Acts of God, Acts of Man

An important distinction exists between suffering and consequences. The Fall has brought suffering into the human experience and also the human tendency to want to do what is wrong. Remembering the distinction is important, because we often choose to do what’s wrong.

We all know examples of suffering. Countless stories of childhood disease and suffering, for example, and often those serve as the strongest objection to Christianity or theism in general. Some of the objections are doubtless muted by the results: the astonishing acts of love and empathy that are seen, often coming from the sufferers themselves!

And then we are confronted with the mysterious wisdom literature of the book of Job in the Bible. Remember the friends? Remember how they kept asserting that Job must have done something wrong? Remember the end, where God indeed rebuked the friends, commanding Job to offer sacrifice to pardon their sins?

God blessed Job materially and with a new family. God also asserted His sovereign will, and the wisdom of His own counsel. Notice that Job doesn’t get the Answer. He’s never privy to the dialogue between God and Satan. He will not see in his earthly life the purpose of it all.

What would make for a very different book is if Job’s friends were simply Job. I venture to say that God views our self-reproach much more favorably than our harsh and sometimes rash judgments of others.

I only know of one obvious exception to this: if we have received and believed in Christ, and are sons and daughters of God, we do not have the right to call what God has made good “bad.” Self-reproach that leads toward forgiveness and restoration, powered by hope is different than self-reproach that brings one to despair.

Conversely, we probably don’t have credibility to speak about our “nasty, brutish, and short” lives if we know that what we mostly face are the consequences of our own choices. No one wants to hear, “Hug your loved ones, because you never know” from the mother of a dead mass shooter. We save that kind of sentiment for accidents and terminal illnesses. Consequences versus suffering epitomized.

In the end, if we might “fault” God for some of the vagueness of what he promises us in restoration, it’s because we lack the ability to fully understand the scope of the restoration, or to experience it now in its totality.

Jason Kettinger is Associate Editor of Open for Business. He writes on politics, sports, faith and more.