A lot of our axioms and canned answers are really quite awful.
Someone loses their job, and we say “God has a plan.”
Someone loses their house, and we say “God moves in mysterious ways.”
Someone loses their family, and we say “God is in control”.
Perhaps we aren’t all to blame. Perhaps we’re just repeating the ineffective consolations we’ve heard our whole life. Perhaps we regurgitate familiar axioms simply because they are familiar, and because we hope to find and share some comfort in their familiarity.
But perhaps we don’t really believe every axiom and simple, canned answer we’ve grown familiar with.
Isn’t it strange to think that the best thing Job’s friends did after Job had lost everything was to sit and mourn with him in silence? The rest of the book feels like one big “axiom-fest”. Job’s friends assumed God was blessing Job’s righteousness and punishing Job’s unrighteousness.
But they were wrong.
In fact, the whole takeaway from the book of Job is that we dreadfully misunderstand and misrepresent God when we think of Him as orchestrating our calamity. We misunderstand and misrepresent God when we create Him in our own image.
As it turns out, the adversary is the one who sought to accuse Job, and to cause immense pain. That wasn’t God’s plan. That wasn’t God moving in a mysterious way.
Perhaps many of us have a hard time really trusting God, because we think His true nature is more like our own, or more like the enemy when in fact His love is perfect.
“God is in control.” In control of what? Suffering? Violence? Justice?
To believe that God is sovereign, or even all-powerful, is not the same thing as believing that He is all-controlling.
When we think of God as an all-controlling entity, we are thinking of a god created in our own image – a cosmic version of ourself.
Astonishingly, the book of Job doesn’t end with God explaining everything to Job and his friends. It’s almost as if the point of Job’s suffering wasn’t to figure out why it happened. It’s almost as if “the point” of Job’s suffering wasn’t really “the point” that mattered. It’s almost as if the most important takeaway from this experience was that Job could really trust the God of Perfect Love, even if he didn’t understand what had happened or why.
And maybe that’s the point for us as well.
Are axioms and canned answers really quite awful? Yes and no. No, because many axioms and canned answers have at least a grain of truth, or can be wonderfully applicable in some situations where we just can’t find our own words. But Yes, because we can rely too heavily on easy sayings and forget to really think about what they mean, what they imply, and what that suggests about our view of God.
Just for a Closer Walk 