Devotional on Job

2019 – Watkins Glen, NY State Park

Caution: big issues in play
Job 8: Does God mess up?
Weโ€™re still at the beginning of the debate that makes up the most of the book of Job but the battle lines are already drawn. Job doesn’t really disagree with what his friends believe; he just sees himself as an innocent victim of some cosmic mistake. Bildad’s comment that “God doesn’t mess up” is at the heart of all this. Job and his friends believe that when a person has something bad happen to them that itโ€™s because theyโ€™re being punished by God. Bildad doesn’t need any other evidence of Job’s children’s sin than the fact that they all died in a tornado. Since he can’t imagine a horrible thing like that “just happening” it has to be that God did it. And, if God did it, he did it for a reason. After all, everyone knows God doesn’t make mistakes. As Iโ€™ve said, the purpose of this book to answer the question, “Will a man serve God for nothing?” However, there are other issues in play and the majority of the book is taken up with those issues. This is one of the big ones: how does the reality of bad things happening to good people fit a theology of a wise, loving, and all knowing God?
Take Away: One result of reading this book of the Bible is that the reader has to think about big issues.

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