raw, long, and as real as it gets. But recently I heard him sharing a little snip bit about his spiritual journey, and out it came, “don’t leave before the miracle happens.”
This easy in or out, good folk’s do well, is repeatedly challenged in scripture.
There is no shortage of biblical promises that Yahweh will pour out blessing and prosperity on the righteous, while sinners will get to suffer all manner of misfortune (Ps 1:1-6). This easy in or out, good folk’s do well, while bad folks get hammered, is however, also repeatedly challenged in scripture.
The book of Job is a prime example, where some of the ancient scribes take serious issue with the notion that good folks get an easy ride straight to the land of plenty. Job is introduced as the most righteous man on earth, he’s got it all. Mister success, enormous family, impeccable religious observance, respect, untold land holdings, camel’s galore, this guy has positively got it made (Job 1:1-5). Then every possible thing that can be taken from him is unceremoniously removed (Job 1:13-2:9). Job understandably is broken and utterly mystified. This just can’t be happening to a righteous man like him (Job 17:1-16). Where the bloody hell is Yahweh? (Job 30:19-22).
So ingrained is the religious belief of the time that bad stuff can’t befall good folks. That the long-suffering Job has to endure his closest buddies visiting him one by one, all with the same message. You must have mucked up somehow and done evil, they all helpfully advise him, just admit your faults, and who knows Yahweh might give you another go. But Job’s not having a bit of it. He knowns damn well, he has done nothing wrong. Ultimately, he demands and gets a sit down with Yahweh to trash the matter out (Job 38:1-18). What he receives, however, is a sort of “My Ways Are Not Your Ways,” moment (Isa 55:8). There is no explicit explanation given why Job like so many other good people in every time and place have to undergo terrible suffering.
Five or six centuries later, in his incredible Sermon on the Mount, the Galilean God with skin on man, who is the epitome of Isaiah’s suffering servant, says, “Rain falls on the good and the evil,” (Matt 5:45). As Richard Rohr writes,
“Job prefigures Jesus, the dying man who should not be dying. Both of them bring us the essence of what religious faith must mean. Both expand the possibility of human freedom to the edge- where only divine union can sustain us, where our life is not just about us.” 2
Job’s story is a brilliant prose polemic; it’s a push back against the prevailing wisdom of some of the Hebrew scribes who promoted the notion that suffering only befalls the unrighteous. This is an idea that persists in religious circles, in one form or another, right up till today.
Suffering comrades is part of the journey, it’s hard rain that no one welcomes.
Eventually, after every form of deprivation, we are told right at the end of the narrative that Job’s fortunes are reversed, the good times are back. He receives from Yahweh double of everything he had lost.
The suffering and eventual restoration of Job parallels the lives of many who tread the spiritual path, including myself. Suffering comrades is part of the journey, it’s hard rain that no one welcomes, but it has a purpose and I’ll have more to say on that in my next post. But let me finish for now by saying that suffering can wash you clean. It can set you on a new and better path where everything, albeit after a long wait in the roar of in-between, is just tickety-boo again. So hey, like the man says, “don’t leave before the miracle happens.”
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